NHMRC – Investigator Grant Application Workshop

29% of our consulting clients have won an NHMRC Investigator Grant

This NHMRC Investigator Grant workshop is designed for health and medical researchers preparing a competitive Investigator application. We work through how to write a vision, craft the knowledge gain sections, write compelling impact narratives for your track record, and showcase leadership contributions. We want to help participants take their work to the next level. This workshop will build skills and help participants understand tools to capture meaningful information to use when writing about knowledge gain and impact in grant applications.

We have been working with researchers on their NHMRC Investigator Grant Applications since they introduced the new scheme in late 2019. Our consulting options fill fast, but we have noticed that when applicants take our workshop, they come to us with a better draft.

This workshop works through all the elements of the application to give participants the best chance of success.

There is an increasing need to understand how to best structure, articulate and communicate your research knowledge gain, and your research impact and leadership track record. This workshop is designed to help you do just that.

Workshop structure

Investigator grant basics and considerations
Mapping out your project proposal
Writing a project vision

Determining your knowledge gain and writing a compelling statement
Language, wording and structure of your proposal elements
Revisiting your project map and project vision
Your top five research publications

Breaking down the impact track record components
Understanding your impact pathway
Mapping the impact elements of your chosen program of research
What goes in each section and how to frame the elements

Leadership sections
Types of information to include in each section
How to show leadership rather than telling
The ten step check list for your application

Your Workshop Facilitators

Dr Tamika Heiden

Principal, Research Impact Academy

Tamika has dedicated over a decade of her career to impact pathways through knowledge translation and the identification and assessment of research impact. Tamika is passionate about making a difference and delivering projects that create significant and lasting change for her clients. Tamika’s more than a decade of career experience as a researcher and research manager in the fields of health, sport and medical research, along with her formal qualifications in knowledge translation and impact make her one of the few specialists that doesn’t just talk the talk. Tamika enjoys helping her clients to form partnerships, develop impact plans, and be rewarded for their efforts. More recently, Tamika founded and hosted the annual online Research Impact Summit. Tamika’s passion for impact, along with the summit success, has led to her becoming known as the “Australian powerhouse of Research Impact”, and resulted in her winning the 2018 Knowledge Mobilization Forum award for Innovation. With a 4000 strong audience representing 47 countries, Tamika has interviewed more than fifty experts in the fields of stakeholder engagement, translation and implementation, and research impact.

Cathie Withyman

Associate, Research Impact Academy

Cathie Withyman is a research impact communication specialist. She has worked with leading universities and government departments both domestically and internationally to develop and craft engaging and insightful impact narratives. Cathie possesses over 15 years experience partnering with researchers, program managers and communication professionals to facilitate training and skills development in the effective communication of research and program impacts. She is a master at drawing out the true nature of impacts and weaving this into a compelling narrative. A key achievement of Cathie’s to date has been the compilation of a leading Australian University’s submission to the Australian Research Council’s 2018 Impact and Engagement Assessment. Cathie managed the development and authoring of 12 Impact Case Studies and 10 Research Engagement Narratives over an intense six-month period. She is skilled at coaching and mentoring research academics to plan, record and report on research impact. She has developed training programs and resource materials to support academics in this increasingly important area of their work.

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Learning Outcomes

Confidence in writing your knowledge gain five pages

You will understand how to position your research to highlight the knowledge gain
We will help you explain your work in a clear and logical manner
You will have a clear project vision that aligns with your work

Track record components

Identify exactly what needs to be presented in each section of your track record
Know how to write about your leadership and best represent your top five publications
A clear plan of what to write in each of the three impact sections

Track record components

Building your case study, examples of good and bad impact sections
Using a story narrative to articulate your research impact in a compelling way
Linking the research and the researcher’s contribution to the impact

Feedback from our clients

I left the workshop feeling positive

I left the workshop feeling positive about having the tools to develop a much stronger application that meets the reviewer guidelines.

Alexandra Hogan

The University of New South Wales

The workshop was useful

The workshop was useful to me because it raised several questions that every researcher should ask themselves when preparing an article — or, more generally, during their research activities. It serves as a reminder of why we do what we do and for what purpose. So for me it was a helpful reminder!

Sergey Belkin

Monash Faculty of Science

The speakers are very well versed in the area of research impact

The speakers are very well versed in the area of research impact, providing such insightful and inspiring information, transferring their research experience to other research projects.

Ernie Mohd Kamal

Taylor's University