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| The NPIF in action (photo andrewmalone via Flickr CC BY 2.0) | : |
You've probably heard of a clutch of new, big-ticket funding schemes to be launched recently, including the Strategic Priorities Fund and the the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. What you may not know is that they're all part of the National Productivity Investment Fund. But what is it, and what's the thinking behind it?
The funding landscape is a little like a garden at the height of summer. It does not appear to have a pattern, and most of the flowers seem unrelated. But if you spend longer in the garden and dig deep into the earth, you find that some of the plants share the same root system even though they sprout up in different places.
The National Productivity Investment Fund is one of the larger root systems. It may not be showy, but it is certainly vigorous. Most people who wander into the garden cannot see it or access it directly, but they can pick the flowers that sprout from the root system across the grounds.
The NPIF provides funding for areas deemed critical for UK productivity, including housing, R&D and infrastructure. When the government first announced the fund as part of its 2016 autumn statement, it totalled £23 billion over four years with almost £5bn of that going to R&D. Since then the fund has grown to £37bn, with £7bn for R&D.
So what plants grow from the NPIF mega-root?
Strategic Priorities Fund
In his 2015 review that led to the establishment of the umbrella funding agency UK Research and Innovation, Paul Nurse recommended that an interdisciplinary, challenge-led fund be established. The Strategic Priorities Fund was the result. Run by UKRI, the fund has three aims:
- To increase high-quality interdisciplinary research and innovation
- To ensure that UKRI’s investment links up effectively with government departments’ research priorities and opportunities
- To ensure the system is able to respond to strategic priorities and opportunities
Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund
Based on the model of the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency in the United States, the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund aims, in the words of Innovate UK’s chief operating officer Mike Biddle, “to deliver the science that business needs to transform industries and create new ones”.
The funding is channelled through a series of challenges, and project proposals must fit within one of the four “grand challenge” themes in the industrial strategy: artificial intelligence and the data-driven economy, clean growth, the future of mobility, and an ageing society.
UKRI is currently selecting the third wave of challenges and has published a shortlist. When these are finalised, the challenge directors will work with UKRI to provide funding through a series of calls. Similar in many ways to normal calls, the difference here is that the research must be based in the UK and must be led by industry.
Fund for International Collaboration
The Fund for International Collaboration is a slightly odd one: it was already spending before it was ‘formally’ announced. As Rachael Sara-Kennedy of Universities UK International wrote on Funding Insight, “the clock started ticking back in April 2018. So, although the fund was officially launched by the minister only recently, it has in effect been covertly operating for some months in order to be able to spend this financial year’s allocation”.
The fund supports bilateral and multilateral partnerships for research and innovation with leading nations that have a reputation for excellence. Unlike the more widely known Global Challenges Research Fund, the FIC aims to connect UK researchers with those in more industrialised countries; the first wave of projects includes partnerships with Canada, India, Israel, Japan, South Korea and the US.
Strength in Places Fund
With the SPF acronym already taken, the Strength in Places Fund had to make do with SIPF. It aims to support innovative regional growth led by businesses, but building on the work of universities, research institutes, the Catapult innovation centres and other R&D facilities (such as Innovation and Knowledge Centres, IKCs).
A total of 23 projects were awarded pilot funding in the first wave of the SIPF, and will now develop full bids to be submitted in September.
Talent
Announced in June 2018 by business secretary Greg Clark, this £1.3bn fund is intended to attract and retain talent in the UK. It includes the flagship £900-million UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships, and applications for the third round of this scheme opened on 2 April. It offers salary funding for up to seven years for both UK and international early-career researchers in both industry and academia.
A total of £350m is going towards fellowships run by the academies. One example is the recent British Academy Global Professorships. “We want to attract the very best people to the UK, share their experience and learn from them,” said the academy’s head of international Philip Lewis. “We want them to become an active, engaged part of their host institutions. Such engagement and openness has never been more important.”
Another £90m has been set aside for 1,000 PhD places in areas aligned with the industrial strategy and £160m for early and mid-career fellowships associated with it.
In addition to these funds, the NPIF root system will provide funding for commercialisation and some other programmes that are still to be specified. This root has not finished growing yet.
A version of this article first appeared in Funding Insight in April 2019 and is reproduced with kind permission of Research Professional. For more articles like this, visit www.researchprofessional.com
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