General Travel Grants

Members can participate in scientific conferences or training events with our General Travel Grants.

Available to Postgraduate, Early Career, Full, and Emeritus members, these grants assist with the cost of face-to-face attendance to support valuable opportunities to expand your network, present your work to topic experts, and benefit from world-class workshops.

We appreciate that travel costs can vary depending on the location of the event. From 2024, we are therefore introducing the following two tiers of funding:

Up to £750 is available for those travelling to national conferences or training events.
Up to £1,500 is available for those travelling to international conferences or training events.

The maximum of £750 or £1,500 will only be awarded for exceptional and well-supported cases where the benefit to the applicant's career is great and where there is a financial need for the maximum grant amount.

Are you looking for funding towards an online event or lab visit? Check out our new Online Attendance Grants and Lab Visit Grants!

Please note that a successful General Travel Grant application would not affect your eligibility to apply for an Online Attendance Grant or Lab Visit Grant, provided you do not exceed a maximum of £3,000 in total funding within a 2-year period.

Eligibility

To be eligible to apply:

Applicants need to have been a member for at least 12 months prior to the deadline on the closing date of the round applied to. If you are not a member, join today. Members that have joined as multiyear members are eligible to apply for a General Travel Grant after six months of membership has elapsed.
Applicants must not have received one of the following Society grants in the 2 years before the closing date of the round applied to: General Travel Grant or Travel Award for Skills and Knowledge Exchange.
Applicants must not have received one of the following Society grants in the 12 months before the closing date of the round applied to: Student Bursary, Early Career Bursary or Full Member Bursary.
Applicants must not exceed a maximum of £3,000 in funding in a 2-year period across General Travel Grants, Online Attendance Grants, and Lab Visit Grants.
Applicants need to provide an abstract that has been submitted to the conference to demonstrate active participation.

Application guidelines

Applications will be assessed according to three main criteria:

1. Benefit to career gained from attendance

Applicants should try to include answers to the following key points in their application:

How will you be participating in the conference or training event, e.g., presenting a poster or giving a talk?
Are there any specific sessions that you think will be particularly useful and/or any speakers that you intend to network with at the event?
How will attending this conference/training course further your career? Give details of whether the aim is to form collaborations or further knowledge in an area that is not currently being pursued.
Are there any other achievements and/or outputs that are relevant?

2. Financial need for support

This refers to the applicant's current funding available for travel. Key points that should be incorporated in the application include:

Details of the applicants provision for travel in their research grant or PhD programme.
Why funds are being sought from the Society and why the level of support is being requested.
The applicant is encouraged to apply for other funding to help attend the conference/training and give details of this so that the committee may see that the applicant will be able to attend if only partial support is provided by the General Travel Grant fund.

3. Letter of Support from Supervisor or Head of Department (required for Postgraduate and Early Career applicants) and/or host lab

A strong letter of support will demonstrate the following:

Case for financial need and the justification for the amount requested.
Promise of the applicant.
What the benefit of attending that particular conference/training course would be to the applicant's career.

Application deadlines

Applications are considered seven times a year, the deadlines for which are:

1 January for conferences/visits after 1 February
1 March for conferences/visits after 1 April
1 May for conferences/visits after 1 June
1 June for conferences/visits after 1 July
1 July for conferences/visits after 1 August
1 September for conferences/visits after 1 October
1 November for conferences/visits after 1 December

Applications can be submitted early, up to six months before the conference date. For example, applications for a July visit can be submitted in the January deadline.

Please note we aim to send round the outcome of applications three to four weeks after the deadline of the round that has been applied to.

Hear from a Grants Committee member

Members of our Grants Committee took part in a Biochemistry Focus webinar titled 'How to apply for Biochemical Society grants'.

Hear from Professor Joanna Kargul, who discusses what to include in a General Travel Grant application.

Contact us

For further information please get in touch with the Grants department.

Important note: Predatory conferences

Presenting your work at a conference is an excellent way to share your research and raise your profile in the scientific community. But there is a growing problem to look out for – predatory conferences. Much like predatory journals, predatory conferences seek to charge high registration fees while offering little value in return for attendees and presenters.

The Biochemical Society will only consider member grant applications for the organization or attendance of meetings believed to be genuine.

Some tips on how to distinguish a predatory conference from a genuine one can be found here:

Signs this is a fake conference

Avoiding predatory conferences