Head of Grants Office in Heidelberg bei European Molecular Biology Laboratory

Purpose of the role

The Head of Grant Office is responsible for the framework around the process of applying for grant funding. This senior role is part of the wider administration and operational leadership team and will work proactively with others in a multidisciplinary context. The role is responsible for maintaining excellent relationships with funding bodies, follow and advise internally on strategic directions and gaps in the EU, international and national funding landscape, ensuring alignment of applications so that they support the delivery of EMBL’s scientific goals, values and risk appetite assuring EMBL’s compliance with funders’ terms and conditions. The Grants team’s objective is to manage a robust, risk-based framework that ensures both compliance and innovation for the scientific community.

The jobholder will work closely with EMBL’s Strategic, International relations and Scientific teams to coordinate and identify new funding opportunities where EMBL’s capabilities in scientific research, the provision of scientific services and training have the potential to contribute to funders’ and EMBL goals in a complementary way.

Context

EMBL has a long and successful history in identifying and obtaining external funds to further enhance its research activities, to provide services including world-renowned databases of scientific information such as Ensembl and UniProt, and to support training and science education programmes.

EMBL currently receives approximately €70m a year in such funding income from an increasingly wide range of funders. External funding ranges from long-term and strategic to project-specific and currently equates to approximately 500-550 running projects and 350 to 400 applications for external funding per year. Major funders include the European Commission, the Wellcome Trust, US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the UK government’s Research and Innovation body (UKRI), the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (German Ministry for Education and Research), the German Research Foundation (DFG) and charitable organisations such as the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

As an International Organisation EMBL operates outside national legislative frameworks, which adds complexity when ensuring compliance to specific legal standards required by many funders. A deep and thorough understanding of EMBL’s legal personality and context is essential to the role.

Reporting to the Chief Operating Officer, the Head of Grant Office leads a team of around 15 staff based across the 6 EMBL sites.

• Lead the Grants Office and the team across all sites to provide a high standard of operational support and advice to Principal Investigators, leaders and Post doctoral Fellows across EMBL - ranging from those who are making individual research funding applications for the first time to large-scale collaborative project funding applications.
• Lead on maintaining strong trust-based relationships with current funders and establishing new relationships with potential funders.
• Being the institutional legal signatory on grant funding applications within a delegated value framework. This requires an ability to review complex legal and funding contracts assessing the risks and liabilities. Consider the impact of the funders terms and conditions on EMBLs legal status to make informed judgements on contractual commitments. Review and escalate high level matters to the senior leadership as required.
• Work closely with the Heads of International Relations, Head of Strategy and Resource Development to ensure alignment of external funding strategy with member state relationships and identification of grant opportunities that aim to further the delivery of EMBL’s overall strategy.
• Work closely with the EMBL Scientific community and the International Centre for Advanced Training to set and communicate the external grant income strategy, consider and collate research impact, ensure effective monitoring and reporting in line with EMBL’s mission, goals and values through the use of appropriate tools and cross team systems.
• Work closely with Finance and the Internal Audit Offices developing standards and frameworks for management and financially reporting on external funding applications.
• Partner with Finance, Legal Services, EMBLEM (intellectual property and technology transfer company) Compliance and Data Protection teams to determine EMBL risk propensity/tolerance relating to external funding and its obligations. Ensure risk and benefit impacts are considered within the grant application decision-making process. Keep this under review and ensure that it is in line with supporting scientific advancement and innovation.
• Direct line management and