UKRI has pre-announced a new Proof of Concept funding opportunity, offering grants between £100k and £250k (from a total fund of £9 million) to ‘support the commercialisation of research to enable spinouts or social ventures, licencing or other commercialisation pathways’.
UKRI will limit the number of bids that the university can submit, should demand be high. UKRI will inform us of this maximum number once the full call opens on 12 March. If you would like to apply for this funding opportunity you must:
- submit the mandatory online form to UKRI by 4:00 pm on 3 March
- notify the University’s Technology Transfer office (TTO) via the internal RIS Intention to Submit form (proposals not notified to the TTO before the call opens on 12 March risk not being supported at full-stage should demand management be required by UKRI)
- use pb487@bath.ac.uk (Dr Phil Brown’s email, Head of TTO) as the TTO email address requested on the UKRI form
Please contact June Mercer-Chalmers, Technology Transfer Manager: chsjdmc@bath.ac.uk with any questions, or to discuss your potential project.
Key points
- Interested applicants must inform UKRI of their intention to submit a bid by 4:00 pm on 3 March; the full call opens 12 March and closes 29 May
- The full economic cost of projects must be between £100k and £250k, and project duration must be between 6 and 12 months.
- The call is open to applications from across UKRI’s disciplinary remit
- The call is open to academic staff, researchers (including PDRAs), and support staff (including technicians, specialists, TT or KE staff)
Internal selection
If UKRI will apply institutional caps, Research and Impact Services (RIS) will run an internal process to select proposed projects to be submitted to UKRI. This will involve completion of a mandatory expression of interest (EoI) form. This EoI form will be based on UKRI’s assessment criteria for the call, and will be available once the call opens on 12 March (i.e. once the assessment criteria have been confirmed). Draft assessment criteria are listed on UKRI’s funding finder.
Further details about the internal selection process will be posted here once the full call has opened.
Timeline
The draft internal selection process and timeline is as follows. Please note this is for guidance only at this stage, and may need amendment ahead of the full call opening.
- 3 March 4:00pm: Deadline to submit mandatory online form to UKRI; notify the university’s TTO via the internal RIS Intention to Submit form
- 12 March: Full call opens
- Late March (date TBC): UKRI webinar
- 7 April: Deadline to submit mandatory EoI to RIS
- 17 April: Outcomes communicated to applicants
Applicants who are successful at the EoI stage should note that although the UKRI deadline is 29 May 2025, you will be expected to have finalised and uploaded your application to the Funding Service at least one week ahead of this, to allow for the necessary pre-award checks and timely submission to the funder.
Applicants who are successful at the EoI stage will be expected to work with the TTO in the development of their bids.
Further information
Further information about the funding opportunity:
The UKRI Proof of Concept funding opportunity aims to support and accelerate the development of new or improved technologies, products, processes, and services arising from research activities.
Award range: £100k to £250k (total fund: £9 million) Project duration: between 6 and 12 months. Projects must start by 1 September 2025.
The opportunity supports early-to-mid stage commercialisation activities that validate the development of concepts that arose from research. This is to support and enable the commercial application of existing research along varied commercialisation pathways such as licensing or company creation (spinouts or social ventures) or any other commercialisation routes.
Applications are welcomed from across all research disciplines and research councils’ remit (AHRC, BBSRC, EPSRC, ESRC, MRC, NERC and STFC) including cross and multi-disciplinary approaches.
UKRI will support projects that are not eligible for funding applications via existing UKRI funding opportunities or those projects that have been funded by other mechanisms and that now require further de-risking at a larger scale.
If your project is eligible and in scope for live or upcoming UKRI council specific translation, knowledge exchange or commercialisation support via a specific council funding opportunity, you should apply via that council.
This UKRI funding opportunity aims to de-risk the commercialisation of research. This will allow research organisations and their partners to deliver better commercialisation outcomes via the establishment of successful university spinouts or social ventures, as well as developing applicable solutions through other commercialisation routes to deliver societal and economic impacts and benefits from research.
The intended outputs of funded projects should include the development of an appropriate commercialisation proposition and strategy. This might include increasing readiness towards an investable or licensable proposition (or any other applicable commercialisation routes, for example social ventures) after completion of the proof-of-concept project.
Successful applicants and their institutions will need to demonstrate commitment to the adoption of best practices in research commercialisation (including, for example, TenU USIT guides).
Examples of activities that can and cannot be funded through this opportunity are given on the funding finder.