Competition summary: synthetic biology for novel materials
Updated 15 April 2016
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1. Summary
This Centre for Defence Enterprise (CDE) themed competition is looking for synthetic biology approaches to produce novel materials to address defence challenges.
Novel materials with enhanced performance in a variety of applications could really help defence and security, while also having many additional civilian, commercial uses.
We’re looking for proposals for short-term, highly innovative, proof-of-concept research. We’d like to see proposals that bring together multidisciplinary teams of scientists who use synthetic biology in the design and/or development of next-generation structural and functional materials.
We want proposals that aim to address the technical challenges associated with developing enhanced structural and functional materials. We’re particularly interested in:
- novel adhesives
- enhanced resistance to corrosion
- protective applications, such as novel armour solutions
We want to see ambitious concepts to exploit the power of biological systems to make complex materials and the fundamental tools of molecular biology to manipulate such systems.
2. Total funding
Up to £750,000 is available for phase 1 of this competition. We expect to fund a number of projects around £50,000 to £100,000 lasting around 9 months. The competition won’t accept proposals for more than £130,000 or projects that last more than 12 months at phase 1.
Up to £3 million will be made available for phase 2. Funding will be considered on a per-project basis.
3. Competition close
This competition closes on Thursday 14 April 2016 at 5pm. Proposals must be submitted to CDE online.