Friday's NRF workshop proved to be quite useful. The key decisions/proposals were:
1. Incentive Funding programme for rated researchers (IPRR). The workshop converged on the following:
1.1 All rated researchers will be eligible for invcentive funding in 2010.
1.2 Only those that have no other NRF funding (there are 758 of these folk) will receive 100% of the grant from the NRF (except Ps and Ys who will still be co-funded by their institutions).
1.3 All those with some NRF funding, including SARChI Chairholders and Directors of CoEs, will receive partial funding (minimum of 68%) from the NRF with the expectation of top-up to the 100% by those institutions who choose to do so.
1.4 The IPRR has been prioritised for funding and will be at 100% funding by the NRF in the 2011/12 round. It will use approx 33% of the core funding of the NRF.

2. Bursary adjustments. The NRF has received a R52.9m top-up to the bursary budget and as a result the NRF busaries fort 2010 will be adjusted as follows:
2.1 Honours R20k (up from R15K)
2.2 Masters R40k (up from R30-33K)
2.3 PhDs R60k (up from R45-55k)
2.4 A R10K top-up is available for needy students who may want to use it. The needy criteria of household income must be used. These requests have to be verified thro the Research Offices of the universities.

3. Bridging finance for Research Equipment. A maximum of R5m per grant will be available out of a current available R20m fund (2010). This is an interest-free LOAN and is repayable to the NRF by 25/3 of the following year. A second call for 2010 will be launched in April.

4. Multi-year Focussed Grants timetable. The NRF in order to reduce the social costs assoc with grant applications and to make more money available to facilitate significant movement in different disciplines is starting a discussion on moving into a multi-year format. Each year will not have comprehensive calls across all disciplines/chosen areas, but all will be covered in a multi-year timetable, with each year offering larger grants in the disciplines/chosen areas of that year.

5.The Thuthuka programme. A 3 track Thuthuka programme is being developed. There will be a PhD track, a post-PhD track and a NRF-Rating track in the new Thuthuka. In theory a Thuthuka Fellow can receive 9 years of funding from being a PhD student to a NRF ratede researcher.

There will be separate briefing sessions for items 4 and 5.

Regards
Hennie Stander
Chair: Rescom