Evaluation in Research Funding Agencies: Are Structurally Diverse Teams Biased Against?

•We analyze whether funding bodies are biased against diverse teams, which have often been linked to the production of transformative research.•We develop a general framework that compares the drivers of success in the ex-ante grant decision process to the drivers of success in ex-post performance.•We use our framework to systematically analyze the decisions of one of the major public funding organizations for scientific research worldwide, the UK's EPSRC.•We find that teams that, although exhibit greater diversity in knowledge and skills, education, and/or scientific ability are significantly less likely to obtain funding, they are generally more likely to be successful.•Our mediating effects show that these biases are weaker and even disappear for teams led by prestigious researchers.