Researcher Funded Engagements FAQs

Researcher funded engagements are available to researchers within the University of Melbourne and external collaborators.

Yes, and this depends on both your preference and the requirements of the project. In general, there are two options.

1. You can engage individual MDAP staff through secondments, charged at a salary cost-recovery rate.
2. MDAP can assemble a multi-disciplinary team of data specialists, charged at Academic Level C rates.

The number of MDAP team members involved in any funded engagement can vary during its life cycle, depending on the required skills and expertise at any one time. MDAP seeks to engage equally with researchers from all Faculties across the University.

Our team is comprised of cross-domain academic specialists who work closely with University of Melbourne academics and researchers. Contributions include, but are not limited to, research design, computing, data management and processing, computational analysis, visualisation, and interpretation. Our contribution will depend on your research and its requirements.

We will be collaborating with you on your research, adding our expertise and intellectual property to the work. We would also work with you as co-authors on research outputs (such as papers or journal articles) related to the aspects of the research we have contributed to.

If we don’t have the capability or capacity to help, or there is an existing platform or service at the University who may be a better fit for your needs, we may redirect you to them. Complete a Funded engagements contact form to let us know what you are looking for, and we can see if we can help.

This obviously depends on the scope of the project, how long the work will take and whether you are an internal or external collaborator. If you are engaging at a team-level (more than one MDAP staff member), this equates to approximately $1,000 a day (Level C plus on-costs) for internal collaborators. Individuals are on a cost-recovery secondment (so it depends on the level of the MDAP staff member). This is inclusive of all activity undertaken by the MDAP team after the funding agreement has been signed and approved, including meetings, and reporting back to the collaborators.

At any time! The Funded engagements contact form is available year-round, however, our ability to collaborate on new projects is subject to team capacity.

When a Funded Engagement request is received, MDAP will review the proposal to ensure that we have the expertise and available capacity within the team. If so, we will organise a scoping meeting with you (usually within one week of the submission), to obtain further information about the project, clarify what you are looking for, expected outputs, timeframes, and any other points relevant to the scope of the project.

MDAP will draft a Terms of Engagement document, and once it has been reviewed and revised by both parties, the project will be fully costed. The Terms of Engagement will then be signed by both yourself and the MDAP director, after which the engagement can begin.

There are additional steps required for external collaborators.

General process

There are no fixed criteria to define the scope of project to which MDAP can contribute.

We work with data from researchers across the University, in every Faculty and discipline area, as well as external collaborators. This means we have worked with qualitative and quantitative data, structured and unstructured, databases or raw binary files. We’ve even worked with data that hasn’t been collected yet.

The suitability of your data format really depends on what it is you are looking to do with it. Researchers and academics across all disciplines deal with diverse, significant, and vast data sets. These can often benefit from bespoke consultations and collaborations with our research data specialists about management, curation, computation, analysis, infrastructure, and preservation. If you’re unsure, contact us.

No. MDAP also runs an internally competitive, Faculty-funded collaboration round every year. Letters of interest open around September each year for projects to be undertaken in the following year. MDAP can also provide shorter consultations if you have questions about your data intensive research. More about engaging with us.

MDAP are a group of academic Research Data Specialists who can provide advice and collaborate with researchers on any activity related to analysis, collection, storage, and presentation of data in support of research at the University of Melbourne. Further, we advise researchers on issues related to software, computing resources, and relevant infrastructure. Our team can help you to determine what is most suitable for your research questions and data, and how either MDAP or another academic and/or service provision group across the University can best assist you.