Shared Research Infrastructure Fund

The Shared Research Infrastructure (SRI) Fund supports purchase or establishment costs and ongoing ownership costs for University-scale research infrastructure – specialist equipment, facilities, or expertise that enables research and teaching activity for University-wide user communities, and/or has ownership costs that are too high to be borne by the hosting faculty/LSRI alone.

The SRI Fund also supports the establishment of new research platforms or new investment in existing platforms.

Proposals will only be eligible if submitted by the dean or director of the host faculty/LSRI; proposals submitted by individual researchers, departments, or other institutes or centres will not be considered.

Proposals may be for new investments or for substantial changes to the capability or operating arrangements for existing research infrastructure; the infrastructure may be individual items of equipment or clusters of equipment/capability with a research-enabling function. They may be existing or prospective research platforms.

SRI funding rounds are usually held annually, in quarter three. Full details are provided in the funding call notification issued by Te Puna Tiketike, Research and Innovation Office, to faculty deans/LSRI directors.

The fund process is designed to support investments identified as priorities in faculty/LSRI planning processes. The scale of co-funding contributed by the faculty/LSRI advancing an SRI proposal is an important indicator of the priority attached to the proposed investment.

Applicants should work closely with their local faculty/LSRI finance and technical teams to ensure their proposals are aligned with local faculty/LSRI priorities and to ensure financial and infrastructure considerations are appropriately addressed.

Additional support is available from the Research and Innovation Office, and applicants are strongly encouraged to advise RIO of the intent to submit a proposal as early as possible.

Research Infrastructure team, RIO
Email: SRI_RIO@auckland.ac.nz