RAEng awards £22m research funding

The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) has awarded its eight new emerging technologies chairs through the UK government’s Innovation in Research Talent Initiative, with grants intended to cover 10-year research programmes. All eight of the researchers are investigating technologies which “have the potential to considerably benefit society and the UK economy, and enable the nation to remain at the global forefront of engineering innovation,” the Academy said.

The research areas are intended to be aligned with the UK’s technological priorities, “with many of the projects directly aligned to the government’s Industrial Strategy and designed to tackle some of the biggest industrial and societal challenges of our time,” it added.

The eight chairs are:

Each awardee receives £2,780,000 over 10 years to allow them to progress their concepts from basic science through to full commercialisation.

Dr Dame Frances Saunders, who leads the Chairs in Emerging Technologies steering group, said: “We have had a large number of fantastic research proposals from very talented individuals across a wide range of engineering disciplines, which has made our job of choosing the final eight awardees particularly challenging. We have been delighted to see ideas coming forward in this round to apply emerging technologies that could revolutionise some more traditional fields of engineering as well as those that could open new areas of application. This is an exciting set of proposals and we look forward to seeing their progress in the years to come.”