Canada-UK Collaborative R&D 2024

To start an application on the Innovation Funding Service (IFS), your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size. You must:

• be or involve at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
• collaborate with at least one Canadian registered SME, which must be a separate legal entity, not linked to the UK partners

Canadian organisations can be a project lead but cannot start an application on IFS.

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

• business of any size
• large organisation (business only)
• academic institution
• charity
• not for profit
• public sector organisation
• research and technology organisation (RTO)

Only UK registered partners must be listed in the Project Partner section of your application on the Innovation Funding Service (IFS). Canadian partners will be funded by the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP) and will not receive any of the Innovate UK competition funding.

A UK business can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in one further application. A UK business that is not leading an application can collaborate on a maximum of two applications. Academic institutions or RTOs can collaborate in any number of applications.

A Canadian SME may only participate in one application either as a lead or collaborator.

Canadian funding applicants are required to register and submit an expression of interest (EoI) before being eligible to apply for this competition.

The registration deadline for Canadian small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is 8 January 2025.

The EoI deadline for Canadian, small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is 15 January 2025.

Canadian funding applicants who do not complete an EoI and have not been invited to proceed will not be eligible for funding through this competition.

Please see the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP) call page for more information in English and French on Canadian eligibility requirements and to register.

A Canadian SME may only participate in one application either as a lead or collaborator.

Your project must:

• have a grant funding request of no greater than £300,000 allocated to UK organisations
• have a total grant funding request for Canadian partners of no greater than CA$500,000
• last between 12 and 24 months
• start by 1 September 2025
• end by 31 August 2027

The majority of the project work must be undertaken in the UK and Canada.

Your project must demonstrate a balanced technological contribution by the participants from both countries and must be equally significant to all participants.

Your project should have a balanced contribution of the total eligible project costs among the partners from the participating partner countries. No one country or project partner can represent more than 70% of the total project cost.

In January 2024, the governments of Canada and the United Kingdom (UK) signed a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) concerning cooperation over Scientific Research and Innovation with the aim to further strengthen bilateral cooperation that delivers excellence, and impacts across all fields of research and innovation. This includes fostering and supporting collaborative industrial research and development (R&D) projects with a high potential for commercialisation.

The aim of this competition is to stimulate the development and implementation of innovative technologies across a range of sectors and technology areas.

This call for proposals is open to organisations from Canada and the UK who wish to form project consortia to perform collaborative projects focused on developing innovative products, processes or technology based services in the area of life sciences, digital and emerging, and sustainability and net zero technologies.

Your proposal must demonstrate a clear intention to commercially exploit the results of the project domestically or globally.

We want to fund a variety of projects across a range of sectors and technology areas. This includes topics of previous collaborative R&D calls between Canada and the UK. We would particularly welcome (but not restricted to) applications from the following areas which receive specific focus in the MoU:

• Life Sciences, including engineering biology, biomanufacturing, and agricultural technologies
• Digital and emerging technologies, including, quantum, artificial intelligence, semiconductors
• Sustainability and net zero, including critical minerals, ocean sciences and technologies, clean energy technologies

This is not an exhaustive list.

An online briefing event will be held on Wednesday 13 November at 4pm GMT: register to attend.

Briefing slides will be available to download from supporting information after the event.