This Capacity Development Programme is a partnership between the Chan Soon-Shiong Family Foundation (CSSFF) and the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) with the objective of training and building an Africa-based workforce and innovation pipeline for vaccine development, testing and manufacturing in Africa.
The programme is geared to enhance Africa’s health and biotechnology human capital and to grow Africa’s workforce in vaccine manufacturing. The programme seeks applications from promising Masters and Doctoral candidates for the CSSFFSAMRC Scholarship awards in disciplines related to vaccine research and development. This includes, for example, but is not limited to, chemical and process engineering, molecular biology, biochemistry, microbiology, virology, structural biology, bioinformatics, immunology, synthetic/analytical chemistry, and industrial pharmacy. The scholarship awards will include a stipend and some funds to cover research costs
Requirements for all applications:
• Must be South African citizens/South African permanent residents/Africans studying at a South African university.
• Must be full-time registered students, or intend to register, for PhD or Masters studies at any South African public university in 2025.
• Prospective PhD candidates should have obtained a Masters qualification at the time of application with the intention to pursue doctoral studies. Similarly, prospective Masters candidates should have obtained an honours/four year qualification at the time of application with the intention to pursue Masters studies.
• Applicants must be registered for the intended Masters or Doctoral degree at the time of commencement of the award.
• The research project must fall within the vaccine research, development and manufacturing areas.
| Level | Funding period | Value |
| PhD | 3 years (+1 year extra, upon motivation from the supervisor) Scholarship: R200-000 stipend per annum P | Scholarship: R200-000 stipend per annum Project funding: R400-000 research project funds per annum |
| Masters | 1 year (+1 year extra, upon motivation from the supervisor) | Scholarship: R160-000 stipend per annum Project funding: R240-000 research project funds per annum |
Please note:
Research supervisors will need to request approval via the UCT eRA system prior to the student submitting their application on the funder portal.
Application process
The student:
• Completes the online application form (on Redcap) and uploads all the required supporting documents. This includes the supervisor’s details on the supervisor information section of the application. An auto-generated e-mail will be sent to the supervisor requesting completion of the electronic form. See RFA guidelines.
The research supervisor:
• Requests institutional approval via UCT’s electronic Research Administration (eRA) system.
• Once eRA approval is granted, the research supervisor completes the full research proposal and the endorsement form (on Redcap) and submits the application on behalf of the student
| Deadline | |
| Supervisor to submit an eRA Proposal Approval request with a draft budget to the Budget Reviewer step on eRA no later than | 20 September 2024 |
| Supervisor to submit an eRA Proposal Approval request to the Finance Approver step on eRA no later than | 11 October 2024 |
| Supervisor to submit the application on the funder portal (Redcap) no later than | 18 October 2024 |
Please complete the intention-to-submit form if you intend applying for this call. Please note that completion of this form is for the purposes of internal support and tracking, it is not linked to funder application processes and does not commit you to applying for this opportunity.
For any queries, please contact the Research Development Team