Welcome to your one-stop shop for developing your grant writing skills! 

“I found the Retreat to be informative, engaging, and honestly a lot of fun!” – 2025 Grant Writing Retreat participant 

Sign up to Health Research from Home’s Grant Writing Retreat to learn from the experts and turn your current or future study ideas into successful grant bids. 

You will learn:

• What makes a successful bid.
• How to make a strong case for your research idea using smartphones and wearables for population health research.
• How funders, reviewers and panels operate, think and behave.
• How to incorporate best practices for engaging and involving patients as well as public and meeting information governance requirements.

Who’s it for: 

Researchers at any career stage who are interested in developing strong bids in the field of population health research using smartphones and wearables are invited.  

We expect you to bring a study idea to present at the start of the meeting. This can be a study that you hope to take forwards, or a hypothetical idea to help you learn about bid writing.   

You will attend practical sessions and work on study ideas with the support of our experienced faculty. There will also be plenty of opportunities to network with our Health Research from Home community.  

Please note: the format follows the 2025 Grant Writing Retreat, so we kindly ask that previous attendees do not reapply. 

Apply now 

This event is waitlist only. Tickets will be released throughout the next few weeks. We anticipate spaces will fill up quickly, so join the waitlist now to be in with a chance!  

2025 Programme

Day one

• 10:00 – 10:45: Welcome and overview – Professor Will Dixon
• 10:45 – 12:45: Delegate study pitches and feedback
• 13:30 – 14:00: Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) – Dr Charlotte Sharp & PPIE Partner TBC
• 14:00 – 15:20: PPIE, Information Governance & Technology Advice Clinics – Dr Charlotte Sharp, Dr Elaine Mackey and Prof Richard Dobson
• 15:20 – 16:30: Time to develop pitches
• 16:30 – 17:15: Perspectives from Funders and the Panel – MRC UKRI representative TBC, Christopher Yau –  UKRI Turing AI Fellow, Public Partner TBC. 
• 17:15 – 18:00: Keynote Lecture – Cathie Sudlow – Director of the UKRI Adolescent Health Study
• 19:30 – 21:00: Dinner at a Manchester restaurant

Day two

• 09:00 – 11:00: ‘Putting pen to paper’: Describing the unmet need, good bid writing and coordinating a team, post-submission – rebuttal, interview, rejection, etc. – Dr Sabine van der Veer, Prof David Schultz and Prof Peter Bower.
• 11:00 – 11:30: Break
• 11:30 – 12:10: PPIE, information governance and technology advice clinics – Dr Charlotte Sharp, Dr Elaine Mackey and Prof Richard Dobson
• 12:10 – 13:00: Time to refine sessions, including drop-in sessions and peer support
• 13:00 – 14:00: Lunch
• 14:00 – 16:00: Pitches round 2, with Panel and Peer feedback
• 16:00 – 16:15: Closing remarks

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