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A Clinician Scientist Fellowship is a type of grant held by a clinician who already has a PhD typically for the purpose of undertaking full-time postdoctoral Out Of Programme Research experience (OOPR). UCL has many postdoctoral Clinician Scientists at any one time who although mainly doctors also come from allied health professional backgrounds such as speech and language therapy.
Clinician Scientist Fellowships are normally held by trainees close to CCT or consultants who have recently obtained their PhD, and not infrequently include periods of full-time research training at overseas laboratories and research institutes. A clinician doing a Clinician Scientist Fellowship will have the opportunity to continue to develop or maintain their clinical skills by participating in clinics, on-call rotas and clinical meetings as appropriate to their clinical specialties.
When to apply for a Clinician Scientist Fellowship?
A Clinician Scientist Fellowship could follow on after an Academic Clinical Lectureship (CL), which will maximise the opportunities for the trainees to compete successfully for funding for a two or three year Clinician Scientist Fellowship. The ACL scheme has protected research time in order to allow the preparation of a proposal to an external funding body for a Clinician Scientist Fellowship. However, a Clinician Scientist Fellowship can be applied for at any time, if an individual has sufficient research experience (including a higher degree i.e. PhD or MD), has identified a suitable supervisor at UCL and written a comprehensive research proposal to apply for funding.