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  4. The President and Principal’s Fund for Educational Excellence

The President and Principal’s Fund for Educational Excellence

The President and Principal’s Fund for Educational Excellence was established to encourage a culture of educational innovation and exploration at Queen Mary.

Funding call 2026/27

In the 2026/27 financial year, the Fund will award up to a total of £120k to support a small number of high‑impact projects in the priority areas listed below. Project teams can apply for funding through the President and Principal’s Fund for Educational Excellence, selecting one or more preferred award levels (£30k, £20k, £10k) Alternatively, teams may apply for a £5k award through the Drapers’ Fund for Innovation in Learning and Teaching. Each project is eligible to receive a single award only.

  • Artificial Intelligence in Education, with a focus on Assessment and Graduate Attributes
  • Assessment 
  • Employability
  • Student access, progression and outcomes 

Funded projects are expected to produce high-quality scholarly outputs and disseminate their findings widely to maximise institutional and sector-level impact. 

Process: Selection criteria

 

Selection criteria

The Panel will evaluate applications based on the following criteria: 

  1. Demonstration of educational innovation and exploration with the potential to make a measurable contribution to one or more key strategic priorities
  2. A robust evaluation approach
  3. Evidence of incorporating the student voice for example; through co-creation
  4. Potential for wider reach and increased impact, including across other disciplines, School/Institutes and/or Faculties. 
  5. An achievable, well structured project plan
  6. A compelling dissemination plan with the potential to raise Queen Mary's profile and enhance our reputation for excellence in education 
  7. Alignment with the priorities set out in the 2030 Strategy for Education, Student Experience and The Queen Mary Education Approach

Eligibility

The project lead should be an academic member of Queen Mary staff. Funding is not available for the continuation of projects which have previously received funding from the President and Principal’s Fund for Educational Excellence, the Westfield Fund or Drapers’ Fund.  

If the project lead has previously received funding from the President and Principal’s Fund for Educational Excellence, the Westfield Fund or Drapers’ Fund, the project (including evaluation) should have completed before being eligible to apply.  

Funding

Allowable expenses 

Staff time  

  

Project leads are encouraged to consider the time required to successfully complete the project and the need to arrange cover.  Please use 25/26 staff costs with an uplift of 5%. Totals should include the full payroll costs.  

Please note that PPFEE does not provide bought‑out time for QMUL staff. Teams may instead use their budget to hire project management, research assistance, or other appropriate staff support. 

Please seek advice and gain approval from your School/Institute Manager.

Student Interns  

Student Interns can be employed through QTemps or directly through the Queen Mary payroll. Interns are usually paid hourly. The hourly cost will vary according to the role and length of service. QTemps, pays a minimum of £13.85 per hour (the London Living Wage), plus holiday pay.

Please seek advice and gain approval from your School/Institute Manager.

External suppliers/experts  

This might include, for example, production of multimedia and other digital resources or payments to external collaborators.

External conference attendance for dissemination

This could include reasonable costs of attending a UK conference including travel and accommodation and should align to your plan for dissemination. 

Event costs  

This might include, for example, the costs of organising and hosting a symposium or conference and should align to your plan for dissemination.

 Non-allowable expenses  

Costs which require additional approval

Costs which require additional approval. Piloting standalone tools is allowable; however, piloting software that would require future full institutional roll‑out (e.g., a replacement for QMplus) is not.

Printing  

For reasons of sustainability

Support for your application

President and Principal's Fund for Educational Excellence: Information sessions

This short information session will provide information and guidance for potential PPFEE applicants. 

Application Writing for Scholarship Funding 

This interactive workshop will outline basic steps for a successful scholarship funding application and look at applying these to the specific requirements for the President and Principal’s Fund for Educational Excellence.  

Sessions are run for each Faculty; however, you are welcome to join the one most convenient for you: 

After these dates, please contact Queen Mary Academy  qmacademy@qmul.ac.uk  to request a recording of the sessions. 

Funding panel

The panel will be chaired by the Interim Director of the Queen Mary Academy and will include senior, experienced educators from all three faculties.  

How to apply

Please download and complete the President and Principal Fund Application Form 2026-27 [DOC 109KB] and email to qmacademy@qmul.ac.uk.  

The deadline for receipt of applications, with appropriate approvals, is 5pm on Friday 22 May 2026. 

Educational Impact workshops

Applicants are strongly encouraged to engage with the support available to help them to articulate the potential impact of their proposal. Two sessions of the workshop ‘Getting Started with Educational Impact’ are taking place as follows: 

Application Writing for Scholarship Funding workshops

In this 60-minute workshop, participants will learn how to analyse a funding call to understand what will make a competitive bid and develop a practical approach to producing an educational scholarship proposal applied to a specific call. Sessions for each Faculty are taking place as follows: 

Funded Projects 2025/26

 Funding has been awarded to eight projects in the following priority areas:

  • Assessment (eg use of authentic assessment, artificial intelligence) 
  • Curriculum Development, embedding the Principles of Academic Degree Programme Design (e.g. in the areas of teaching and learning approaches and activities, employability

Developing an EDI engineering employability learning toolkit in partnership with students – enhancing employability and graduate attributes for women and global majority engineering students – Project leads: Sara Hajikazemi and Salim Salim (School of Engineering and Materials Science). Collaborators:  Hicham Adjali, Folashade Akinmolayan, Mouna Chetehouna, Sanaa Hafeez and Saqib Jivani.

Oral Surgery Risk Assessment (OSRA): A Mobile Application to Support Clinical Reasoning and Guideline Compliance in Health Education – Project lead: Haidar Hassan (Blizard Institute). Collaborators:  Atif Matin and Hussain Al-Tamimi.

A Plagiarism Detection Tool for Jupyter-Notebooks used in Assessments: JBEval – Project lead: Nikesh Bajaj (School of Physical and Chemical Sciences) Collaborators: Jesús Carrión, Dimitris Chiotis, Ammar Naich and Kaushal Yadav.

Aligned by Design: Co-creating Ethical and AI-Enhanced Assessment and Feedback at QMUL - Project leads: Luigi Ventimiglia (School of Economics and Finance) and Paulo Oliva (School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science) . Collaborators: Farrah Arif, Claire Cooper, Thomai Filipelli, Eva Galante, Nick Hostettler, Daniela Tavasci and Eileen Tipoe.

Co-Creating Resources to Support the Integration of Employability into Curriculum and Assessment – Project leads: Georgy Petrov and Sevil Yesiloglu (School of Business and Management). Collaborators: Luis Carabantes, William Monteith, Usman Naeem, and Lindsey Shirah.

Professionalism: A Cross-Disciplinary Forum Theatre Initiative to Address Sexual Misconduct in Healthcare Education - Project lead: Amitha Ranauta (Institute of Dentistry). Collaborators: Dominic Hurst and Martin O’Brien.

Empowering Educators to Embed Learner Engagement Analytics in Curriculum Design - Project leads: Usman Naeem (School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science) and Vindya Wijeratne (School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science). Collaborators: Habiba Akter, Megan Jones, Dimitris Kalogiros, Maryam Malekigorji, Georgy Petrov and Sevil Yesiloglu.

Preparing Future Clinicians: An Innovative Co-created Framework for Embedding Artificial Intelligence in MBBS and BDS curricula – Project leads: Sushma Saksena (Institute of Health Sciences Education) and Cassandra Lewis. Collaborators: Chie Adachi, Shabana Bharmal, Mohamed Elbadawi, Nick Fisher, Catherine Molyneux Joshua Soane (FMD) and Lindsey Shirah.

Drapers’ Fund for Innovation in Learning and Teaching 2025/26

Who experiences experiential learning? Enhancing inclusion in experiential education – Project lead: David Geiringer (School of History). Collaborators: Aisha Abuelmaatti, Alison Blunt, Leslie James, Patrick McGurk, Lisa Morrison, Kanishka Ratnayake, Rehan Shah, Lindsey Shirah and Karen Watton.

Frequently Asked Questions

What support is available to applicants?

Please attend one of our Information Sessions when there will be a chance to learn more and ask questions. If you would like support in developing your evaluation plan, please attend one of our ‘Getting Started with Educational Impact’ sessions. Details for both can be found above.

If you still have questions please contact us qmacademy@qmul.ac.uk

Is there more detail on the kinds of costs which the panel will expect to see?

The panel will look at your application and assess whether the proposed budget is likely to achieve the stated deliverables. We have provided some sample costings [PDF 36KB], based on previous funded projects, to give an indication of the kinds of activities which have previously been funded.

The panel will look at costs in terms of impact: are the suggested items aligned to maximise the impact of your project (in terms of number of students who will benefit, measurable contribution towards strategic aims etc..)? The panel will be looking for costs which are well aligned to the project aims and plan.

What flexibility is there to reallocate funds once the project has started?

Project leads have discretion on the use of funds and are expected to meet their objectives within the overall funding awarded. No additional funding will be available. If costs increase, project leads will be expected to absorb any additional costs within the funding which has been allocated.

How will the project be expected to report on progress?

A member of the Queen Mary Academy team will be assigned to support you and help you to stay on track. At the end of the year we will ask you to complete a short final report. You can see an example of the format which will be used for projects funded in financial year 2025/26 President and Principals Fund final report template [DOC 74KB]

How will projects be asked to share their outputs?

The Fund application form will ask you to share your dissemination plan. This should include, for example, sharing the work at the Festival of Education, producing a case study for the website, sharing resources produced during the project, speaking at conferences, applying for prizes and other forms of external recognition.

Is the funding available for just for one year?

Funding will be awarded for financial year 2025/26 and funds will be transferred to your budget code in August 2025. If you wish to carry forward funds to the 2026/27 financial year, please ensure that you use an Extra Departmental Activity (EDA) code.

We therefore advise you to consider whether your project is achievable in one academic year.

I can't attend the Information sessions, is there more that I should know?

The slides from the Information Sessions are now available to download Information session slides [PDF 249KB]

Funded projects 2024/25

Creating an open, co-created and co-guided toolkit to support staff integration of AI literacy and skills into the curricula - Lilian Schofield (School of Business and Management), Xue Zhou (School of Business and Management), Daniela Tavasci (School of Economics and Finance), Lesley Howell (School of Physical and Chemical Sciences), Aisha Abuelmaatti (School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science) and Cassandra Lewis (Institute of Dentistry)

Making Diversity Count, Fixing the Leaky Pipeline - Giorgio Chianello (School of Physical and Chemical Sciences) and Tippu Sheriff (School of Physical and Chemical Sciences)

Critical hope: co-creating learning resources for a changing world [PDF 320KB] - Catherine Nash (School of Geography) and Heather McMullen (Wolfson Institute of Population Health)

Empowering Neurodivergent Voices: Co-creation or Peer Support Strategies in Education - Ruth Rose (School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences, Lesley Howell (School of Physical and Chemical Sciences), Sally Faulkner (School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences) and Mark Hudson (School of Physical and Chemical Sciences) 

Future Ready: Integrating Artificial Intelligence, Interdisciplinary Practices, and Entrepreneurial skills for Enhanced Student Employability - Aisha Abuelmaatti (School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science), Jo Elliott (Medicine and Dentistry), Karen Watton (School of Law), Leon Vinokur (School of Economics and Finance), Paraskevi Argriou (School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences), Pedro Elston (Institute of Health Sciences Education), Veronica Veleanu (School of Economics and Finance), Weronika Fernando (School of Languages, Linguistics and Film) and Xue Zhou (School of Business and Management) 

SustainAbility in the curriculum: Developing Queen Mary's virtual greenspace for sustainability awareness [PDF 655KB] - Sayed Elhoushy (School of Business and Management - HSS), Ishani Chandrasekara (School of Business and Management - HSS), Nurul Ahmed (Careers and Enterprise - PS), Paul Clatworthy (Careers and Enterprise - PS), Sally Faulkner (School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences - S&E), Patrick Healey (School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science - S&E), Anna Moore (Wolfson Institute of Population Health - FMD), Jonathan Otter (Queen Mary Student Union - PS), Jovani Palnoni (Queen Mary Student Union - PS), Rehan Shah (School of Engineering and Materials Science - S&E), Jenna-Marie Smallwood (Estates - PS), Zoe Sturgess (Queen Mary Student Union - PS), Chris Sutton (School of Mathematical Sciences - S&E), Sara Tomé (Estates - PS), Louise Younie (Institute of Health Sciences Education - FMD) and Alison Blunt (School of Geography - HSS)

Enhancing Data Science Education through Competitive-Based Learning and AI-Driven Assessment [PDF 495KB] -Pengfei Fan (School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science - S&E), Jesus Carrion (School of Physical and Chemical Sciences - S&E), Nikesh Bajaj (School of Physical and Chemical Sciences - S&E), Jordan Smith (School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science - S&E), Ebru Burcu (S&E), Gloria Molinero (School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science - S&E) and Reza Moosaei (School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science - S&E)

Drapers’ Fund for Innovation in Learning and Teaching 2024/25

EduMark AI: AI-Driven Grading and Personalised Student Feedback to Save Educator Time - Deepshikha Deepshikha (School of Engineering and Materials Science), Conrad Bessant (School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences), Darryn Mitussis (School of Business and Management), Li Wang (School of Engineering and Materials Science), Xinru Deng (School of Engineering and Materials Science), Giuseppe Viola (School of Engineering and Materials Science) and Mouna Chetehouna (School of Engineering and Materials Science)

Funded projects 2023/24

President and Principal's Fund for Educational Excellence 2023/24

Drapers’ Fund for Innovation in Learning and Teaching 2023/24 

  • Innovative and diverse creation of teaching materials in Economics, Finance and Business Management: new approaches in the classroom with co-creating Research-Led, Learning by Doing, Peer-Led Team Learning and Teaching with Historical Perspectives - Dr Daniela Tavasci, Dr Eileen Tipoe, Dr Luigi Ventimiglia (School of Economics and Finance); Dr Xue Zhou and Dr Lilian Schofield (School of Business and Management)

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