Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will work with the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP) to invest a total of up to £6 million in innovation projects. These will enable the advancement of quantum technologies and their commercial use cases.
The aim of this competition is to strengthen collaborative research and development (CR&D) through Canadian and UK partnerships towards commercialising quantum technologies.
Your proposal must demonstrate co-development, have a high potential for commercialisation, address a technological challenge and include a plan for future exploitation.
In applying for this public funding, you are entering into a competitive process.
This competition closes at 5pm UK time (which is 9am PDT and 12pm EDT) on 19 April 2023.
Eligibility
Your project
Your project must:
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 and Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian and Belarusian source.
If your project’s total grant funding request 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.
Canada specific rules
Canadian funding applicants are required to register and submit an Expression of Interest (EoI) to the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP). You must be successful with your EoI before being eligible to apply for this competition.
The EoI registration deadline for Canadian SMEs is 31 January 2023 and the submission deadline is 15 February 2023.
Canadian funding applicants who do not complete an EoI and have not been invited to proceed will not be eligible for funding through this competition.
Please see the NRC IRAP competition page for more information in English and French on Canadian eligibility requirements and to register when the EoI opens on 21 November 2022.
Lead organisation
To lead a project your organisation must be either:
or
More information on the different types of UK organisations can be found in our Funding rules.
Academic institutions and research and technology organisations (RTOs) cannot lead.
Project team
To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following:
Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once accepted, partners will be asked to login or to create an account and UK registered organisations must enter their own project costs into the Innovation Funding Service.
To be an eligible collaboration, at least one eligible business from the UK must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application and partner with at least one eligible Canadian SME.
In the collaboration, no single partner or country can represent more than 70% of total grant.
Applicants from UK academic institutions or RTOs cannot claim more than 50% of the UK’s total grant requested.
Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding. Their costs must be included in the total project costs.
Canadian project participants who are not eligible for funding (including researchers from the National Research Council of Canada) are welcome to collaborate as additional participants on a self‑funded basis or as subcontractors.
Subcontractors
Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.
For UK organisations, the cost of subcontractors is limited to no more than 20% of your organisation’s total eligible costs.
All subcontractors must be selected through your usual procurement process.
You can use subcontractors from UK, Canada and other countries but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the countries providing grant funding for the project.
You must provide a detailed rationale and evidence of the potential UK or Canadian contractors you approached, with the reasons why they were unable to work with you. We will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use a subcontractor from a third country.
All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate for the project.
Number of applications
A UK business can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in one further application.
A UK business that is not leading an application can collaborate on a maximum of two applications.
A Canadian SME may only participate in one application either as a lead or collaborator.
Aademic institutions or RTOs can collaborate in any number of applications.
The aim of this competition is to strengthen collaborative research and development (CR&D) through Canadian and UK partnerships towards commercialising quantum technologies.
Your project must demonstrate:
We particularly encourage projects that:
Portfolio approach
We want to fund a variety of projects across different technologies, markets, themes, technological maturities and research categories. We call this a portfolio approach.
Specific Themes
Your project must focus on one or more of the following:
-ai.png)
