Wellcome Data Science Ideathon
The Wellcome Data Science Ideathon is a competition that will have teams compete to propose data science solutions to tackle three urgent health challenges: mental health, infectious diseases, and climate and health.
The Wellcome Data Science Ideathon is a competition that will have teams compete to propose data science solutions to tackle three urgent health challenges: mental health, infectious diseases, and climate and health.
Who can apply: The Ideathon is open to student teams and researcher teams. All team members must be affiliated with a Higher Education Institution (HEI) or research institute in the UK.
Teams can apply to the Ideathon as either:
- Student Teams comprised of 3-5 postgraduate students, Masters or PhD.
- Researcher Teams comprised of 3-5 researchers at any career stage.
See ‘Eligibility and suitability’ for more details.
The Event: Around 25 teams will be selected as semi-finalists to compete in the event at Wellcome’s offices in central London on 10-12 July 2023.
Prizes: 10 teams will be selected as finalists and will be eligible to win one of the prizes or grants described in 'Prizes and awards'.
- Student teams selected as finalists are eligible for cash prizes of up to £3,000 per team member.
- Researcher teams selected as finalists are eligible for one-year grants* up to £120,000.
* Grants are available up to the listed amounts and at Wellcome’s discretion, and are at all times subject to Wellcome’s policies and processes, including but not limited to Wellcome receiving an appropriate grant application form that reflects the relevant winning proposal, Wellcome’s due diligence, costs compliance and budgetary approval. Wellcome shall not have any liability if any grant funding is not awarded.
The Wellcome Data Science Ideathon will fund data scientists with innovative ideas that can help further Wellcome's work. Around 25 teams will be selected to attend a three-day, in-person event at Wellcome's offices to work on and propose data science solutions to urgent health challenges facing everyone.
The event will offer participants the chance to tackle one of nine challenges we’ve set relating to three urgent health challenges: climate and health, infectious disease, and mental health.
Each challenge will ask participants to develop and pitch ideas to solve problems through data science, which may involve:
- developing prototype data platforms
- building bespoke machine learning models
- app development
- application of natural language processing models.
The name Ideathon stems from hackathons, however there are some key differences.
- Our Ideathon will award prizes to teams that come up with novel and innovative ideas. We are not interested in ‘hacking’ insights from data and some challenges will require no data to complete.
- The event is designed to be inclusive and fun. We are actively discouraging overnight or over-weekend work and will be promoting a positive research culture during the event.
- If your application is successful, the full challenges will be released and your team will have two weeks to start working on these remotely before finalising your proposed solution at Wellcome’s offices. During these two days you can meet with our Policy team for Climate and Health and Infectious Disease challenges, Lived Experience Advisors for Mental Health challenges; as well as having the opportunity to hear talks from Wellcome staff and external guest judges.
This event will be a unique opportunity to meet Wellcome staff, hear from guest speakers and have the chance to develop your innovative ideas to solve urgent health challenges.
Student teams will have the chance to learn about grant writing and compete for cash prizes.
Research teams will have the opportunity to develop research proposals and apply for grant funding without having to demonstrate lengthy track records.
You can apply if:
- you are a team of 3-5 postgraduate students (Masters and/or PhD).
OR
- you are a team of 3-5 researchers (across any career levels).
AND
- all members of your team are based at a UK Higher Education Institution or research institute (can be multiple Higher Education Institutions and/or research institute across the team);
- all members of your team will be in the UK for the entirety of the in-person event (10-12 July 2023).
Unlike traditional hackathons, we will not provide any matchmaking, so you must apply in a pre-formed team. Teams do not need to be based in the same Higher Education Institution and/or research institute and we encourage you to consider team members across multiple departments.
For research teams, your team leader will be your Lead Applicant. If successful their organisation will administer the award. We expect that each team member will have a clearly defined role in the team and at a minimum expect the team to have some experience in:
- Data science - for this event we define data science very broadly. This may include:
- statistics
- software engineering
- machine learning and AI
- model development and training
- data analysis and visualisation.
- Climate and health, OR mental health, OR infectious disease.
See 'Forming a team’ for full details about useful skills and experience.
Who can't apply:
-
All individual team members must only contribute towards one team. You cannot apply if you are already on another team.
We want to ensure the event is as accessible as possible.
We will pay for/provide:
- travel and accommodation for anyone across the UK to attend every day of the event (as arranged by our events team)
- breakfast, lunch, and dinner for every day of the event (dietary and allergy requests will be catered for)
- reasonable costs to cover caring responsibilities (to be discussed with events team)
- step-free access
- gender neutral and full accessible toilets
- refreshments (tea, coffee, water) throughout the event
- BSL interpreters/hearing loops as required
- access to hardware (laptops and/or tablets)
- access to a quiet room for those may need it (available on first come, first served basis)
- access to all written materials in advance where possible
- access to cloud computing (available before the in-person stage of the event).
There is the opportunity to discuss these points and any other requirements you may have with Wellcome's events team.
Student teams
Cash prizes will be awarded directly to team members once the relevant team members have provided their bank account details. If the bank account is for a bank branch that is located outside of the United Kingdom, then payment of the prize for that team member is subject to Wellcome being able to transfer funds to that location.
The following cash prizes are available:
- Gold student prize: £3,000 per team member
- Silver student prize: £2,000 per team member
- Bronze student prize: £1,000 per team member
Researcher teams
One-year grants are awarded subject to our grant conditions and information detailed in ‘Costs and research expenses offered in awards’.
The following grants are available*:
- Ideathon health challenge principal award: up to £120,000
- Climate and health Ideathon distinction award: up to £100,000
- Climate and health Ideathon award: up to £80,000
- Mental health Ideathon distinction award: up to £100,000
- Mental health Ideathon award: up to £80,000
- Infectious disease Ideathon distinction award: up to £100,000
- Infectious disease Ideathon award: up to £80,000
* Grants are available up to the listed amounts and at Wellcome’s discretion, and are at all times subject to Wellcome’s policies and processes, including but not limited to Wellcome receiving an appropriate grant application form that reflects the relevant winning proposal, Wellcome’s due diligence, costs compliance and budgetary approval. Wellcome shall not have any liability if any grant funding is not awarded.
A Wellcome Ideathon award provides funding up to the amounts of £120,000, £100,000 and £80,000, depending on the placement of your team in the Ideathon event, to cover research expenses, including salaries where required.
Winning Researcher teams will be asked to submit a fully costed proposal shortly after the event. You should ask for a level of funding that is justifiable for your proposed research. You must justify all costs within the costs section of your proposal.
The award includes:
Applicants (including Lead applicant and coapplicants)
You can ask for a contribution to your salary if you do not hold a permanent, open-ended or long-term rolling contract. You will need to identify a sponsor at your administering organisation.
The amount we pay will be proportionate to the time contributed to the award, for example if you contribute 30% of your time to the award, we will fund 30% of your salary.
Your administering organisation (or sponsor) must confirm:
- they will underwrite the remaining percentage of time, including any salary costs not covered by Wellcome, for the period of time working on the grant, if you cannot get it from other sources. The post cannot be contingent on the application being successful.
- you will be provided with the necessary space and resources you’ll need from the start date to the end date of your award.
If you will spend 80% (or more) of your time on this grant, you can ask for your full salary. Your post does not need to be underwritten and can be contingent on the application being successful.
Alternatively, you may get your salary through employment on another grant.
Staff working on your award
We will provide the salary costs for staff, full or part-time, who work on your project.
For any staff or applicants working on the award, you will need to be able to evidence the time spent working on the award.
PhD/Research Masters fees
We do not provide studentships on this award.
How to cost salaries for research staff:
Staff salaries should be appropriate to skills, responsibilities and expertise. You should ask your host organisation to use their salary scales to calculate these costs, which should include:
- basic salary
- employer’s contributions, including any statutory obligations (for example, National Insurance contributions if you’re based in the UK) and pension scheme costs
- Apprentice Levy charges for UK-based salaries
- any incremental progression up the salary scale
- locally recognised allowances such as London allowance.
Read about the responsibilities of grantholders and administering organisations for people working on a Wellcome grant.
If you have named people on your grant whose salaries will be funded by Wellcome, you can ask for visa or work permit costs to help them take up their posts at the host organisation. You can also ask for:
- visa costs for the person's partner and dependent children
- essential associated costs, such as travel to attend appointments at a visa application centre or embassy if you can justify these
- Immigration Health Surcharge costs for the person, their partner and dependent children if they will be in the UK for six months or more.
If you or a member of staff working on your grant is disabled or has a long-term health condition, you can ask for adjustment support to help you carry out your project.
Costs can include, but are not limited to:
- additional costs for staff to help with day-to-day activities related to your project
- assistive technology to help use computers, research equipment or materials – for example, text to audio software
- care costs for assistance animals if you need to travel.
We will not pay for capital or building costs, such as access ramps.
You can ask for these costs if your government and/or employer:
- does not cover any of the costs
- only covers some of the costs (if they do, we will only meet the shortfall).
The costs we provide must not replace the support you may get from the government or your organisation, who are responsible for providing these costs.
If you don't know what these costs are now, you can ask for them after we've awarded your grant.
We will pay for the materials and consumables you need to carry out your project.
Equipment purchase
Your chosen research environment should have the necessary equipment for you to complete your work. You can ask for additional basic items of equipment that are essential to your research project.
Costs may include purchase, delivery, installation, maintenance and training, where necessary.
We will cover VAT and import duties if the usual UK exemptions on equipment used for medical research don’t apply.
You can also ask for specialised equipment if:
-
it is essential to the success of the proposed research project
-
it is not available at your host organisation or through collaboration, and
-
you’ll be the main user and have priority access to the equipment.
Computer equipment
We will cover the cost of one personal computer or laptop per person up to £1,500.
We won't pay for:
- more expensive items, unless you can justify them
- installation or training costs.
You can ask for the cost of access to shared equipment, facilities or services if they’re essential to your project.
These may include materials and consumables, plus a proportion of:
- maintenance and service contracts
- staff time costs for dedicated technical staff employed to operate the equipment or facility.
We don’t cover the costs of:
- estates and utilities
- depreciation or insurance
- other staff, for example, contributions towards departmental technical, administrative and management staff time.
If the facilities or equipment were paid for by a Wellcome grant, you can only ask for access charges if:
- the grant has ended
- any support for running costs and maintenance contracts has ended.
You can ask for overheads on any part of your grant that is sub-contracted to any of the organisations listed below.
- university outside the UK or Republic of Ireland
- research organisation that does not receive core funding for overheads
- charitable or not-for-profit organisation
- small or medium-sized commercial organisation.
If you’re based at a UK university, you can’t ask for overheads for sub-contracted activity if your university will include the sub-contracted funding in its annual report to the UK Charity Research Support Fund.
Overheads can include:
- estates, for example building and premises
- non-project dedicated administrative and support staff
- administration, for example finance, library, and room hire.
The total cost for overheads should not be more than:
- 20% of the direct research costs if you’re based in a low- or middle-income country
- 15% of the direct research costs if you’re based anywhere else.
These costs must directly support the activity funded by the grant.
How to apply for these costs
In your grant application you must:
- give a full breakdown of costs (you can't ask for a percentage of the research costs)
- explain why these costs are necessary for your research
- include a letter from the finance director of your host organisation, or the sub-contracted organisation, confirming that the breakdown is a true representation of the costs incurred.
Conference attendance
You can ask for a contribution towards the costs of attending scientific and academic meetings and conferences, including registration fees and the costs to offset the carbon emissions of your travel.
We provide costs to cover caring responsibilities if you or any staff employed on your grant attend a conference. This includes childcare and any other caring responsibility you have. We will pay these if:
- Wellcome is providing the salary
- the conference is directly related to the research
- the caring costs are over and above what they'd normally pay for care
- the conference organiser and their employing organisation are unable to cover the costs.
You can ask for up to £1,000 per person for each conference.
Collaborative travel
You can ask for travel and subsistence costs for collaborative visits for you and any staff employed on your grant. You’ll need to justify each visit and its duration.
Other travel
We will pay for other essential visits, for example to facilities, for sample collection and for fieldwork. You can include subsistence costs.
Carbon offset costs
This applies to all types of travel costs Wellcome provides.
You can ask for:
- essential travel costs, even if the low carbon option is more expensive (for example travelling by train instead of flying)
- project-related resources or activities that provide an alternative to travel, such as video conferencing, communication and file-sharing software
- costs to offset the carbon emissions generated by the essential travel. If carbon offsetting for travel is not part of your organisational sustainability strategy, you can ask us for a similar level of support for other sustainability initiatives. Your organisation must get our approval before submitting an application.
We won't pay for the core infrastructure that your host organisation should provide, unless you're eligible to ask for these costs under our overheads policy. Examples of these costs include:
- organisation-wide video conferencing packages
- high-speed broadband
- HD screens.
See our carbon offset policy for travel for information on what you and your organisation need to do.
Subsistence costs
If you’re away for up to one month you can ask for subsistence costs. These include accommodation, meals and incidentals (for example, refreshments or newspapers).
If your administering organisation has a subsistence policy, use their rates.
If your administering organisation doesn’t have a subsistence policy, please use the HMRC rates.
If you’re away for more than one month and up to 12 months, we will pay reasonable rental costs only, including aparthotels. You should discuss appropriate rates with your administering and host organisations, or Wellcome, as appropriate. We expect you to choose the most economical options, booked in advance where possible.
If you’re from a low- or middle- income country and will be working in a high-income country for more than one month and up to 12 months, you can also ask for up to £10 a day to cover extra costs, such as transport and incidentals.
The allowance we provide will be based on family and business need. We will set the maximum allowance we pay for each location. This will be based on current market data or, where data is unavailable, in consultation with your administering organisation, using equivalent market rates. Please contact us if you need help calculating the costs.
We will cover the direct expenses you have to pay to find and rent a home. We will not cover the cost of utilities or any refurbishment.
Overseas research
If you or any research staff employed on your grant will be doing research away from your home laboratory, we'll help with the additional costs of working on the project overseas. Please see the 'Overseas allowances' section for details.
If you or any staff employed on your grant will be spending time in another country, we’ll help you with the additional costs of working on the project overseas.
Our overseas allowances are:
- a contribution towards the personal cost of carrying out research overseas, to ensure that you are not disadvantaged
- provided on the assumption that you’ll be paying income tax, either in your home country, or the country you will be working in (your personal tax is your responsibility)
- provided on the understanding that you or your partner will not receive equivalent allowances from elsewhere
- determined by the amount of time you will spend away from your home country.
Carbon offset costs
We expect the people we fund to choose travel that has a lower carbon impact, where practical, even if it’s more expensive (for example travelling by train instead of flying).
You can ask for costs to offset the carbon generated by the travel, as part of your overseas allowances. If carbon offsetting for travel is not part of your organisational sustainability strategy, you can ask us for a similar level of support for other sustainability initiatives. Your organisation must get our approval for other sustainability initiatives to be included in applications.
See our carbon offset policy for travel for information on what you and your organisation need to do.
Partners and dependents travelling with you:
If you will be away for 12 months or less and can justify why your partner and dependants must travel with you, we may provide overseas allowances for them.
We define your partner as the person:
- you’re married to
- you’re not married to but with whom you’ve been in a relationship for at least a year
and
-
you live with at the same permanent address and share some form of joint financial commitment with, such as a mortgage.
See a list of low- and middle-income countries, as defined by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
You can ask for the following allowances. You need to provide estimated costs as accurately as possible.
Outward and return travel:
We will pay your travel costs at the beginning and end of your overseas work. Costs can be for air, ferry, train or coach fares.
All fares should be:
- in line with our carbon offset policy
- booked in advance where possible.
Baggage and freight shipping allowance:
If you are away for up to 12 months, you can ask for up to 80kg of additional baggage or unaccompanied airline freight for your outward and return journeys.
We will pay the full cost of transporting:
- half a standard shipping container if you’re travelling alone
- a whole standard shipping container (20ft) if you’re travelling with a partner and/or dependants.
Medical and travel insurance:
We will pay the cost of your medical insurance and travel insurance.
If you will be working in a low- or middle-income country we will also cover the cost of emergency evacuation cover.
We won’t pay for medical insurance if you will be based in the UK or Republic of Ireland.
Visas and vaccinations:
We will pay the costs of visas, vaccinations and anti-malaria treatment.
Housing security:
You can ask for this if you’ll be based in a low- or middle-income country and it is necessary.
Costs can include guards, panic buttons and alarms. You should ask your employing organisation for advice on the level of security you need.
Accommodation and subsistence:
If you’re away for up to one month you can ask for subsistence costs. These include accommodation, meals and incidentals (for example, refreshments or newspapers).
If your administering organisation has a subsistence policy, use their rates.
If your administering organisation doesn’t have a subsistence policy, please use the HMRC rates.
If you’re away for more than one month and up to 12 months, we will pay reasonable rental costs only, including aparthotels. You should discuss appropriate rates with your administering and host organisations, or Wellcome, as appropriate. We expect you to choose the most economical options, booked in advance where possible.
If you’re from a low- or middle- income country and will be working in a high-income country for more than one month and up to 12 months, you can also ask for up to £10 a day to cover extra costs, such as transport and incidentals.
The allowance we provide will be based on family and business need. We will set the maximum allowance we pay for each location. This will be based on current market data or, where data is unavailable, in consultation with your administering organisation, using equivalent market rates. If you need help calculating the costs please contact us.
We will cover the direct expenses you have to pay to find and rent a home. We will not cover the cost of utilities or any refurbishment.
If your organisation receives open access block grant funding, you can ask them to cover your open access article processing charges.
If you're at an organisation that does not receive block grant funding, we’ll supplement your grant when your paper has been accepted for publication.
You cannot ask for these charges in your grant application.
You can ask for costs that are essential to the project. These can include:
- materials, including printing and publishing
- other costs relating to engagement activities that are essential to carry out your research, such as patient involvement (including under-served groups) and community engagement
- dissemination of research results and findings arising from Wellcome funded research and workshops.
We will provide funds if you need to outsource project work to:
- contract research organisations
- other fee-for-service providers.
Allowed costs
You may ask for the following costs (you will have to justify them in your application):
- specialist publications that are relevant to the research and not available in institutional libraries
- consultancy fees
- expenses for subjects and volunteers – includes recruitment of participants, their participatory fees and travel, as well as interviewee expenses
- reasonable research-associated costs related to the feedback of health-related findings but not any healthcare-associated costs
- costs associated with developing an outputs management plan
- questionnaires, recruitment material, newsletters etc for clinical, epidemiological and qualitative research studies
- recruitment, advertising and interviewee travel costs for staff to be employed on the grant
- purchase, hire and running costs of project-dedicated vehicles
- project-specific personal protective equipment (PPE) that is above the standard expected for the setting
- computing, including recurrent costs dedicated to the project (for example, software licences).
Disallowed costs
We will not pay for:
- estates costs – such as building and premises costs, basic services and utilities. This also includes phone, postage, photocopying and stationery, unless you can justify these within a clinical or epidemiological study.
- page charges and the cost of colour prints
- research, technical and administrative staff whose time is shared across several projects and isn’t supported by an audit record
- PhD stipends
- charge-out costs for major facilities – departmental technical and administrative services, and use of existing equipment
- cleaning, waste and other disposal costs
- indirect costs – this includes general administration costs such as personnel, finance, library, room hire and some departmental services
- office furniture, such as chairs, desks and filing cabinets
- clothing, such as lab coats and shoes
- non-research related activities such as catering, room and venue hire for staff parties, team-building events and social activities
- indemnity insurance (insurance cover against claims made by subjects or patients associated with a research programme)
- ethics reviews, unless you are in a low- or middle-income country
- radiation protection costs
- contingency funds
- organisation insurance
- clinical examination or course fees
- working capital costs of commercial organisations.
See ‘Other costs’ for costs we will and will not provide.
The Ideathon was created to promote the value of team science. See the list of all the required and some optional skills and experience needed to complete each of the three challenges within each health challenge.
When you apply you must select which health issue you are tackling. This cannot be changed after application. Whilst you can change between challenges (1, 2, 3 in each respective health issue), we strongly recommend you do not do this as each requires a different set of skills and experience to complete.
Challenge 1: Long-term retention
- Required: Mental health research, data platform development.
- Optional: Longitudinal studies, mobile app development, machine learning, UI/UX design.
Challenge 2: Mental health trials
- Required: Mental health research, data platform development, web development.
- Optional: Clinical trials, mobile app development, knowledge of industry and research collaboration, data privacy, UI/UX design.
Challenge 3: Digital interventions
- Required: Mental health research, web development and/or mobile app development.
- Optional: Digital interventions, data platform development, knowledge of industry and research collaboration, UI/UX design.
Challenge 1: Climate and economy
- Required: Climate change research, statistics (data manipulation, correlation and regression, and feature engineering)
- Optional: Representation learning, reinforcement learning, unsupervised learning, supervised learning, policy, economics, and development of ML pipelines (no-code or otherwise).
Challenge 2: Climate datasets
- Required: Climate change research, statistics (data manipulation and feature engineering), and data platform development.
- Optional: Epidemiology, economics, healthcare, visualisation, data privacy, pseudonymisation and anonymisation, policy.
Challenge 3: Methane emissions
- Required: Climate change research, visualisation.
- Optional: Methane research, dashboard development, data manipulation, satellite data.
Challenge 1: Correlates of protection
- Required: Infectious disease research, statistics (correlation and regression), machine learning (supervised learning, feature importance, validation), and platform development.
- Optional: Unsupervised learning, representation learning, biostatistics, development of ML pipelines, policy.
Challenge 2: Qualitative data
- Required: Infectious disease research, natural language processing (NLP)
- Optional: Social media research, supervised learning (classification), causal inference, development of ML pipelines, policy, visualisation, public engagement and communication.
Challenge 3: Non-traditional data sources
- Required: Infectious disease research
- Optional: Natural language processing (NLP), social media research, supervised learning (classification), causal inference, development of modelling pipelines, policy, visualisation, public engagement and communication.
To be competitive, your answers to the 'Application to Attend' initial criteria will demonstrate:
- Team composition. Used to assess if your team is well suited to the competition
- Your team values:
- trustworthy and open data science
- inclusive data science principles.
Your answer to the preliminary challenge question will be:
- Thoughtful. Your response has clearly considered the question, answered each prompt and is feasible.
- Thought-provoking. Your response raises interesting and novel ideas that can be explored during the Ideathon and beyond.
How Semi-finalist proposals will be assessed
To be competitive, your proposed solution will be:
- Feasible. Your proposal will be clear, supported by evidence and the proposed outcomes/outputs are feasible.
- Innovative. Your presented solution to the challenge is novel – it develops and tests new concepts, methods or technologies, or combines existing ideas and approaches in a new way.
- Accessible. Your presented solution is user-friendly, aligns with Wellcome’s diversity, equity and inclusion and open access goals.
- Thoughtful. Your presented responses to the ‘Evaluation questions’ are clear, well thought-out, and represent a clear plan for possible future work.
- Cohesive. Every member of your team will have clearly contributed to your solution, proposal and/or presentation.
To meet this criteria we strongly recommend your presentation includes a demonstration of a prototype.
The Application to Attend is split into two sections. The first section gathers basic data including team and member names, as well as the health challenge you are applying to tackle. The second section includes questions that your team will have to answer and will be assessed on.
In addition, you will be asked to answer one of the nine preliminary challenge questions listed in 'Preliminary challenge questions' (you can pick any one of the three questions from your chosen health challenge).
The full questions and assessment criteria can be found in 'Guidance for completing Application to Attend' in 'Useful documents'.
After the application deadline, a follow-up survey will be sent to members of the team. We require that this survey is submitted by each team member.
Semi-finalist round
Full challenges will be released to successful teams named as semi-finalists, who can then begin work remotely. Slack and GitHub will be used for communication and code and document storage. During the event, GitHub repositories will be private but will be made public once the event has been completed – all outputs must be open access (CC BY 4.0) and open source (MIT). Participants cannot bring their own data.
Some challenges will require data to be solved. When required to solve a challenge, links to data portals or repositories will be provided. Some challenges will require teams to simulate data, this must be reproducible. As part of the terms and conditions (see 'Useful documents') of this event you are agreeing to comply to the Terms of Use of the supplied (or linked) datasets. If required, we can provide cloud computing access.
The final three days of the event will be in-person at Wellcome’s London office.
The first two days will see teams continue to work on their proposed solutions as well as hearing talks from Wellcome staff and external speakers. Throughout this time, you can ask questions to, and chat with, members of our Policy team (for Infectious Disease and Climate and Health challenges), Lived Experience Advisors (for Mental Health challenges), as well as other Wellcome staff.
At the end of the second day, teams will submit their proposed solution in writing.
On the final day teams will present to a panel of 3-5 judges including Wellcome staff and external experts. The presentation should tackle the chosen challenge with a competitive solution, as well as answering specific questions that will be released with the challenges.
Winning teams (see 'Prizes and awards') will then be announced in a closing ceremony, see full terms and conditions in 'Useful documents'.
As part of the 'Application to Attend' you must answer one of these questions in your chosen health challenge. These questions relate to the full challenges that semi-finalists will take on during the event.
Challenge 1: Long-term retention
We are interested in understanding how to improve long-term participant retention in longitudinal studies of mental health. A key barrier to long-term study is a high rate of participant drop-out. We’d like you to tell us what you think are the most common reasons for loss to follow-up. Why do you think these might be more pronounced in mental health research? What do you think could be the biggest driver of change to improve retention?
Challenge 2: Mental health trials
Taking part in clinical trials is a recognised and important method of accessing and trialling new treatments. This is especially true for those suffering from life-threatening illnesses such as cancer where one in ten cancer patients in the UK participated in a trial during their treatment. However, there is still some way to go for the same being the case for people with mental health challenges. How do you think we could translate successes from other medical fields to mental health, particularly access to trials, onboarding, and retention? What do you think are the most common reasons for people experiencing mental health problems not taking part in a trial and what do you think could be the biggest driver of change?
Challenge 3: Digital interventions
Digital interventions in mental health (for example, internet-based cognitive behavioural therapy) hold large promise for the treatment and resolution of mental illness given their scalability and apparent efficacy. However, current digital interventions solutions are limited to research groups that have enough resources to hire engineering expertise to build their interventions. What do you think are the largest barriers blocking mental health researchers from developing their own digital interventions? What could be done to make the development of digital interventions more accessible to mental health researchers?
Challenge 1: Climate and economy
There are many proven ways in which climate change directly negatively impacts on human health, however there are also indirect impacts on health. For example, the effects of climate change on the economy. How do you think climate change could impact on human health via economic impacts? How would you consider proving this link between climate, health, and the economy?
Challenge 2: Climate datasets
Unlike other areas of health research, there is a multitude of climatic datasets. However, the sheer amount of data means there can be a lack of agreement around standardisation and harmonisation of datasets, and especially when it comes to augmenting climate data with other sources. What do you think are the biggest challenges with using climate data? How would you convince healthcare researchers of the need to include climate data in research? What do you think are the risks associated with establishing relationships (causal or otherwise) between climate and health data, especially thinking across geographic and temporal scales?
Challenge 3: Methane emissions
At Wellcome, we are interested in funding a portfolio of projects around the effects methane emissions on health. This is not a novel area of research but there are some gaps in the literature including around data science methodology. What do you think are the biggest challenges with conveying the impacts of methane on health? What do you think are the biggest challenges of tracking methane emissions across geographical and temporal scales? How would you overcome these challenges?
Challenge 1: Correlates of protection
Correlates of protection are immune biomarkers that can be used to predict whether a vaccine is likely to protect against infection or disease. Identifying accurate and robust correlates of protection can speed up the time taken to license a new or improved vaccine. We are interested in the potential of using AI tools for inference and predictive methods to identify correlates. What do you see as being the biggest challenges with using AI in this way? How could AI be used to improve upon the status quo for discovering correlates?
Challenge 2: Qualitative data
We are interested in the potential of qualitative data to drive policy and public health decision making. How do you think social media data can inform public health research? What do you see as the benefits and challenges of using this data? How do you think AI could be utilised to analyse this data for public health research?
Challenge 3: Non-traditional data sources
We are interested in the potential of qualitative data to drive policy and public health decision making. How do you think social media data can inform public health research? What do you see as the benefits and challenges of using this data? How do you think trust could be built around this sort of data for public health research, especially when considering the challenge that the status-quo is robust quantitative datasets?
Before you apply:
- Confirm eligibility. Read the ‘Eligibility and suitability’ section to ensure you are eligible to take part.
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Form a team. Read the ‘Forming a team’ section to see what skills and experience are essential and useful to solve each challenge.
Apply:
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Complete the Application to Attend. You can read a sample of the application form in 'Useful documents'. While completing the application, we strongly recommend you follow the 'Guidance for completing Application to Attend' which can be found in 'Useful documents'.
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If your team is eligible to take part, a second form will be sent to each individual team member at the end of the application period (end of April). You will have two weeks to complete this survey and without it your application cannot be progressed. The survey will be sent by 'Wellcome Ideathon' with email address 'noreply@qemailserver.com'.
Semi-finalist round:
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If your application is successful, you will hear from us by 16 June 2023 informing you that your team has been selected as a semi-finalist. We will also notify unsuccessful teams. We will not be providing feedback on the application to attend.
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We will be in touch to arrange anything you may need to attend and participate to the best of your ability, from travel and accommodation, to cloud computing.
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Time to idea. On 26 June 2023 we will release our full challenge questions and your team can start tackling these remotely. We will also create a GitHub repository for your team to host any code and documents you need, as well as Slack channels to communicate with each other and with Wellcome staff.
In-person Ideathon event:
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Wellcome will open its doors on 10 July 2023 to all semi-finalist teams and you will have until 17:00 BST on 11 July 2023 to finish your proposed solutions.
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During the event semi-finalists will also have time to chat with Wellcome staff, hear talks, and engage with Lived Experience Advisors for Mental Health challenges and policy experts for Infectious Disease and Climate and Health challenges.
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By 17:00 BST on 11 July 2023 you will submit slides for your final presentation, in addition Research teams will submit plans to tackle your proposed solution over the next 12 months (full details of submission requirements to follow on successful application).
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On 12 July, teams will present their proposed solution to a judging panel of experts in the chosen health challenge (Mental Health, Infectious Disease, Climate and Health). By the end of the day the winners will be chosen. We will release full details of judging before the event
Awards and prizes:
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For Researcher teams, we will get in touch with your Lead Applicant and their administering organisation to discuss conditions for awarding the grant.
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For Student teams, we will get in touch with team members to organise giving out the cash prizes.
If you are disabled or have a long-term health condition, we can support you with the application process.
You must submit your application by 17:00 (BST) on the deadline day. We don’t accept late applications.
Three day in-person event at Wellcome’s London Office with winners announced on the last day.
If you have a question about eligibility, what we offer or our funding remit, contact the Data for Science and Health team organisers:
We do not answer questions on the competitiveness of applications.
