Extra £30M for Scottish commercialization fund

Funding opportunity

Scotland’s excellence in research is set to be supported further with Scottish Enterprise announcing an additional £30 million in funding for commercialisation.

Scotland’s excellence in research is set to be supported further with Scottish Enterprise announcing an additional £30 million in funding for commercialisation.

The Proof of Concept Programme, which is designed to improve the level and quality of commercialisation within Scotland’s universities, research institutes and NHS boards, will use the allocated budget to continue funding new competitive awards to individual research projects over the next five years.

Awards are currently made annually through applications from research projects, however, the success of the programme to date will see applications being received twice a year from September, encouraging more ideas to be submitted.

The programme currently supports 184 ground-breaking projects, which have leveraged over £44 million in post-programme funding, and has created over 500 new jobs. So far, there are 34 spin-out/start-up companies and 32 licences as a result of Proof of Concept funding.

Derek Waddell, director of Research Services and Commercialisation at the UniversityEdinburgh, says: “Scotland has long been known for its research excellence. The Proof of Concept Programme’s additional funding will create even more opportunity for great ideas to become business realities. of

“This funding underlines the importance of commercialisation to our economy and the opportunities this represents for Scotland’s universities.”