UK Regulatory Science and Innovation Networks – Discovery Phase

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £7.5 million, up to 2025, to support the creation of regulatory science and innovation networks across the UK.

The aim of this competition is to support the development of proposals for virtual networks of expertise in regulatory science that generate research-based evidence and insights.

At this Discovery phase they will support projects to:

• build relationships
• complete background information and data gathering
• develop a proposal for the Implementation phase

Only successful applicants at this Discovery phase will be invited to apply for the Implementation phase.

Specific Themes

• They welcome proposals from collaborations across different sectors.
• They encourage proposals that align with innovation priorities identified by the UK Government, these include
  • the Science and Technology Framework
  • the Pro-innovation Regulation of Technologies Review
  • areas of interest identified by the Regulatory Horizons Council in either its reports to Government, or other publications
• In the health and life sciences sector they encourage proposals focusing on the following themes:
  • artificial intelligence (AI) and software as a medical device
  • biotherapeutics, cell and gene therapies
  • data science
  • diagnostics and genomics
  • genomics and synthetic human biology
  • international recognition
  • in Vitro Diagnostic (IVD) regulation
  • medical technologies
  • neurotechnology
  • vaccines and immunotherapies

Project Size

• Your collaboration’s total grant funding request for the Discovery phase must be no more than £50,000.

Projects they will not fund

They are not funding:

• capital expenditure
• activity that you are already undertaking in partnership or as a single organisation
• activity that does not contribute to the development of a proposal for the Implementation phase of the programme
• activity that an existing regulatory science and innovation network was already undertaking or so-called “business as usual”
• enterprises which are seeking to gain a selective economic or commercial advantage from the funding

Who can apply?

• Your collaboration
  • Your Discovery phase collaboration must:
    • start its activities by 1 March 2024
    • end its activities by 31 August 2024
    • carry out its project work in the UK
  • 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.
• Lead organisation
  • To lead a collaboration your organisation must be a UK registered
    • business of any size
    • academic institution
    • independent research and technology organisation (RTO) or Catapult centre eligible for UKRI funding
    • charity
    • not for profit
  • The lead organisation must:
    • collaborate with other eligible UK registered organisations
    • not act in any way to gain selective commercial or economic advantage from the outputs of this collaboration
  • Existing regulatory science and innovation networks can apply for funding, but only to expand their focus into new areas of activity or scale up existing activities.
• Collaborators
  • To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be a UK registered:
    • business of any size
    • academic institution
    • public sector research establishment (PSRE) eligible for UKRI funding
    • independent RTO or Catapult centre eligible for UKRI funding
    • charity
    • not for profit
    • regulator
    • other public sector organisation
  • Your proposal must include at least two organisations interested in forming a network that will serve a specific emerging technology.
  • Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service 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 the Innovation Funding Service. 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.
• Subcontractors
  • Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.
  • Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.
  • You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.
  • You must provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you. They will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.
  • All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.
• Number of applications
  • An eligible organisation can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in any number of applications.

For more information, visit Innovate UK.