Welcome to the FRDC Research and Innovation Investment Briefing for March 2022.
In this briefing, we highlight investment opportunities, provide an update on our recent funding round, and explain how we’re enhancing FishNet. These enhancements build on the changes that allow researchers to submit milestone reports via Fishnet. I’d like to thank our researchers for embracing this change, which is making milestone processing more efficient.
If you’d like help using FishNet, please refer to our quick start guide.
To stay up to date with other news and information from FRDC, including our monthly FRDC News, you can subscribe here. You can also follow us on LinkedIn and YouTube. Please drop us a line if you have any suggestions for news you’d like us to include in future briefings.
Cheers
Crispian Ashby
General Manager Research and Development Investment
FRDC funding round update
We received 26 applications in our latest open call funding round. A pool of external reviewers and our Research & Development Investment team are currently evaluating the attractiveness and feasibility of these applications and we anticipate informing applicants of the outcomes and next stages of their application evaluation in coming weeks.
Research Advisory Committee meetings
Our eight Research Advisory Committees (RACs) – there is one for each state, the Northern Territory and the Commonwealth – provide advice on research priorities and investment needs relevant to the public good and for sectors not covered under our Industry Partnership Agreements. The RACs are meeting during March and April to identify additional priorities and we anticipate announcing the next call for applications in the middle of the year. We will share information about the call with subscribers to this newsletter.
Fishnet enhancements
As part of our process of continual improvement and making applying for funding easier, FRDC is developing a number of application types to suit different types of investments. This will include prospectus for investments into events, conferences and sponsorship and pitches for investment into innovation.
Opportunities to partner and co-invest with FRDC
Our stakeholders have helped to identify a number of strategic areas where we need additional focus and investment to achieve our R&D Plan 2020–25. One of them is how to help fishing and aquaculture transition to a circular economy, which is a model of production and consumption that involves designing out waste, keeping products in use longer, and regenerating natural systems.
We have just published a funding opportunity to deliver a regional pilot to facilitate adoption of the principles underpinning circularity throughout fishing and aquaculture. The pilot would operate in a single region initially to build a connected community of people to learn together. This will offer potential to scale at a later point in time – so it will involve tracking what’s working, what’s not working, and identifying methods of adaptation.
Other funding opportunities
The Australian Government publishes forecast and current grant opportunities on its centralised website GrantConnect. We suggest reviewing these grant opportunities to understand more of your funding options. Two current grants are highlighted below.
The Innovative Agricultural Trials in Indian Ocean Territories grant through the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications is an open, competitive grant for a two-year program on Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands to promote economic diversity and growth by supporting agricultural or aquaculture trial demonstration sites. Application close 5.00 pm (ACT local time) 31 March 2022.
The Women's Leadership and Development Program: Lead and Succeed grant opportunity through the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet supports projects that address the structural and systemic barriers that impede women’s employment and progression into leadership; create an environment for women to achieve professional success; and support women to access leadership roles. Applications close at 9:00 pm (ACT local time) on 21 April 2022.
For more information, refer to GrantConnect.
New projects
For details about the 20 new research, development and extension projects that have been recently contracted, click here.
Recently finalised projects
For details about final reports that have recently been published on our website, click here.
