Funded people and projects
Find out about the people and projects we've funded, including grants awarded and the latest grant funding data.
Find out about the people and projects we've funded, including grants awarded and the latest grant funding data.
Search our database of project summaries written by current and past grantholders.
In 2021/22 we started to make grants under a broader range of simplified funding schemes. This marks a major change for how Wellcome funds science to solve urgent health challenges.
The data presented below for 2021/22 includes awards made under the final rounds of our previous schemes and those awarded through our new Discovery Research, Infectious Disease, Mental Health and Climate and Health research programmes.
This means that not all the data from this year is comparable with previous years.
What is Wellcome funding?
In the 2021/22 financial year we received 2,756 applications for funding and made 629 awards, worth almost £1.5 billion – an increase from £1142 million in 2019/20.
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This means that at the end of the 2021/22 financial year, which for Wellcome is 30 September 2022, we had 3,170 active awards, worth a total of more than £6.1bn.
Where does Wellcome fund?
Our funding is global, with 1,027 organisations in 111 countries named on awards at the end of 2021/22.
Of Wellcome’s active research portfolio:
- 26% (£1.6bn) was directly awarded to non-UK organisations
- 12% (£762mn) of the portfolio supported UK-based research with an international partner
- 26% was held by researchers at three UK universities – University of Oxford, UCL and University of Cambridge.
In 2020 we published our strategy, which commits us to equitable funding processes and health outcomes. We are working to ensure our funding worldwide is as inclusive as possible. help encourage and support greater numbers of applications from other UK institutions.
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Who does Wellcome fund?
In 2021 we published our diversity and inclusion strategy which outlined our commitment to being an inclusive funder. We set ourselves the following goal, that by 2031, people funded by Wellcome will be more representative of the global population, able to be themselves, and supported to be their best. Publishing our grant funding data is part of our commitment to get there.
Applications in 2021/22
- 66% of applications we received were made by white researchers, compared to 71% in 2019/20.
- We received 51 applications (2.7% of UK applications) from Black or Black British researchers based at UK institutions. We made 13 awards from these applications.
- Women continue to make up a smaller proportion of applicants for more senior level awards and those of higher financial value.
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Awards in 2021/22
- 72% of awards were made to researchers from white backgrounds, 12% to Asian or Asian British researchers, 8% to Black or Black British researchers and 9% to researchers of mixed or other ethnicities. The proportion of awards made to white researchers has decreased from 81% in 2019/20.
- 49% of awards were made to women, the same proportion as in 2019/20.
- 2.5% of awards were made to disabled researchers.
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Award rates in 2021/22
Award rates globally were lower for non-white applicants (9.5%) than for white applicants (12.4%). And award rates were similar for men (11.3%) and women (11.2%).
Data for disabled applicants is too low to report.
Advisory groups and panels
We have also worked to diversify our groups and panels in 2021/22.
Of Wellcome’s advisory groups and panel members, which shortlist and interview applicants:
- 55% were women, up from 48% in 2019/20
- 23% were from non-white backgrounds, up from 15% in 2019/20
- 51% were early-mid career researchers (we did not report on this in the 2019/20 report)
- 45% were from outside the UK, up from 39% in 2019/20.
Explore the full data
Download a spreadsheet of grants awarded since October 2005.
Wellcome grants awarded 1 October 2005 to 4 May 2022XLSX 11.4 MB
These spreadsheets have been created using the 360Giving data standard. The work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence, which means the data is freely available to anyone to be used and shared as they wish. The data must be attributed to Wellcome.
View biomedical research grants funded by Wellcome and other global research funders on the World RePORT database, hosted by the National Institutes of Health.