Open Life Science has recently been awarded three grants - one from the EOSC-Life Training project and two more small grants, which will partially support the OLS-3 and OLS-4 cohorts (more information will follow soon).
With this development, we are delighted to announce that all OLS-3 and OLS-4 project leaders (aka mentees) - will be able to request small seed grants for expenses that they may need for their participation in OLS or to run their project. This could be an audio headset, the cost for more data on a tethered mobile phone to attend calls, fliers or stickers with your project logo on it, or the fee to register your project as a legal organisation in your country.
Given that our current budget is very small - around $5000 USD in total for OLS-3 and OLS-4 - our cap for eligible expenses will be $50 USD for personal expenses such as high speed internet or a new headset, and up to $200 in total for project-specific expenses such as company registration or stickers. If we receive more micro-grant requests than we are able to cover, we will seek additional funding but may not be able to guarantee we can cover beyond the initial $2500 budget for each cohort. If your employer is able to cover a given expense, we request that they do so. In order to make the most impact possible, this fund is intended for those who might not be able to afford the expense, otherwise.
In order to be eligible, you must be an accepted member of Open Life Science as a project leader, aka a mentee, who is actively participating in the program. If you’re a mentor or expert speaker for OLS (any round), or if you’re a graduate from a previous cohort, we may be able to support similar expenses separately - please contact team[at]we-are-ols.org.
Applications for OLS-3 will open on December 1st 2021, and applications for OLS-4 will open mid 2021.
OLS project leads will be eligible to request personal expenses as soon as they are notified of acceptance to OLS-3 or OLS-4.
Project-specific costs will be eligible from week 4 of the currently-running OLS cohort onwards, providing that the project lead has been participating actively in the program - i.e. attending mentor calls and communicating on Slack or GitHub, and attending at least half of the cohort calls. We do not expect participants to attend all cohort calls as this is a global program that spans many time zones, but we do expect participants to catch up on missed calls via the OLS YouTube Channel.
After week 12 of the program, if the full budget for the cohort has not yet been spent, we may open up requests to larger expenses than our previously stated caps. Any unspent budget will roll over to the next cohort.
We will reimburse you when given receipts for any purchases made, or if the up-front costs would be prohibitive, we can try to purchase your request on your behalf - you will be given the chance to indicate your preference on the grant request form.