Event announcement: Researcher in Residence Tranche 3 launch
Following on from the announcement of the Innovation Launchpad Network’s third tranche of funding, the Network is pleased to invite academics to an online launch event on Thursday 5th October 2023 at 1pm.
The online session will see a welcome from Innovation Launchpad Network’s director Pete Osborne, an overview of each of the 9 Catapults that make up the Catapult Network plus a variety of other speakers that will be announced in the run up to the event.
What is it about?
The Innovation Launchpad Network+, Innovate UK, EPSRC and Catapult Network invite proposals for Tranche 3 of our Researcher in Residence (RiR) scheme which support the UK’s strategic goals, deliver impact across the UK economy and enable UK businesses to thrive in global markets.
The RiR scheme promotes academic engagement and is designed to enable researchers to work with the Catapults, undertaking a project or activity in an area of strategic importance.
Successful applicants will be awarded up to £50k to cover your university salary costs, travel and accommodation during the placement as well as consumables used at the host Catapult. The current funding for the Innovation Launchpad expires in April 2026 so applicants need to make sure to have claimed all of their budget and finished their project by then.
Applicants are expected to hold a PhD (or demonstrate experience and knowledge to a similar degree) and be employed in full or part by a UK university for the duration of the scheme. As a minimum, the proposal should align with Innovate UK/EPSRC‘s remit and one of the thematic areas of the Network+:
-Net Zero
-Healthcare & Wellbeing
-Resilience
Applicants should also have a strong awareness of the wider context of their research and how they will deliver impact through their research. Please visit our FAQs page for further information.
About the ILN+
The Innovation Launchpad Network+ has been set up with help from Innovate UK and EPSRC to help refresh the pipeline of new ideas and knowledge coming into the Catapults by tapping into emerging research coming from academia.
The £6.75 million Innovation Launchpad Network+ builds on the successful Catapult Fellows and Researcher in Residence programmes with a goal to create a truly inclusive and integrated Catapult-led innovation community and deliver 100 world-class Researchers in Residence (RiR) projects.
A key aim of the programme is to foster new links between individuals and groups who are yet to engage with the Catapult Network cluster of research centres and will focus on the themes of Net Zero, Healthcare and Wellbeing and Resilience.
Professor Ben Hicks
Co-Investigator for Resilience for the Innovation Launchpad Network+
“Recent global crises have highlighted the need for more resilient systems and underlined the important role that resilient systems play in meeting societal challenges. Residences in this theme will explore approaches, tools and technologies to improve the resilience of products, services and sociotechnical systems – thereby enabling them to anticipate, manage, recover and transform from unexpected events.”
Professor Fiona Charnley
Co-Investigator for NetZero for the Innovation Launchpad Network+
“It has been fantastic to see so many high-quality applications from our first round of Researcher in Residence applications and the motivation and ambition around the themes of Net Zero and the circular economy is particularly evident. We are looking forward to pushing this agenda even further in our second call for applications.”
Professor Alejandro Frangi
Co-Investigator for Healthcare & Wellbeing for the Innovation Launchpad Network+
“The first tranche of applications showed us there is a huge amount of technology, know-how and expertise out there in academic institutions that hasn’t been tapped into by industry. There’s a gap between what academia is doing and what industry is doing, and we need to bridge that gap. Researchers need support in bringing their technologies further within academia before they are at a stage where they will be attractive to industry.
“Engage early on and don’t leave talking to the Catapults until the last minute. I’m absolutely convinced that when that connectivity between academia and the Catapults has happened well before submission, it has resulted in some really great proposals.”
Professor Ash Tiwari
Co-Investigator for Resilience for the Innovation Launchpad Network+
“Resilience as a research topic requires inter-disciplinary, cross-TRL collaborations across a number of areas covered by the Catapult Network. The Innovation Launchpad Network+ provides a unique opportunity for academic researchers to co-locate themselves with the
Catapults and contribute to enhancing the resilience of complex real-life systems in areas such as manufacturing, infrastructure and healthcare. This theme also provides exciting opportunities for translation of research up the TRL scale using the industrial-scale facilities available at the Catapults.”
Additional information
About the Catapult Network
The Catapult Network is composed of nine world-leading technology and innovation centres established by and working in partnership with Innovate UK. They support businesses in transforming great ideas into valuable products and services. They deliver impact across the UK economy, enabling businesses to thrive in global markets.
For more information visit the Catapult Network.
About the Researchers in Residence scheme
The Research in Residence (RiR) scheme promotes academic engagement and is designed to enable researchers to work within the Catapult environment as part of one or more centres, undertaking a project or activity in an area of strategic importance for Catapults. As well as increasing knowledge exchange and co-creation between academia and the Catapults, this scheme allow the researcher to gain deeper application-specific knowledge across a range of sectors and nurture the talents and skills development across both research and Catapult.
