News story

Disruptive, high-impact aerospace technologies: apply for funding

Organisations can get grants to develop game-changing solutions to UK aerospace challenges and bring forward the flight technologies of the future.

• From: Innovate UK and UK Research and Innovation
• Published: 4 January 2019

The competition is looking for disruptive ways of tackling aerospace challenges in the UK.

A total of £8 million funding is available to develop world-leading civil aerospace technologies in the UK.

The funding will be shared across 3 competitions. This latest competition is for collaborative feasibility studies. 2 competitions have already been run for expressions of interest for:

• fast-track collaborative research and development projects that could be exploited within 3 to 5 years
• longer collaborative research and development projects, taking 5 years or more for exploitation

A portfolio approach will be applied across the 3 opportunities, with funding split across a spread of themes, project durations and costs.

Innovate UK is working with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) to fund and manage the programme.

Demonstrating the feasibility of new solutions

The competition is looking for high risk, high-impact projects that demonstrate visionary, revolutionary or disruptive ways of tackling the biggest aerospace challenges in the UK.

It is designed to support and speed up industry investment in supply chain companies.

Projects should focus on one of more of the following:

• concept designs for radical or unconventional medium and long-range aircraft
• concept designs for urban and regional air vehicles, vertical take-off and landing and short take-off and landing
• identifying and evaluating the requirements for a scalable, hybrid electric power demonstrator facility
• modelling high-temperature, superconducting electrical power machines
• establishing the environmental impact of novel air vehicles, including gaseous and particulate emissions
• integrating single crew or autonomous vehicles into controlled airspace

They should align with the UK aerospace technology strategy to maximise the UK’s share of the global commercial aircraft market.

Find out more about the strategy and its technical themes.

Competition information

• the competition opens on 14 January 2019, and the deadline for applications is at midday on 27 February 2019
• a UK-based business of any size must lead the project, working with other businesses, research and public sector organisations or charities
• projects can range in size between £255,000 to £500,000 and last up to 12 months
• businesses could attract up to 50% of their project costs
• applicants will need to sign up to the ATI framework agreement

Find out more about the competition and apply.

Published 4 January 2019