Royce Industrial Collaboration Programme (ICP) Round 5

Overview

The Royce Industrial Collaboration Programme (ICP) is designed to help UK businesses fast-track innovation in advanced materials by collaborating with world-leading academic institutions. Delivered by the Henry Royce Institute, the UK’s national institute for advanced materials research and innovation, the programme funds collaborative R&D projects that tap into the Institute’s state-of-the-art facilities and academic expertise.

The ICP enables businesses, particularly SMEs, to address real-world industrial challenges through access to cutting-edge research, materials testing, and characterisation tools. Successful applicants can explore new products, processes, or services that could transform performance, productivity, and sustainability across a wide range of sectors.

Scope

Sustainable Materials Innovation

• Materials innovations to support sustainability across the foundation industries (cement, metal, glass, chemicals, polymers, paper and ceramics sectors), including design, production, use, and end-of-life considerations
• Resource efficiency and scarcity: Innovations in materials use and recycling to address the scarcity of critical minerals and reduce dependence on limited resources

Extending Life of Major Assets through Materials Science

• Performance enhancement and degradation mitigation: Development of surface treatments, coatings or repair strategies to enhance or extend lifespan of large infrastructure assets
• Smart infrastructure management: Solutions that enable structural material health modelling (prediction), measurement and monitoring

Advanced Materials for next generation Quantum and Semiconductor Devices

• High-frequency telecommunications, sensing and power electronics
• New functionalities, heterogeneous integration, and metamaterials
• Thin film development for low-power electronics

Energy Materials and Green Hydrogen Technologies

• Materials for production, storage, transport, and utilisation of hydrogen in gaseous and liquid form
• Advanced energy materials: Energy harvesting, storage and conversion technologies for efficient, scalable solutions
• Energy Materials and Green Hydrogen Technologies

Material innovations in healthcare:

• Materials for medical applications that interface effectively with biological systems to realise a healthier population

Cross-cutting capabilities:

• We encourage translation of digital methods within the above areas leveraging Materials 4.0 approaches which may combine with advanced experimental methods e.g.:
• Accelerated materials design: Leverage simulations, modelling, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and large language models (LLMs) to predict behaviour and optimise properties, reducing experimental reliance.
• Smart manufacturing of materials: Utilise digital twins, data-driven control, and automation to optimise processes and enhance efficiency.
• Data-driven discovery: Applied artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and/or large language model (LLM) for materials informatics to accelerate discovery and analysis of data.
• Modelling capabilities: Predict and explain material behaviours to accelerate the design of new materials.
• Simulation capabilities: Develop rapid (real-time) simulation methods, including data driven and surrogate models, to support development of digital twins to mirror physical processes.
• It is the responsibility of the applicants to explain how their application aligns with the scope areas.

Eligibility

Your project team is expected to:

• Include at least one business and at least one university or RTO
• Able to start from Wednesday 1 October 2025 at the latest
• Complete all Royce-funded activity by Saturday 28 February 2026
• Carry out its project work in the UK
• Intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
• Incur all Royce funded costs within the project’s duration
• Be a new project or activity that has not already started

To collaborate or lead, you must be one of the following:

• Higher Educational Institutes and Universities (HEIs)
• Research and Technology Organisation (RTO)
• Charity or not for profit organisation
• Business of any size

UK-registered companies may participate and claim funding.  International companies are eligible for participation but cannot claim funding.

Funding

Universities, research and technology organisations and companies can apply for funding of total project costs between £50,000 and £130,000 for exploring innovative ideas with a focus on technology translation. A maximum of 3 organisations may collaborate on each project. These awards are not offered to support fundamental research projects.

Funding timeline

17 March 2025: Call opens

19 March 2025: Briefing event

12 May 2025: Competition closes

14 July 2025 (W/C): Applicants notified

01 October 2024: Projects start