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The Future Fellowships scheme reflects the Australian Government’s commitment to excellence in research by supporting excellent mid-career researchers to undertake high quality research in areas of national and international benefit.
The objectives of the Future Fellowships scheme are to:
Applications for funding commencing in 2024 opened on 5 October 2023 and closed on 23 November 2023. Applications were submitted through the Australian Research Council (ARC) Research Management System (RMS). This report outlines outcomes from the selection process for that round.
These recommendations are based on advice from the ARC Selection Advisory Committee (SAC) which:
and, advice from the ARC’s National Competitive Grants Program (NCGP) Eligibility Committee which:
This report reflects the outcomes approved by the Minister. Unless otherwise specified, data represented in this report excludes withdrawn applications.
All applications that meet the eligibility criteria for the Future Fellowships 2024 applications were assessed and merit ranked using the following assessment criteria:
Describe the quality of the candidate as per the relevant section in Table 1.
Table 1: Future Fellowship candidate.
Describe the:
If the project involves research pertaining to Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander communities describe:
Describe the potential benefits including the:
The ARC assessment process for Future Fellowships 2024 involved 51 Selection Advisory Committee members across four discipline panels and was managed in RMS. A total of 1,486 independent assessors’ reports were submitted to the ARC.
Future Fellowships are funded for four consecutive years on a full-time basis. The annual salary contribution may be awarded at one of three salary levels, either $170,848, $206,818 or $242,783 (2023$) including 30 per cent on-costs. In addition, the ARC may provide up to $60,000 in project costs per annum.
The ARC received a total of 603 applications for Future Fellowships for funding commencing in 2024, of which one application was withdrawn.
One hundred Future Fellows are approved for funding commencing in 2024, shown in Table 2. The overall success rate for Future Fellowships for funding commencing in 2024 is 16.6 per cent. A comparison of success rates and funding amounts is shown in Table 2 and the overall success rate by salary level is shown in Table 3.
Of the unsuccessful applications in 2024, 2 were found not to meet eligibility requirements.
Table 2. Comparison of application numbers, success rates, requested and allocated funds for approved Future Fellowships applications from 2023 to 2024.
Table 3. Application numbers, success rates, requested and allocated funds for approved Future Fellowships applications 2024.
Success rate
(%)
A summary of outcomes by discipline panel is shown in Table 4.
Table 4. Application numbers, success rates and requested and allocated funds for approved Future Fellowships 2024 applications by discipline.
*BSB - Biological Sciences and Biotechnology; EIC – Engineering, Information and Computing Sciences; HSE – Humanities and Creative Arts, Social, Behavioural and Economic Sciences; MPCE – Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Earth Sciences
A summary of outcomes by Administering Organisation is shown in Table 5.
Table 5. Number of applications and success rates for approved Future Fellowships 2024 applications by Administering Organisation
Of the 602 Future Fellowship candidates in this round, 224 were female, 372 were male, 1 was Indeterminate/Intersex and 5 chose not to specify their gender. The success rate for female, male, Indeterminate/Intersex and unspecified candidates in this round is 15.2 per cent, 17.7 per cent, 0.0 per cent and 0.0 per cent respectively.
Success rates of Future Fellowship candidates by career age and gender in the current Future Fellowship round are presented in Figure 1.
At the closing time of submission of applications, of the 602 candidates, 513 were between 5 and 15 years of the award of their PhD and 89 were beyond 15 years of the award of their PhD. To be eligible to apply for Future Fellowships, the latter group of researchers had their significant career interruptions certified by their Administering Organisation.
Of the approved Future Fellows, 84 candidates were between 5 and 15 years of the award of their PhD and 16 were beyond 15 years of the award of their PhD.
Figure 1. Participation and success rate of Future Fellowships 2024 candidate by gender and career age*^
* Career age is calculated as years since PhD based on the relevant qualification as selected in the application.^ Calculated career age does not take career interruptions into consideration.
Table 6. Future Fellowship 2024: Gender by Discipline Panel - submission and award numbers, and success rates
*Ind/Int – Indeterminate/Intersex; Unsp - Unspecified
Figure 2. Participation and success rate of Future Fellowships 2024 candidate by gender and panel
Table 7. Future Fellowship Level by Discipline Panel - submission and award numbers, and success rates
Figure 3. Participation and success rate of Future Fellowships 2024 candidate by FT Level and panel
Applications were open to Eligible Organisations to nominate candidates who are outstanding mid-career researchers of international repute, resident either within Australia or overseas (Table 8).
Table 8. Citizenship/residency status of Future Fellowships 2024 candidates and approved Awardees
Note: All totals and percentages are shown using rounded figures, and as such may not sum.
Among 602 of the applications considered, applicants foreshadowed 1,672 instances of collaboration with researchers in 96 overseas locations. Of the applications approved for funding, applicants foreshadowed 298 instances of collaboration with researchers in 52 overseas locations (Figure 4).
Figure 4. International collaborations by location in approved Future Fellowships 2024 applications*
*The top 10 international collaboration locations are listed in Figure 4 and the remaining are grouped in the ‘Other’ category.