Imperial College and MIT launch €270K joint fund for high risk research

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Imperial College London Monday have announced a joint €270,000 fund to support high risk research that would not otherwise get backing.

The fund will cover joint small-scale experiments and the development of prototypes, among other activities.

The collaboration will further strengthen the ties between the two universities, said Alice Gast, President of Imperial College. “This programme is an important and creative way to ensure that truly novel ideas can be pursued,” she said.

Gast’s counterpart at MIT, Rafael Reif said many of the breakthroughs made by MIT and Imperial can be traced directly to a shared commitment to basic research. “It is critical that we continue to find ways to support research interests whose payoff might be significant, but only over time,”Reif said.

For Maggie Dallman, associate provost at Imperial, a common obstacle to innovation is the need for seed funding of exploratory research work. “Sometimes very modest sums can make all the difference in helping ambitious and even risky ideas to take off,” Dallman said.