Online Attendance Grants

Members can participate in online scientific conferences, training courses, or workshops with our Online Attendance Grants.

Available to Postgraduate, Early Career, Full, and Emeritus members, these grants will cover the registration fees for online or livestream attendance.

Please note that this would not affect your eligibility to apply for a General Travel Grant, provided you do not exceed a maximum of £750 in total funding within a 2-year period.

Contact us

For further information please get in touch with the Grants department.

Eligibility

To be eligible to apply:

Applicants need to have been a member for at least 12 months prior to the deadline on the closing date of the round applied to. If you are not a member, join today. Members that have joined as multiyear members are eligible to apply for an Online Attendance after six months of membership has elapsed.
Applicants must not have received one of the following Society grants in the two years before the closing date of the round applied to: International Sponsored Places or Travel Award for Skills and Knowledge.
Applicants must not have received one of the following Society grants in the 12 months before the closing date of the round applied to: Student Bursary, Early Career Bursary or Full Member Bursary.
Applicants must not have received more than £750 in funding from a General Travel Grant or Online Attendance Grant in a 2-year period.
Applicants need to provide an abstract that has been submitted to the online event to demonstrate active participation. In the case of training courses or events without abstract acceptance, please provide a summary of how you will participate in the online event and the benefits gained from attendance.

Application deadlines

Applications are considered seven times a year, the deadlines for which are:

1 January for online events after 1 February
1 March for online events after 1 April
1 May for online events after 1 June
1 June for online events after 1 July
1 July for online events after 1 August
1 September for online events after 1 October
1 November for online events after 1 December

Applications can be submitted early, up to six months before the online event date. For example, applications for a July event can be submitted in the January deadline.

Please note we aim to send round the outcome of applications three to four weeks after the deadline of the round that has been applied to.

Application guidelines

Applications will be assessed according to three main criteria:

1. Benefit to career gained from attendance

Applicants should try to include answers to the following key points in their application:

How will you be participating in the conference e.g., presenting a poster or giving a talk?
Are there any specific sessions that you think will be particularly useful?
How will attending this online conference/training course/workshop further your career? Give details of whether the aim is to form collaborations or further knowledge in an area that is not currently being pursued.
Are there any other achievements and/or outputs that are relevant?

2. Financial need for support

This refers to the applicants current funding available for event attendance. Key points that should be incorporated in the application include:

Why funds are being sort from the Society and why the level of support is being requested.
The applicant is encouraged to apply for other funding to help attend the conference and give details of this so that the committee may see that the applicant will be able to attend if only partial support is provided by the Online Attendance Grant fund.

3. Letter of Support from Supervisor or Head of Department (required for Postgraduate and Early Career applicants)

A strong letter of support will demonstrate the following:

Case for financial need and the justification for the amount requested.
Promise of the applicant
What the benefit of attending that particular online conference/training course/ workshop would be to the applicants' career.

Important note: Predatory conferences

Presenting your work at a conference is an excellent way to share your research and raise your profile in the scientific community. But there is a growing problem to look out for—predatory conferences. Much like predatory journals, predatory conferences seek to charge high registration fees while offering little value in return for attendees and presenters.

The Biochemical Society will only consider member grant applications for organisation or attendance of meetings believed to be genuine.

Some tips on how to distinguish a predatory conference from a genuine one can be found here:

Signs this is a fake conference

Avoiding predatory conferences

Related grants

Please find other related funding opportunities below.