Academics from Nottingham Trent University are interested in this funding for early stage feasibility projects and are looking for industrial partners.
UK registered organisations can apply for a share of up to £2.5 million for early stage feasibility projects working with one or more of the Diet and Health Open Innovation Research Club (OIRC) hubs. This funding is from BBSRC and Innovate UK.
- Competition opens: Wednesday 14 February 2024
- Competition closes: Wednesday 8 May 2024 11:00am
Your project
Your project must:
- have total costs between £100,000 and £250,000
- last between 9 and 18 months
- carry out all of its project work in the UK
- intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
- start by 1 October 2024
- end by 31 March 2026
Projects must always start on the first of the month and this must be stated within your application. Your project start date will be reflected in your grant offer letter if you are successful.
You must only include eligible project costs in your application.
Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian or Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian or Belarusian source.
If your project’s total costs or duration falls outside of our eligibility criteria, you must provide justification by email to support@iuk.ukri.org at least 10 working days before the competition closes. We will decide whether to approve your request.
If you have not requested approval or your application has not been approved by us, you will be made ineligible. Your application will then not be sent for assessment.
Lead organisation
To lead a project your organisation must:
- be a business of any size
or
- a research organisation eligible for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funding
Your consortium must include at least one business and one research organisation, as a minimum.
More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.
Project team
To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:
- business of any size
- academic institution
- charity
- not for profit
- public sector organisation
- research and technology organisation (RTO)
Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service (IFS) by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once partners have accepted the invitation, they will be asked to login or to create an account in IFS. They are responsible for entering their own project costs and completing their Project Impact questions in the application.
To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.
The lead applicant and partners must be members of a Diet and Health Open Innovation Research Club (OIRC) hub. Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) will be checking names, organisations and job titles against applicant’s membership of the OIRC hubs.
Funding
Up to £2.5 million has been allocated to fund innovation projects in this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.
If your organisation’s work on the project is commercial or economic, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically but for the purpose of this project will be undertaking commercial or economic activity.
This competition is funding early stage feasibility studies.
You could get funding for your eligible project costs of:
- up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
- up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
- up to 50% if you are a large organisation
For more information on company sizes, please refer to the company accounts guidance.
If you are applying for an award funded under State aid Regulations, the definitions are set out in the European Commission Recommendation of 6 May 2003.
Research participation
The research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 50% of the total eligible project costs. If your consortium contains more than one research organisation undertaking non-economic activity, this maximum is shared between them. Of that 50% you could get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:
- 80% of full economic costs (FEC) if you are a Je-S registered institution such as an academic
- 100% of your project costs if you are an RTO, charity, not for profit organisation, public sector organisation or research organisation
Funding for early stage feasibility projects opportunity taken from the UK Gov website, click here to learn more.