King’s College London’s Research Grants & Contracts team provides a seamless, end‑to‑end Pre‑ and Post‑Award service helping researchers secure funding, navigate contract negotiations, and manage their awards with the assurance of dedicated professional expertise.

The portfolio is led by Paul Labbett, Director of Research Grants & Contracts, working alongside Laura Weiss, Director of Pre‑Award, Research and Consultancy Contracts. The Director of Research Award Administration (Post‑Award) position is currently vacant

The Pre-Award Office is the specialist office at King's responsible for submitting, approving and signing-off research applications and research projects sponsored by external funders. The Pre-Award Office expertise covers funders that support research via competitive peer-review (national and international), including but not limited to:

• UKRI
• European Commission
• US Government funding (NIH, DoD etc.)
• National and international charities such as the Wellcome Trust, Leverhulme Trust, Bill & Melinda Gates foundation etc.
• UK Government funding via NIHR
• International Research Councils

Costings, approvals and management of research awards that fall under the remit of the Pre-Award Office are managed in Worktribe, the research management system adopted by King's College London. 

Overall the Pre-Award Office support covers the following:

• Understanding calls and expectations from funders;
• Checking compliance and accuracy of the overall costing and the associated University's overheads;
• Ensuring high quality technical and financial aspects of research applications;
• Advising on the University's resources and procedures;
• Approving and submitting research applications in funders' systems;
• Negotiating agreements/subcontracts etc. with collaborators and funders;
• Sign-off of research contracts on behalf of King's College London;
• Activating research grants

If you are a member of staff applying for external research funding, please see our internal pages where you will find in-depth guidance on Preparing a Proposal, Costing and Pricing a Proposal and details for all the Pre-Award team contacts. Further information and how to use the system can be found on the Worktribe Hub pages (internal webpage).

The Contracts team is responsible for providing costing and contractual support for industry and government research funding (excluding NIHR), consultancy projects (advisory and fee-for service) and contractual support for non-financial agreements, such as data transfer, confidentiality (non-disclosure) and material transfer agreements.

If you are unsure who to contact, please email us: RGCContractsTeam@kcl.ac.uk 

If you are a member of staff requiring in-depth guidance on industry research, studentships, consultancy and other contract types within the team’s remit, please see our internal pages Contracts Team Support.

Once formally accepted by King's College London, our Post-Award team will manage the financial administration of your award.

The team offers expert management of research funding to ensure compliance with funder’s terms and conditions and the university’s financial procedures.

Post-Award provides support on account management, forecasting, budgetary control, financial reporting, risk management and audit as well as providing financial and business management information on all research projects.

The team is also responsible for:

• the issuing of grant codes
• authorisation of staff recruitment
• invoicing
• profile payments
• financial reporting

If you are a member of staff with a question about an active grant or contract, please see our internal web pages for contact details for team members.

In order to be compliant with the US government Public Health Service requirement for the disclosure and management of financial conflicts of interest, King’s College London have published ‘Disclosure of Financial Interests & Management of Conflicts of Interest, Public Health Services Research Awards Policy & Procedures’. As part of the policy, this document is required to be made publicly available.

The policy & procedures document can be accessed here. 

A further requirement of the policy is to make certain information relating to Senior/Key personnel publicly available. The definitions and scope relating to this requirement are laid out in the policy and procedures document. When information within scope needs to be made available it will do so here.