Anglers in the North East are being reminded to ensure they abide by national and local byelaws as enforcement officers cast their net on illegal fishing.

Science Minister calls on researchers and businesses to submit applications to receive funding through the Strength in Places Fund.

Ambitious groups of research leaders, businesses and local partners can now apply for government funding to support ground-breaking innovations.

Applications open today for projects to bid for up to £50,000 early-stage funding to develop their ideas and will then go on to develop full stage bids that could see between £10 million and £50 million awarded to the strongest candidates.

Funding comes from the Strength in Places Fund, announced in the government’s modern Industrial Strategy, to help local areas build on their research and innovation strengths and grow local expert networks.

Science and Innovation Minister Chris Skidmore said:

From the booming satellite industry, to becoming global leaders in clean energy development, inspirational science and research is happening in every part of the UK.

With only 0.9% of the world’s population and the UK boasting 6% of global research publications, we are committed to building on our world-leading reputation. The Strength in Places Fund is part of our modern Industrial Strategy, ensuring places across the UK have the opportunity to develop their science, research and innovation capabilities and create the high-skilled jobs of the future.

The £236 million Strength in Places Fund, a flagship fund delivered by UK Research and Innovation, brings together research organisations, businesses, and local authorities on projects that will boost the highly-skilled, highly-paid jobs of the future and grow the local economy.

UK Research and Innovation Chief Executive, Professor Sir Mark Walport said:

Our vision is to ensure people right across the country benefit from the UK’s world-leading research and innovation. The Strength in Places Fund will bring together research organisations, business and local leadership to create ambitious projects that will deliver local economic growth and create high value jobs.

The opening of this new round of funding follows the recent announcement that 23 projects around the UK were awarded up to £50,000 to develop their full-stage bids in Wave One of the fund.

The call for expressions of interest for Wave Two of the fund is now open and the deadline for submissions is 9 October 2019.

Notes to Editors:

• The UK Research and Innovation Strength in Places Fund (SIPF) Wave Two is now open for expressions of interest. The deadline for applications is 9 October 2019
• successful bids to this initial stage will be announced during summer 2020
• winning consortia will receive up to £50,000 to develop full stage proposals over a period of 6 months
• in the second stage, those awarded early-stage funding will be eligible to bid for up to £50 million of funding to carry out projects designed to drive significant local economic growth
• for further call information visit The UKRI Strength in Places Fund

UKAEA’s work to increase diversity and inclusion amongst its workforce has been recognised by a second Bronze Award from the Athena SWAN charter – the nationwide accreditation scheme for gender equality in higher education and research.

Athena SWAN was set up by the Equality Challenge Unit (now Advance HE) to encourage and recognise employers’ commitment to advancing the careers of women in research and higher education. The charter was updated in May 2015 to recognise work undertaken to address gender equality more broadly, and not just barriers to progression that affect women. There are currently 160 Athena SWAN member organisations.

UKAEA first achieved the standard in 2015 as a catalyst in its efforts to address a long-standing lack of diversity among its employees – a problem that is unfortunately common to many UK scientific and engineering organisations.

UKAEA CEO, Professor Ian Chapman was delighted with the news :

I am delighted with UKAEA’s latest Bronze award – this confirms the major steps forward in the last three years: Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) now has a higher profile in the organisation. Inclusion and a sense of belonging is the mainstay of our approach to engendering culture change at UKAEA and all of the Athena SWAN action points have this as the ultimate aim. I am fully committed to delivering our action plan so that we can achieve the ambition of being regarded as a truly inclusive employer.

Since 2015, UKAEA has used the Athena SWAN scheme as the springboard for a wider programme of changes to create a more inclusive workplace culture and practices. Uptake of flexible working practices has increased significantly, we have a large team of Inclusion Ambassadors, and support networks for new parents and LGBT+ staff.

Winning another Bronze Award is a sign of this progress. Less than 60% of applications are successful – but UKAEA is committing itself to further improvements. It is targeting a Silver Award within the next four years as it continues efforts to make the organisation a welcoming place for people from all backgrounds.

Seeking Innovations

I represent DASA in Central Southern England. I cover from Chippenham in the West to Slough in the East, and from Oxford in the North, down to Southampton and Portsmouth on the coast. It’s an area that is flourishing with innovation, particularly among small businesses and academia. This is one of our busiest regions, with nearly £8m of innovative projects funded in the last two years. Two-thirds of this money has gone to SMEs, many of whom have never previously worked with us before.

Essentially, I am an innovation scout, seeking ideas that have relevance and benefit in the Defence and Security sectors. It’s that relevance and benefit that’s important here; I need to see that a technology or innovation could offer a real-world benefit before it will be considered for funding. In essence, it is not sufficient to be a ground-breaking idea, it’s the potential benefit that really sells it. However, that benefit isn’t always obvious on first discovery. For example, I came across a company that develop condition monitoring systems for industrial machines, that provide, for example, advance notice of when a component is about to fail or how many products have been completed. I took time to understand the technology and the company, and together we discovered that the same innovative idea can be adapted to detect illicit devices in buildings. DASA funded this company, under the Open Call competition, to trial the technology and one day soon, we could see a new novel surveillance capability for both Defence and Security use.

Bringing innovation alive

It is this sort of thinking that brings innovation alive for DASA. I work as part of a team of 12 Innovation Partners covering the length and breadth of the UK. We work together to support UK innovators, helping them engage with Government to devise and deliver real world innovation that not only benefits UK Defence and Security, but boosts UK prosperity as well. We are empowered to reach out to harness the most innovative ideas from all sectors of society. The potential is now there to integrate the latest thinking onto our Armed Forces as those technologies emerge – a feat that was not possible or perhaps a laborious and lengthy task only a few years ago.

Boots on the ground matter

To be able to positively contribute to my local economy gives me a deep sense of pride and is something that drives me to establish these innovation links. I also get to meet the most fascinating companies and academics with a broad range of technical expertise. A great example is Oxford Space Systems (OSS) who I first met after giving a talk to raise awareness of DASA. Our conversation led us to establish potential links between their pioneering satellite antenna work and the Defence space research programme, which is managed by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). I arranged for OSS and Dstl to establish a dialogue and within a matter of months, the ‘wrapped rib’ antenna project received development funding of £1m and could soon become a key technology in future satellites.

Championing Themes

We run two types of competitions; ‘themed competitions’ where our defence and security stakeholders in Government, like the Home Office or MOD, have identified specific challenges, and we then help them to find and fund novel ideas or technologies to provide potential solutions. The second type is the Open Call for Innovation which accepts proposals for any innovation of potential benefit for Defence, and proposals for specific focused areas for Security. This is open year round.

For our themed competitions we have prior knowledge of what’s coming up, but likewise for the Open Call, I know what ‘interesting’ looks like! I will look to share that information with innovators in my patch, letting them know what the latest themes are, and encourage engagement. A recent themed competition, Take Cover, which looks for innovations in deployable battlefield fortifications, resulted in two successful funding allocations for motorsport companies in my region, including Williams Advanced Engineering.

Open to ideas

DASA has invested £53.1m since December 2016 in cross government projects to develop and trial new capabilities for defence and security. And we want to invest more this year! I will be out and about in the next few weeks talking to existing and new contacts in my region about current and upcoming themed competitions in: countering drones, underwater autonomous vehicles, and bank note security; to name a few. We’ve also got a ‘Space’ competition, for which we’re looking to fund advances in novel sensors, free-space optical communications, satellite protection systems and techniques for understanding the capability and intent of other satellites. I shall also be briefing on the focus areas for the Open Call, in particular, we’re looking for innovations that could potentially benefit transport security.

So, if you think you have a great idea, get in touch and DASA will match you up with me if you’re in my region or the Innovation Partner in your area accelerator@dstl.gov.uk

About Ben

Ben joined DASA as an Innovation Partner in April 2017. He has a Masters in Engineering Science from the University of Oxford and 14 years’ experience working across Defence, having worked for the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S) and central MOD. When not working, he’s invariably either riding or tinkering with mountain bikes.