Research and Innovation Services

Scottish EDGE is a competition aimed at identifying and supporting Scotland’s up-and-coming, innovative, high-growth entrepreneurial talent.

The Enterprise Fellowship programme supports innovative, creative entrepreneurial engineers who have demonstrated an exceptional innovation in engineering which they want to develop further. 

The ARC Accelerator is designed to help social science and arts & humanities researchers to develop ideas based on their research into businesses or ventures to help people, society and the economy.

ARC helps you transform your innovative research and ideas into impactful ventures that can reshape society and the economy. The accelerator programme will support you with training, mentors and market validation to build the venture you need to deliver impact at scale. 

ICURe Programmes

There are 4 ICURe programmes designed to support researchers at all stages in pathways to commercialising technology. ICURe Exploit is a 16-week online customer discovery programme designed using lean start-up methodology and funded by Innovate UK. 

Lean start-up takes the scientific method (hypothesise, test, evaluate) and applies it to business ideas. You will learn how to use this approach to test what your potential customers think about your idea, product or service. 

Innovate UK fund 4 months of salary support for early career researchers plus the costs of customer discovery activities up to the value of £30,000. 

Open - please contact the IP & Innovation Team for more information.

Working in collaboration with Scotland’s universities, we uncover emerging spinouts and start-ups, acting as a catalyst to accelerate the creation of innovative products and services that will improve lives and safeguard our planet.

Open to university staff, students and recent graduates across Scotland, our programme is designed to springboard new businesses through intensive business training, networking, 1-2-1 support, generous equity-free cash prizes and expert advice from our roster of industry partners.

We run four challenge categories tailored to developing business across all sectors and stages of development.

Our High-Growth Spin-out Programme helps researchers to take their ideas and inventions from the lab to the global marketplace by awarding funding and support.

Deeptech Labs is the catalyst for deeptech success. Twice a year, our accelerator and fund embeds a cohort of startups in a powerful network of successful entrepreneurs, expert practitioners, leading researchers, and deeptech organisations.

We identify and recruit the most disruptive life science and healthcare start-ups worldwide, seed-fund them and leverage the exceptional resources of the Cambridge Cluster to de-risk and drive their success. 

Developmental pathway funding scheme (DPFS)

This scheme aims to drive fundamental discoveries stemming from MRC’s research boards and the wider academic community along the developmental pathway towards patient benefit and or commercialisation.

Invention for Innovation

The Invention for Innovation (i4i) programme is a translational research funding scheme aimed at de-risking early-to-late stage medical devices, in vitro diagnostics and high-impact patient-focused digital health technologies for ultimate NHS use. 

We fund projects that have demonstrated proof-of-concept and have a clear pathway towards adoption and commercialisation.

i4i has three funding streams: Product Development Awards (PDA), Challenge Awards and Connect. PDA and Challenge run two funding competitions a year, launching in autumn and spring, whereas Connect runs one funding competition each year. All i4i funding streams have a two-stage application process.

BBSRC Follow on Fund

The BBSRC Follow-on Fund (FoF) is designed to support the translation of fundamental research into practical application, including commercialisation. We want to ensure that innovation arising from BBSRC-funded research has the best opportunity to create positive impacts for society.