Award management system

SESAME is SFI’s online grants and awards management system. SESAME enables:

  • Researchers to apply online to SFI’s calls for proposals
  • Researchers to keep a record of research outputs in their contact profile
  • Research Body representatives to review and authorise all applications from their research body
  • Research Body representatives to track the status of applications
  • The submission of scientific annual reports and financial reports
  • The submission by researchers and approval by research body representatives of requests for budget reallocations and no cost extensions

How to access SESAME

SESAME is accessible online at grants.sfi.ie In order to access the system all researchers must be set up by their local Research Office. Research Officers of each institution can manage and setup other Research Officers to their team via the Contacts tab on their SESAME portal.

SESAME user guides

Guidelines for completing the Annual Research Outputs Survey

Dictionary of SESAME Researcher Profile Terms

Researcher User Guide for SESAME Award Management System

Research Body User Guide for SESAME Award Management System

Data Protection Notice

SESAME FAQ

Your Research Office Administrator is required to activate your profile within the system in addition to setting up the contact profile: Module 3 of the Research Body User guide provides guidelines on activating profiles using the settings menu. Please contact your Research office to activate the profile.

No, currently you may, but are not required to complete the research outputs section (publications, awards, patents etc) of your contact profile prior to submission.  This information will be required for submission of annual reports, if an award is made. 

You do need to complete the additional contact information where displayed in red e.g. nationality, year of PhD etc.

SESAME can accommodate some, but not all characters / symbols.  To add characters, please use True Type font in Word and Unicode or ASCII encoding (see below).  The user should select “Insert symbol” in Word, select Unicode or ASCII symbols and then copy and paste into text fields in SESAME.  The user must then verify by viewing the PDF of the proposal / document that the symbols are correctly displayed.

Research Officers can log in to SESAME and view a report under the “Reports” tab called “List of Co-applicants associated with RB”.  This will provide a listing of any proposals where a researcher based at your research body is associated as a co-applicant on a proposal.

Users can either input publications manually into sesame or relevant publications can be entered using PubMed or ORCID (see module 4 of the Guidelines for completing the Annual Research Outputs Survey). We regret that additional functionality is not currently available for the use of other online databases or other formats although SFI hope to expand on this functionality at a later stage.

It is important however to note that, at the current time, not all Calls require researchers to enter past publications into sesame as the usual CV template continues to be employed in many programmes.  At a later stage, award holders will be required to enter research outputs for the preparation of their annual returns.

(a)Applicants do need to complete the contact information including “additional contact information” where displayed in red e.g. nationality, year of PhD, DOB, Citizenship etc.

(b) Applicants are NOT however required to complete the detailed research outputs section of their profile (education, employment, journal articles etc.) in order to submit an application to PI 2011.

Research funding

2. Researchers are required to complete the “current and pending research support “fields within SESAME application”, in addition to the information required in the CV template.   This may either be completed in the profile and then added to the application of may be entered as the applicant proceeds through the application process (as shown in screen shot below).  Please ensure that researchers are completing these fields prior to submission.