BBSRC Pioneer Awards 2025 to 26: bioscience discovery research

The BBSRC Pioneer Awards 2025 to 26 provide funding to pursue early-stage bioscience discovery research. Applications should open novel adventurous research avenues with the potential to transform our fundamental understanding of living systems. Projects must be early-stage fundamental bioscience lacking preliminary data, explore visionary and untested ideas, and have the potential to open new research paradigms in the longer-term. This unique opportunity aims to support excellent, original, and potentially transformative discovery research at an early stage of development, by encouraging greater tolerance for risk and reducing the expectation for preliminary data. The scheme seeks to stimulate creativity within the research community by providing funding that encourages a 'high risk, high reward' culture in the application and assessment process. Applications should be focused on BBSRC's understanding the rules of life theme, opening new research directions relevant to fundamental bioscience questions, and should constitute a significant departure from existing lines of investigation or represent an entirely new line of inquiry.