Future Leaders Fellowships: Round 10, business and non-academic

Summary

The aim of this competition is to:

• Support ambitious research and innovation to tackle difficult and novel challenges
• Support excellence in innovation, including at interdisciplinary boundaries, and across sectors
• Develop, retain, and attract the next wave of research and innovation leaders 

Your project must:

• Deliver research or innovation above and beyond the standard activities of the organisation
• Maximise the impact and influence of the proposed work
• Include a clear programme of skills development, allowing you to fully develop your leadership potential through, for example, mentoring and professional development training
• Have the full support of your host organisation

Your project can:

• Be made up of a single programme of work, or multiple consecutive or concurrent projects led by the Fellow, known as a ‘Portfolio Fellowship’
• Be altered once underway to react to changes in the research landscape or react to business needs

Specific themes

Proposals are invited from all areas of research and innovation, including:

• The arts, humanities and social sciences
• The seven technology families outlined in the UK's innovation strategy
• Applications that are multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary

Research and innovation is considered in its fullest sense including business, creative, cultural, service and knowledge-based sectors.

Who can apply

Your project must:

• Have a grant funding request of between £100,000 and £3 million last for a minimum of four years, with the option to extend for a further three years
• Carry out all its project work in the UK
• Intend to exploit results from or in UK
• Be based at, or have the support of, an eligible non-academic host organisation

Lead organisation

The application must be started by the fellow as a representative of the host organisation.

To host a Future Leaders Fellow your organisation must be a UK registered:

• business of any size
• charitable organisation
• Catapult
• public organisation
• Agri-Tech Centre
• eligible research organisation

Fellow applicants

You must demonstrate the necessary skills, knowledge, and experience to deliver the proposed project.

You do not need to hold a PhD, and there are no eligibility rules based on the number of years since your PhD. If you do not hold a PhD, you must be able to demonstrate equivalent research, innovation experience or training.

Fellows are welcome from outside of the UK with the support of an eligible UK based host organisation. Researchers and innovators are eligible for a Global Talent visa under the ‘exceptional promise’ category for future research leaders.

Future Leaders Fellowships (FLF) offer flexibility to support outstanding individuals:

• from diverse career backgrounds
• returning from a career break or returning to research or innovation following time in other roles
• wishing to work part-time or in job shares to combine the fellowship with personal responsibilities

Fellows can spend up to 50% of their time (not funded by FLF) on other activities, where these activities are shown to benefit or be necessary for their career. Non-fellowship activities can include business as usual, other grant funding or ongoing contracts. Be advised no further salary can be claimed for non-FLF activities during the award. The duration of the fellowship can be increased to pro-rata the time spent on the fellowship, back up to a maximum of 100% if requested.

Partners

Partners are only permitted when bringing complementary and different skills to the project. Their role should be clearly defined in the application.

Partners must be from a UK based eligible organisation and hold a contract of employment for their time on the project. Eligible organisations can include all UK registered businesses, charities, Agri-Tech Centres, public organisations and Catapult centres. Research organisations eligible to receive UKRI funding can be found at Research organisations eligible for UKRI funding.

Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service (IFS) by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once partners have accepted the invitation, they will be asked to login or to create an account in IFS. They are responsible for entering their own project costs in the application.

Non funded partners

Your project can include non-UK partners, including partners based in the EU, who bring their own funding. Non-UK partners are permitted to carry out project work from within their home countries and exploit results overseas. Their costs will count towards the total eligible project costs.

Funding

Up to £110 million has been allocated to fund innovation projects in this round of the programme. Funding will be in the form of a grant.

If as a host organisation your work on the project is commercial or economic, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically but for the purpose of this project will be undertaking commercial or economic activity.

The balance between your total project costs and the amount of grant awarded must be funded by the organisation receiving the grant.