Innovation funding

The Innovation Funding Team helps to identify and secure funding opportunities
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What is innovation funding?

Innovation funding includes diversified funding streams to generate University income that is underpinned by economic, social or environmental outputs that make a significant difference in the real world.

These non-traditional funding streams have allowed the University of Plymouth to invest and develop applicable R&D innovations to allow industry partners and academics to stay ahead of their competitors in areas of research such as maritime cybersecurity, e-Health products and services, marine-related technologies, agricultural and sustainability technologies, electro-microscopy applications, business productivity, big data and analytics. Funding is often delivered with businesses or other external stakeholders but can still support new research posts, buy new equipment, lead to publications, impact case studies and support wider research. The focus of our team is to develop partnership projects with businesses or other organisations where we can translate the expertise within the University to make an economic, social or environmental impact.

Why is innovation funding important?

The UK government has set innovation at the heart of 'Build Back Better: our plan for growth' to make the UK a global hub for innovation by 2035.

Our strategy. University 2030: A Future of Excellence.

University 2030: A Future of Excellence
Innovation funding is contributing to our strategy and institutional goals

Marine Building, Plymouth

Academics
Collaborate with industry and optimise research impact

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Businesses
Access University facilities and expertise and improve business productivity

Hand holding business team by nopporn, courtesy of Shutterstock

How can the Innovation Funding Team help?

The IFT works with internal and external partnerships, offering a proactive and flexible approach to grant capture. All team members are committed to providing a responsive, professional service, working across R&I and the wider university to deliver value to the institution and the wider region.
The Innovation Funding Managers help you scope out your project and Knowledge Transfer Partnership ideas, link businesses with academics, prepare and then submit the grant application.
The IFT also supports public engagement from strategy to community engagement.

The IFT is available to support you with:

Projects funded by innovation funding schemes

“The Innovation Funding Team has been magnificent in supporting bid development working with all the relevant partners, funders, etc., and being instrumental in ‘landing’ our ERDF-funded EPIC1 and then EPIC2 grants (some £7m) and in preparing other bids related to health technology. Without them we would not have the development of health technology that we have in the University.”
– Professor Ray Jones , Professor of Health Informatics
“As we are looking to move to more diversified funding streams to support new kinds of research and engagement activities, we have relied heavily on the expertise (and good will!) of the Innovation Funding Team to help us target and develop applications … and it has definitely paid off. A lot of future activity will depend on large-scale academic/industrial/government calls and we’ll definitely be relying on this team to help us deliver against these ambitions.”
– Professor Kevin Jones , Executive Dean, Faculty of Science and Engineering

Key statistics (project data, 2017–2021)

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£23.7m won in grant funding
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7 FTE knowledge exchange posts | 20 FTE research posts | 5.5. FTE technical posts | 96 internships & placements
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New capital equipment
C-Worker 4 Autonomous Surface Vehicle | digital positioning system | focussed ion beam scanning electron microscope | health robotics
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Projects led to 34 scientific papers and publications over the last 4 years (2017–2021)
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13 projects launched over the last 4 years (2017–2021)
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£1.9m total revenue to University of Plymouth from R&D projects

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships: A selection of real business success stories

Research funding guidance

Innovation Funding Team

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