VSS Research Grants

Details: Last Updated on Saturday, 30 March 2013 10:29; Written by Tom Richards

Financial members of Variable Stars South are invited and encouraged to submit applications for research grants at any time.

The purpose of the grants scheme is to assist a VSS member or research team that has a VSS member, in their participation in a recognised VSS research project. Applications will be considered for expenditure on items such as, but not limited to, the following:

Items of instrumentation directly relevant to variable star research such as eyepieces, spectroscopes and photometric filters
Software related to image acquisition, processing, measurement, and data analysis
Charges for access to research telescopes
Obtaining research papers for which a charge is made
Travel/registration to relevant conferences, but only as an invited speaker
Travel necessary for research purposes, e.g. to libraries or public/professional observatories where observing time has been booked.

Conditions of Grant

The maximum amount of the application should not normally exceed NZ$500.00, and smaller requests are more likely to succeed. Grant-in-aid applications, where the proposer wishes to make expenditure in excess of the amount requested and will meet the excess in other ways, are certainly acceptable.

Applications will be judged on their relevance to the purposes of VSS and its projects, and to the extent to which they will enable the grantee to be involved in those projects.

The amount granted must be spent within one year of the date of grant. The grantee should arrange for and pay for all purchases and other expenditure under the grant and submit receipts to VSS for reimbursement up to the maximum granted. If the grantee submits receipts in excess of the amount granted, only the amount granted will be reimbursed. If the grantee submits receipts during the grant period for less in total than the amount granted, then VSS retains the unspent balance.

The grantee is required, at the end of the grant period, to submit a full report to the Director of VSS of the research carried out using the grant monies. This report will be taken into account in the evaluation of future grant applications, and may at the discretion of the Director be published in the VSS Newsletter.

The grantee is required to ensure that in any research publications of which is grantee or any member of the grantee's team is an author, whether refereed or not, and arising from research of the grantee or team that was materially assisted by the grant, whether in the grant period or afterwards; appropriate acknowledgement of the grant shall be made.

Equipment and material purchased with the grant will remain the property of the grantee, not VSS.

Submission

Applications should be in DOC or DOCX format, no longer than one A4 page of 10-point type, including any illustrations or tables.

Applications must contain:

Full name, postal and email addresses of the proposer
An itemised list of the proposed expenditure items. Where costing is difficult, please supply estimates.
A justification of the expenditure.

Applications can be submitted as email attachments to the Director, Dr Tom Richards, ( This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ), at any time. Proposers will be notified of the outcome of their application shortly after the submission is received.