Applications are open for the Centre for Translational Medicine (CTM) Post-Doctoral Clinical Research Excellence Fellowships; this scheme offers up to 24 months protected research time for health professionals at the postdoctoral stage of clinical academic training. The scheme is open to any postdoctoral health professional working or planning to work in translational medical research. This scheme is open to both internal and external applicants with priority given to individuals who’s clinical and research work will largely be based in a King’s Health Partners (KHP) organisation for the fellowship. 

These fellowships are designed to provide a period of protected research time, to support individuals to apply for more substantial, competitive research funding to further their clinical academic career. The time should be used to generate data to support subsequent funding applications, deliver research outputs such as peer reviewed articles, and build research skills and/or collaborations. A key success metric of the scheme will be obtaining competitive external funding for the next stage of research training eg. Clinician Scientist, Intermediate or Advanced fellowships (or equivalent). 

The ambition of this call is to support exceptional health professional researchers to become the next generation of clinical academic leaders. Successful applicants will have access to a programme of research training and career development through King’s Clinical Academic Training Office (KCATO) and other entities across the KHP organisations. This will include mentoring, research skills training, professional development and grant/publication writing support. 

To facilitate training in Translational Medicine, fellows will receive supervision by clinical or academic colleagues with a proven track record in translational medical research including successful supervision of external peer-reviewed personal fellowship-holders. Supervisors must be employed by one of the KHP organisations, and supervisors may support only one fellowship application per round. 

Strategic fit

Funding seeks to support fellows to develop and deliver on projects in translational medical research, particularly studies of disease mechanisms in humans and the translation of these insights into early detection and interventions. This includes use of diagnostics and devices, patient-reported outcome measures, and the development of proof of concepts, such as through early phase clinical studies of new treatments and development of advanced therapies.  Fellows’ research projects should align to the priority areas and themes summarised in Figure 1 and demonstrate clear contributions to the strategic priority areas for health research at the KHP organisations, including how the research will seek to reduce health inequity. Discovery science projects and/or those involving animal models are not eligible. 

We particularly encourage applications that:

  • Aim to harness combined strengths across King’s College London faculties and KHP organisations;
  • Bring together multidisciplinary, cross-partner and/or cross-faculty research and expertise, which may be reflected in the supervisory team;
  • Connect mental and physical health (and/or links to the NIHR Maudsley BRC).

Figure 1: Priority areas for funding:

Priorities - understanding mechanisms of disease linked to: risk stratification, early detection, precision and advanced therapies, monitoring outomes. Impact on patients (enabled by data) - increased awareness of risk of disease onset, disease detected at an early more treatable stage, best treatment responses based on disease characteristics, increased chance of identifying relapse.

Examples of projects funded by the Centre for Translational Medicine can be found on the CTM website.

Funding available

  • Fellow salary: This scheme seeks to match the current salary of fellows during the research period, the maximum salary envelope is £213,626 (£106,813 per annum). This includes the total salary costs for up to two years, including all On-costs, ie, pension and NI contributions. But not including on call costs). Therefore, applicants should cost their salary based on their salary in September 2026 (see “costings” below);
  • This fellowship can be taken at less than 100% FTE (minimum 50% FTE) however the total length of the fellowship remains at a maximum of two years; applications must indicate a work plan which is achievable in the allocated time;
  • Use of research platforms should be costed into the application;
  • Up to £10,000 per annum (pro rata) can be requested for research running costs/consumables. As part of this fellowship, it will be expected you have a budget line for PPIE activity. This may come out of the consumables budget or another source but needs to be indicated in the application;
  • Each fellow will also have access to up to £1,000 per year flexible bursary eg. for travel to meetings or external training not provided by KHP organisations.

For the duration of the fellowship, in addition to pursing their research projects, recipients will:

  • Prepare for future research fellowship application(s) for submission to external funding bodies, such as a Research Council, Charity or NIHR, to support a further period of research activity eg. clinician scientist fellowship, advanced or intermediate fellowship;
  • Publish their research outputs in peer-reviewed journals;
  • Prepare and present their research at internal and external meetings;
  • Actively participate in research meetings and public engagement activities.

  • Health professionals (registered with a UK health professional regulatory body) are eligible to apply, including nurses, midwives, doctors, dentists, pharmacists, healthcare scientists, psychologists and all other registered professions allied to healthcare. 
  • Applicants who are not currently registered with a UK health professional regulatory body can apply if they are expected to be registered by the time of the interview in February 2026. Researchers/scientists who are not registered health professionals are not eligible.
  • Applicants should have a doctoral degree in a relevant research area, eg., PhD, MDRes.
  • The aim of the fellowship is to provide protected research time embedded and supported in the optimal environment for clinical academic career progression. Successful Fellows will have the opportunity to be based at King’s College London (fixed term contract) or to maintain their NHS employment if they currently hold substantive employment for the duration of the fellowship at one of the KHP partner trusts (South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust).  This decision should be made in conjunction with your sponsor to allow you to be based wherever is best for the type of research activity, optimal research supervision/ mentoring, support structures/professional development, requirements for professional registration and validation etc.
  • We welcome applications from individuals based in KHP and outside King’s Health Partner organisations.
  • This scheme aims to support researchers who are intending to pursue a clinical academic career i.e. maintain both clinical professional activity and research in the long-term. An outline of the plan to achieve this is required in the application.
  • We particularly encourage applications from non-medical health professionals; our ambition is to broaden the health professions represented amongst CTM funded fellows, this includes nurses, midwives, doctors, dentists, pharmacists, healthcare scientists, psychologists and all other registered professions allied to healthcare.
  • We welcome applications from candidates from underrepresented groups for this scheme, irrespective of gender identity, disabilities, neuro-divergence, race or ethnicity, religion, or other personal circumstances. 

  • Supervision must be provided by research-active staff employed by one of the KHP organisations. At least one supervisor must be a King’s College London employee or hold an adjunct appointment.
  • Supervisors should have a track record of successful supervision of clinical Post doctoral fellows, successfully supporting them to obtain external competitive intermediate/advanced fellowship funding.
  • At least one supervisor must be a clinical academic health professional.

Fellowships are offered for up to two years with full salary covered (up to a total of £213,626, including on costs). Maintaining clinical skills (up to a maximum of two PAs/0.2FTE per week) is encouraged as part of the full-time fellowship period, in order to avoid deskilling clinically.

If a part-time work plan is proposed, this should be articulated in the application form. The minimum FTE for the fellowship is 50% FTE. Fellowships will not be offered for longer than two years. Fellowships need to be completed by 31 March 2029.

Successful applicants are expected to start the fellowship in September 2026. Flexibility on start date will be considered on a case-by case-basis.

For external candidates, the supervisor should assist with costings for the application. Total salary for applied FTE over the two-year period September 2026 – September 2028 should be calculated including all on costs (not including on call costs). 

  • Salary cost: For NHS salaries, the NHS Trust Research and Development (R&D) office will help determine salary costs for the duration of the project. Please request this straight away, as it can take up to four weeks for a costing request to be processed.
  • NHS Trust R&D office contacts are:
  • For King’s College London salary costings, please use WorkTribe. Local Business / School Manager or Departmental Research Support Officers can guide you to completing a WorkTribe costing. The total salary cost as a stand-alone budget, internal funding. Successful candidates will be required to provide recent pay slips as evidence of their current salary.
  • The use of research platforms should be costed into the application.
  • Research running costs/consumables should be costed up to a maximum of £10,000 per year, pro-rated (total maximum £20,000 for two years).
  • Support with costing your funding application: To assist with preparing the financial aspects of your application, King's Clinical Academic Training Office (KCATO) has produced a training video. These are available from the KCATO SharePoint or at this link.

Applications that incorporate collaboration with external NHS, University or industry partners, and co-supervisors will be considered. Successful fellows may undertake periods of training in institutions of collaborators where appropriately justified eg. where expertise, technologies or techniques are not currently available across KHP. In such cases, applicants are encouraged to outline how any new capabilities learned externally will be brought back for wider dissemination.

Selection process

After an initial eligibility check, an independent representative review panel from across King’s Health Partners, including patient/public representation, will evaluate all applications. Applications will be ranked, and shortlisted candidates will be invited to interview where the panel will assess: 

  • The research track record of the candidate;
  • The training and development plan, including plans for future clinical academic career progression and leveraging external fellowship funding; 
  • The quality of the research project described; 
  • Contribution towards positive outcomes for patients and/or communities contribution towards enhancing health equity;
  • Strength of the PPI/E plans; 
  • Suitability of the supervisory team; 
  • Alignment of research with the strategic research priorities across KHP organisations; 
  • Relevance to the four priority research domains (Figure 1); 
  • Value for money and justification of the funding requested.

Application Process and Key Dates 

There are two stages for candidates to apply to the fellowship:

  1. Fellows and supervisors work up an application form to submit. Application deadline: Thursday 18 December 2025 12pm (noon) UK time.
  2. Shortlisted applicants will be invited to interviews. Interviews: w/c 23 February 2026. Fellowships starts -  September 2026 (or earlier if possible). 

How to apply

Applications should be submitted through the online form on Qualtrics.

You will be asked to upload a ‘Scientific Rational and Experimental Design’ document and a signed approval form on the application portal.  All sections of the application forms must be complete at the time of submission. Late applications will not be accepted.

Download the key documents here:

First supervisors should complete a separate MS Form.

Engagement session

We are holding an engagement Q&A session on Monday 17 November 2025 2pm -2.30pm. To register to attend, please sign up via registration form.

Drop-in sessions on PPIE are available for applicants to support the development of ideas on how to involve PPIE members in early stages of research while writing grant applications. 

Dates: 3 November, 13 November, 25 November, 11 December 2025. 

All Sessions will be held 12:30-1:30pm. Location: MS Teams. Please go to the CTM website to sign up and book a time.

Queries can be sent to the CTM team delivering the call via translationalmedicine@kcl.ac.uk.

Deadline:
18 December 2025, 12:00pm