Innovation, Research and Development

Engineers, designers, developers, innovators, entrepreneurs or anyone with an idea for a simple product that makes an everyday task easier for a person living with dementia can now apply for support of up to £100,000 of funding and business support. Funding is available from the Alzheimer’s Society Accelerator Programme to develop either products or services which during the 12 months will be developed and evaluated to ensure that they will...

Organisations working with partners in Africa on innovative agriculture and food projects can apply to a £5million fund. Innovation in agriculture and food systems is low in developing countries, particularly in Africa where only 28% of farmland is planted with modern crops compared with 65% globally. The funding is being made available by the Department for International Development and the Global Challenges Research Fund and is managed by I...

Businesses across the UK are being invited to collaborate with an academic or research organisation and a graduate on a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP), a scheme that helps businesses to innovate and grow. Up to £40 million in total is available for part funding of KTPs that will offer businesses the opportunity to access new skills and the latest academic thinking to help them deliver a specific, strategic innovation project. KTPs can l...

Grants of up to £30,000 are now available for non-profit organisations, charities, academic institutions, private companies, community organisations and local authorities to help grow the field of collective intelligence design. The funding is being managed by Nesta as part of the £500,000 Collective Intelligence Programme and will support experiments that help generate new insight and knowledge on how to design and apply collective intellig...

The Wingate Foundation has announced that the next deadline to apply is the 4th December 2019.The Foundation supports projects, institutions and activities in the following areras: Jewish Life and Learning; Performing Arts; Music; and Medical Research Travel grants. Applications are invited from smaller charitable organisations only; the Trustees will not consider approaches from large charities who are well represented on the High Street or...

A new £400,000 fund will be launched to encourage researchers and innovators to experiment with citizen science. Citizen science is an important way in which diverse groups of people can participate and collaborate in research and innovation. This could include crowdsourcing data, working with volunteers to analyse existing datasets, collaborating with communities in designing research programmes, and approaches to innovation that involves di...

Businesses and public sector organisations of any size can now apply for a share of £40 million to develop ideas that could help people to enjoy healthier and more active lives in older age. Rising life expectancy poses significant challenges for health services. Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, has up to £2 million to invest in stage 1 of the Healthy Ageing Trailblazers competition which aims to establish large, multi-disci...

Organisations can apply for a share of £9.3 million to trial innovations that tackle global societal challenges in low-income and emerging economies. The fund aims to encourage UK businesses to work with overseas partners to develop innovations that could transform lives in countries that receive overseas development assistance. The Global Challenges Research Fund is a two-phase process made available by the UK government. In phase 1, project...

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport has launched a new £30 million competition to test 5G applications in rural areas, along with plans to improve and extend mobile coverage. The Rural Connected Communities (RCC) competition will fund up to 10 5G research and development projects to run over the course of two years. These projects will trial innovative use cases and technical solutions to build the business case for investment...

The Nuffield Foundation is calling for applications to its new £15m Strategic Fund for ambitious, interdisciplinary research projects that will address some of the most important challenges facing UK society and the public policy agenda in the next decade. This is an opportunity for researchers to develop original and challenging ideas, to work collaboratively across disciplines, and to influence social policy in a period of rapid change and...

Businesses can apply for a share of up to £33 million to work with others on developing new products and services that exploit quantum technologies. Projects must aim to speed up commercialisation of second-generation quantum technologies and should address at least 1 of the following areas: connectivity and techniques for securing data in storage and in flight; situational awareness including autonomous systems; sensors and detectors for the...

The British Academy is inviting proposals from UK-based researchers in the humanities and social sciences wishing to develop international interdisciplinary projects in collaboration with colleagues from the natural, engineering and / or medical sciences, with a focus on hazard and risk, cultures of forecasting, and the meaning of resilience. The purpose of each project will be to develop new international research ideas. The Academy particula...

A new round of an investment initiative that enables independent games developers from the English Regions (outside Greater London) to kick-start the development and release of a new game launches on the 21st May 2019. The Greenshoots Fund supports games companies in early stage development and helps to stimulate the wider games industry. Previous recipients include Nottingham-based Pixel Squad, whose game Crime Coast, featured prominently acr...

Grants of up to £500 are available to full members of Hospice UK (Adult or Children’s hospices) to undertake a small research project. Research projects supported will offer practical research that includes patient and public involvement and offers results that may be shared through open access publications. The research may take place over up to two years, however no more than £500 will be granted in total. This is an open call with limit...

Up to £60 million of public funding is to be offered to business innovators in the UK for research and development projects aimed at developing waste-based plastics. The funding will also be used to support concepts which would enable manufacturers to use a higher proportion of recycled content in their plastic packaging. Offered through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund and delivered by UK Research and Innovation, the first round of the...

The Better Broadband Scheme has been extended for a further year until 31st December 2019. The scheme offers a subsidised basic broadband connection to businesses and private dwellings where occupiers are unable to access download speeds of at least 2 mbps, and who will not benefit from the superfast broadband rollout within the next 12 months. The subsidy can be used to fund a variety of technology solutions, including satellite, 4G and fixed...