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General Information
To support the attendance of scientific conferences by its members, OUBS has created the “OUBS Conference Travel Support Fund”. This fund is dedicated to serving the mobility of graduate students that have contributed to OUBS. To this end, during week 1 of every term, a maximum of £334 of the OUBS budget are transferred to the fund – under consideration of the rule that the fund’s volume at any given time should not exceed £2500. The application will be accepted on a rolling basis.
Application Process
Applications have to include the (completed) application form, a letter of acceptance to the conference and a copy of your CV and have to be sent to oubs@bioch.ox.ac.uk accordingly.
OUBS reviews whether the application fulfils formal requirements (such as the eligibility criteria outlined below [cf. paragraph “Eligibility”] or whether the application is complete). In case these criteria are fulfilled, OUBS asks the person that was specified by the applicant to write an endorsement letter for the applicant.
The application is then forwarded to an OUBS-independent board which decides on the allocation of funds based on the assessment criteria. This board consists of three members with no link to the Oxford University Biochemical Society and reflects gender and ethnic diversity.
Subsequently, the board creates a list of applicants (in order of priority) and their granted funding. In case the funds claimed by the applications exceed those that are available in the current pool, applicants that are below the priority threshold are put on a waiting list.
Applicants are informed about the outcome of their application by OUBS once the board has reviewed the application. Successful applicants have one week to accept their funding. In case successful applicants decide to decline their allocated funding, applicants on the waiting list move up.
Eligibility
The fund is targeted at graduate students at the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford based on the assessment criteria outlined here. Students can only apply once per academic year for support of up to £1000 per application. Moreover, the overall amount a student can apply for in several applications/years is £1500.
Introduction
The OUBS Impact Award honours OUBS committee members that have made outstanding contributions to the society's progress, prosperity and aims, during their membership and – as such - transformatively advanced the graduate community at Oxford University’s Department of Biochemistry.
Criteria
For an individual to be considered for an OUBS Social Commitment Award, they must have performed outstandingly in all key areas of their role(s) within the OUBS committee.
The OUBS committee member must have consistently demonstrated exceptional commitment and actively and successfully contributed to the delivery of OUBS’ key goals.
Nominations of candidates from all genders, backgrounds, and communities, particularly from under-represented groups such as Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) and disabled people, are encouraged.
General Information
Nomination periods last for six months and end on August 31 and February 28, respectively.
Per nomination period, a maximum of three OUBS committee members can be awarded. An individual cannot receive the award multiple times.
A committee member can be nominated by either nominating themselves or by being nominated by another committee member, such as an OUBS senior member.
Nominations consist of a completed nomination letter and two letters of endorsement, each of which is independently authored by one of the senior members of OUBS. Typically, a nomination letter is sent to the OUBS senior members asking them for their endorsements. The senior members forward the nomination letter along with their letters of endorsement to oubs@bioch.ox.ac.uk.
Evaluation Process
At the end of each nomination period, OUBS’ secretary forwards all the complete nominations that have been sent to oubs@bioch.ox.ac.uk along with the maximum number of awards to be awarded for the respective nomination period (cf. below) to an OUBS-independent evaluation board that consists of at least two assessors, one of whom being external to the department, and that reflects gender and ethnic diversity.
The board ranks the nominations in order of merit. It may also recommend to not award a nominee if it considers their nomination not sufficiently remarkable. The board shares the resulting ranked list of nominees with OUBS’ president/secretary who keeps the information confidential and implements the board’s recommendations.
Details on the Award
Awards are typically awarded at major departmental events, such the induction events at the start of the academic year or the departmental annual recess. The award involves a cash prize. The amount allocated to recipients depends on the availability of funds resp. sponsorships in a given nomination period as determined by OUBS’ treasurer. Moreover, based on the availability of funds, OUBS’ treasurer may define a maximum number of awards to be awarded for a given nomination period that is forwarded to the board along with the nominations.
All recipients within a given nomination period are allocated the same amount, regardless of their ranking during the nomination evaluation.
