Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
Several Australian universities jointly propose a Centre of Excellence around a shared research theme, naming one university as the administering organisation while partner investigators at the other institutions -- plus, commonly, international and industry partner organisations -- are named as formal collaborators in the funding agreement.
- Is an instance
A Centre of Excellence funds not just senior investigators' research time but a cohort of postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers trained within the centre over its full term, making workforce capacity-building an explicit, budgeted objective rather than an incidental benefit of the research funding.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A single university team seeking funding for one discrete, proposal-bound research question without a multi-institutional collaboration structure should look to a Discovery Project, not a Centre of Excellence, which is specifically built around a large, coordinated, multi-partner program.
Editorial commentary
An ARC Centre of Excellence (CoE) is the Australian Research Council’s flagship large-scale collaborative research funding instrument, administered under the ARC’s Linkage Program alongside schemes such as Linkage Projects and Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF). Where most ARC schemes fund a project or a person, a Centre of Excellence funds a standing, named research organisation built around a major theme — bringing together investigators from multiple Australian universities, and typically international and industry partner organisations, for a sustained, multi-year program rather than a single bounded piece of work.
Scale and duration
Recent Centre of Excellence funding rounds (including CE26) have run on a seven-year term, with individual centres funded at many millions of dollars across that period — publicly reported examples from the CE26 round include centres funded at roughly $34.8 million and $35 million over seven years. The exact number of centres funded, total program spend, and per-centre funding envelope are set separately for each round in the ARC’s published Grant Guidelines and selection outcomes, so a specific figure from one round should not be assumed to carry over to the next.
What the funding covers
Centre of Excellence funding is deliberately broader than a single research budget: it typically covers investigator salary contributions, a cohort of postgraduate and postdoctoral positions trained within the centre, and centre operating costs, with an explicit objective of building Australia’s research workforce capacity alongside the research outputs themselves. The ARC’s stated objectives for the scheme include undertaking innovative, potentially transformational research; achieving scale and focus not otherwise possible; and providing high-quality training for the next generation of researchers.
Administration and how it differs from other ARC schemes
As with every ARC scheme, an eligible Australian university acts as the administering organisation and formal grant recipient, lodging the proposal and subsequent reporting through the ARC’s Research Management System (RMS), even though the actual research activity spans multiple partner institutions. This distinguishes a Centre of Excellence from a Discovery Project (a single, proposal-bound piece of research) and from personnel fellowships such as DECRA or the Future Fellowship (which fund an individual researcher’s salary and research program) — a Centre of Excellence funds an institution-hosted, multi-partner program of coordinated activity at a scale none of those other instruments is designed to support.
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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