As discussed at the Commonwealth Science Conference in June, the Royal Society and the National Research Foundation in Singapore (NRF) are working together to promote opportunities for collaboration across the Commonwealth.

We are therefore delighted to announce that the NRF has established a new Post-doctoral International Collaborative Fellowship for the Commonwealth. Up to ten Post-doctoral Fellowships will be awarded to do research in either Oceans or Sustainable Cities, two of the themes of the Conference. The Fellowships will be based in a Singapore institution. Details of the scheme and the supervising team are available here.

The Commonwealth Science Conference website also sets out information about existing Royal Society schemes as well as detailing other funding schemes across the Commonwealth.

We will be writing to you again shortly with more information about new Royal Society schemes.

Commonwealth Science Conference Evaluation

Thank you to those of you who completed the evaluation of the June Conference. It is incredibly important to get your feedback about what worked well or not so well and to receive your suggestions for any future Commonwealth Science Conference.

We had around 200 completed questionnaires with the topline findings as follows:

  • 99% of respondents said that their overall experience of the conference was excellent (66%) or good (33%).
  • 97% of respondents said that the Royal Society should organise another CSC with 83% saying that it should continue to be multi-disciplinary.
  • 90% of respondents said that the conference met its stated aims. (10% said maybe).
  • 70% of respondents said that the conference was likely to have an impact on their future research
  • 82% of respondents said that they were more likely to consider researchers from Commonwealth countries when planning collaborations with 60% of respondents saying they had plans to collaborate with new contacts made at the conference (31% said maybe).
  • 70% of respondents said they were planning to apply for or recommend someone for a follow-on grant.

We do hope you take the opportunity to work with colleagues across the Commonwealth and would be really interested to find out more information about any collaborations.

Lesley Miles
on behalf of the organising team – Commonwealth Science Conference