The Summer round of the Bursary Fund closes at the end of August.

Here are the upcoming dates for 2024 applications:

• Winter: 1 January to 29 February
• Spring: 1 April to 31 May
• Summer: 1 July to 30 August
• Autumn: 1 October to 29 November

 

Background

The Institute of Acoustics is pleased to confirm that its Bursary Fund is open for applications from its members.

The IOA Council has allocated £10,000 to the Bursary Fund, which it aims to use in both improving IOA members’ access to acoustics related training and activities and also assisting them in carrying-out acoustics-related STEM activities, where funding from other sources may be limited or unavailable.

Applications can be submitted from members at any grade, either as individuals or as a consortium. The IOA Executive and Council recognise the ongoing impact of economic uncertainties on the acoustics community, and have decided that applications from members who have recently lost their job, or those who are struggling to find employment, will be prioritised.

 

Bursary funding rules and eligibility criteria

The maximum award which will normally be granted, per application, is £1,000.  Depending upon available funds and in specific exceptional cases, grants over £1,000 may also be considered. 

Applications for grants can be made under the following three categories:

1)    Full or part-time course related to the field of acoustics (up to a maximum of 50 % of the course cost). If you are currently in employment, the course needs to be unrelated to your or your employer’s business or business development.

Examples:  A member who has recently been made redundant wanting to retrain into a different area of acoustics to help increase their re-employment opportunities.

A postgraduate student researching a building acoustics topic wishing to attend https://www.ioa.org.uk/education-training/certificate-competence-building-acoustics-measurement

2)   Fees payable to the organiser of an acoustics-related short-term course, meeting, lecture or conference, and/or reasonable travel and subsistence costs to participate either as an attendee or presenter. If you are currently in employment, the topic needs to be unrelated to your or your employer’s business or business development.

Example:  An undergraduate attending an IOA one-day meeting on a subject they are interested in

3)   Undertake activities to promote acoustics and the IOA in public forums, including STEM activities in schools. If a bursary award will be used to fund research activities, the applicant needs to explain why their University/research institute can’t fund this activity.

Example:  Funding props for an acoustic demonstration that can be presented in a school assembly, or a lesson.

Applicants should note that they are more likely to be successful in receiving a bursary from the fund if they can specifically demonstrate, when preparing their applications:

*   how they, the IOA and the wider acoustics industry/community will benefit from the activity they propose to undertake; and

*   how the funding will enable them to achieve this outcome.

As a condition of receiving a bursary, successful applicants are requested to share their experience with the wider IOA membership – for example by writing an article for Acoustic Bulletin about the course they attended, or presenting their work to local IOA Branches, or at wider IOA Conferences.  Successful applicants may also offer to prepare articles for the wider related press to raise the profile of acoustics, as well as their work.

 

Funding prioritisation

In the event of the value of approved applications exceeding the available funds, applicants should note that applicant priority to funding will be applied in the following order:

IOA Early Career members* who have lost their job, and/or are struggling to find a job in acoustics

IOA members (any category) who have lost their job, and/or are struggling to find a job in acoustics

IOA Student members

IOA Early Career members

IOA member (any category) who is not employed in private or public sector in an acoustics role, which may include retired members, those not currently in any paid employment, or a member who is employed in a non-acoustics job

Any other IOA member employed in any organisation.

*Note: An applicant is classified as Early Career if they are under 35 years of age or within the first five years of their career in acoustics.

 

Application process

The Bursary Fund opens for applications four times a year. If you wish to be considered for a grant from the fund, please download a copy of the application form here. If you are applying as a consortium, please provide the information on Page 1 of the application for each consortium member.

Once completed, submit your completed application form by email to ioaioa [dot] org [dot] uk with ‘IOA Bursary Fund Application’ in the email subject title, taking note of the deadlines in the respective call. Please note if funding is requested for attendance to a conference, this will need to be submitted as soon as possible and no less than three months before the conference. This is to ensure the panel will review the application and release the funding before the conference takes place.

Applications will be considered by the IOA Bursary Fund panel, who will review anonymised applications and assign a recommendation to each individual case. The criteria to which applications will be reviewed against are outlined above, and those applications which best-satisfy these criteria are most-likely to be successful.

The applicants will be notified of the IOA Bursary Fund panel’s decision on their application by email. Where the application is unsuccessful, the applicant will be provided with the reason for this decision; together with a recommendation for resubmission, if appropriate.