MS Society Data Discovery Awards

The MS Society Data Discovery Awards sit under Multiple Sclerosis Society UK and support exploratory, data-driven MS research with a clear data science emphasis. Awards go up to GBP 100,000 over two years, and the society strongly encourages use of the UK MS Register, which passed 50,000 participants in 2025. Eligible applicants must be based at a UK university or NHS institution, and the work must stay within MS research. Laboratory-based approaches are excluded, as are studies of pharmacological interventions for MS. The 2026 call added a highlight notice for work on MS risk reduction and prevention, which gives the scheme a sharper prevention angle than a broad exploratory call. This award is best for teams that can answer a clean analytical question with patient-level data rather than a wet-lab experiment. Strong applications should show a disciplined method, a direct link to the register or another relevant dataset, and a question that can be answered without drifting into intervention testing. The round opens around March, with deadlines usually in February and outcomes in August. Success rates were 100% in 2024 and 20% in 2023.

Each grant below is a distinct funding opportunity with its own eligibility, scope, and deliverables.