Funding
Soft Matter and formulation research is truly multidisciplinary, bringing together physicists, biologists, chemists and engineers and therefore funds within various disciplines can be used to support work with us. University, Scottish, UK and international funding is available to support projects of all sizes. A representative list of funding opportunities is outlined below, but please contact us to discuss the most recent and suitable types of funding for your project.
University of Edinburgh Funding
Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) funding
UKRI have awarded the University of Edinburgh Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) funding to support a wide range of impact activities including collaborative research and knowledge exchange projects. Money is centrally awarded to the University and is then bid for internally across several application rounds. Projects are typically 3-12 months and are match-funded by company cash and in-kind support.
Scottish Funding
Interface funding
Interface connect a wide variety of businesses and industries to Scotland’s universities, research institutes and colleges. They match businesses of all sizes and across multiple sectors to Scotland’s world-leading academic expertise to help them grow and address specific sector challenges.
Under a Standard Innovation voucher, up to £5,000 of funding is available aimed at encouraging first-time partnerships between a company and an academic partner. The company contributes an equal value in cash or in kind (such as staff time, materials or equipment) or a combination of both. Find out more.
UK funding
Innovate UK
Innovate UK is part of UK Research and Innovation, a non-departmental public body funded by the UK government. Innovate UK aim to drive productivity and economic growth by supporting businesses to develop and realise the potential of ideas generated from the UK’s research base. They regularly run competitions to support large (£50-500K) industry-led projects in high value manufacturing, biotechnology, nutrition and formulation science, among others. Frequently, it is essential to have SME involvement and ideally collaborations on topics of interest would be set up well in advance of the call becoming live. Calls currently open for applications can be found on the Innovate UK website.
Knowledge Transfer Partnerships
Run by Innovate UK, Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) support a suitably qualified graduate to work with a company in partnership with a University for 6 months to 3 years. An SME contributes around one third of the total cost. The academic commits 10% of their time to work with the company, mainly at the company premises. Find out more.
National Biofilms Innovation Centre
The National Biofilms Innovation Centre (NBIC) is a fusion of world class interdisciplinary research and industry partnerships working to deliver breakthrough science and technologies to control and exploit biofilms. NBIC run funding calls to catalyse academic-industrial collaborations aimed at achieving breakthrough innovation within biofilm-related topics. Typically, these collaborations must involve at least one company (micro, SME or large) or stakeholder with a UK presence and one (or more) UK University/Research Institution, and be themed around NBIC’s strategic themes of Prevent, Detect, Manage and Engineer.
International funding
EUSMI European Soft Matter Infrastructure
EUSMI provides the community of European soft-matter researchers with an open-access infrastructure as a platform to support and extend their research, covering characterization, synthesis, and modeling.
The use of EUSMI installations is offered free of charge and financial contribution to related travel and accommodation costs is granted to successful applications from academia and from industry, thanks to financial support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 731019 (EUSMI).
European Soft Matter scientists can apply for access to our facilities at the University of Edinburgh. Equipment running costs, travel and accommodation are paid for by the network.
