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The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) has awarded University of Oxford, Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) Funding over three years (1 April 2022 to 31 March 2025). In addition, University of Oxford has received a STFC Knowledge Exchange Institutional Award (KEIA) in 2023, which enables us to increase support for projects. The total STFC IAA budget available over 2023-24 is at least £290,000

Introduction to the STFC IAA

STFC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) Fund provides support for activities that will accelerate impact from University of Oxford research that falls within the STFC remit, but the IAA panel also wants to see projects with synergies between STFC and EPSRC science portfolios.

IAA funding will support (but is not limited to):

  • Innovation and commercialisation proof-of concept projects
  • Industry / stakeholder engagement and community building workshops
  • Industry / stakeholder secondments

This funding is for knowledge exchange related work for the benefit of researchers working in one or more of the STFC core science remit areas.

Applicants are not required to hold a current or past STFC grant to apply for STFC IAA support.

STFC IAA funds will not support existing programmes or blue-skies research or public engagement.

The University of Oxford’s STFC IAA is accepting applications to support activities involving:

  1. Impact Development or Technology Development
  2. Partnerships or Knowledge Exchange (KE)
  3. Doctoral Impact (New Scheme)

Details of these schemes are on the Funding Schemes tab.

Key dates

Call Open: Rolling Deadline

*Please contact stfciaa@mpls.ox.ac.uk before submitting an application.

 

1. STFC IAA Fund

a) Starter Fund

Starter fund is for small projects with early-stage innovation (e.g. TRL1-3), including market research, events, meetings, visits. The projects can be six to twelve months in duration and £2k-£40k in value.

b) Accelerator Fund

Accelerator fund is for ambitious, scalable IAA projects (e.g. TRL4-TRL6) that will progress outputs closer to commercialisation, or exploitation, or use by the non-academic sector. The accelerator projects are typically six to twelve months long and around £30k-£75k in value (or if higher, provide good justification). 

Types of activities supported by the STFC IAA programme include (but are not limited to):

(i) Impact Development or Technology Development activities are expected to support

(a) transfer of knowledge, whose take-up will provide benefits to users but will not necessarily generate a financial return to the University (e.g. applications for NHS and other public bodies, local/national government, NGOs, etc.)

(b) the development and commercialisation of new technologies to the point where they are suitable for follow on support from other sources (e.g. other IAAs; STFC’s External Innovations Programme – Early stage research and development scheme, e.g. (i) Early Stage Research and Development or (ii) Late Stage Commercialisation; Challenge-led Programmes led by STFC Horizons Programme; Oxford University Innovation (OUI) UCSF) or for commercial exploitation.

Impact/Technology Development could include, e.g.

  • proof of concept
  • commercialisation activity
  • market validation support

(ii) Partnerships or KE activities that will accelerate impact through increased engagement of researchers with end-users of research in non-academic organisations, and includes

  • proof of concept projects
  • people movement across sectors
  • support for networks
  • industry events

2. 
STFC Doctoral impact fund

Doctoral Impact Scheme supports and encourages new DPhil graduates to maximise the impact of their research beyond academia through engagement with non-academic partners.

DPhil students are eligible to apply for the scheme if:

  • their research is within STFC research areas (students do not need to have received STFC funding before)
  • they have passed their Confirmation of Status examination
  • they are within 12 months of submission of their thesis

Applications should be led by the supervisor, who must be an employee of the University for the duration of the project, and who will assume responsibility for ensuring that the award is used within the terms of the grant. DPhil secondees can be named as Co-Investigators.

The project can be up to six months in duration and £30k-£35k in value. Applicants could seek longer (12 months) and/or higher value (£60k) awards, with justification.

Please refer to the EPSRC Doctoral Impact Funding Scheme tab for purpose and use of funding.

 

 

Application to the STFC IAA

STFC IAA Funding Calls will be announced on a regular basis, usually twice a year, until all of the available funding has been allocated.

Application form and guidance: Applicants should read the guidance for the relevant scheme thoroughly prior to submitting an application. Applicants are encouraged to contact the IAA team in advance. Support will be provided for applicants. If you are unable to access the Word documents below, please contact stfciaa@mpls.ox.ac.uk.

Pre-submission feedback: IAA staff are happy to review and provide feedback on draft applications prior to final submission. Please email feedback requests to stfciaa@mpls.ox.ac.uk up to 3 days before the application deadline. Late feedback requests may be considered subject to staff availability, urgency and need.

User Engagement: Applicants must include a letter of support from their user(s)/non-academic partner(s) with their application; this will minimise time delays between the funding decision and project start. The letter should clearly detail that what the partner will contribute to the project is in line with the information provided in the application.

Note: Applicants to the IAA are required to engage users in their projects, if this is not the case, applicants must contact the IAA (stfciaa@mpls.ox.ac.uk) to explain reasons for this before submitting an application, as this will avoid delays in the review of an application.

Applications for STFC IAA funding should be made through the online Internal Research Awards Management System (IRAMS) which can be accessed using your Single Sign-On (SSO) details. Once you are logged in, please choose the correct scheme from the list to start your application. If required, IRAMS guidance in the form of quick reference guide (QRG) documents for applicants, departmental approvers and administrators can be found on the Research Support IRAMS pages.

Please note that some departments may have set an earlier internal deadline, so please check with your local research support team and prepare your application well in advance of the date advertised above. Applications must be reviewed online by departmental approvers and, where approved, submitted for review by the assessment panel before the deadline.

Informal enquiries are welcome from applicants – email stfciaa@mpls.ox.ac.uk

 

STFC IAA Assessment

Applications for STFC IAA will be considered by the fund selection committee.

STFC IAA Panel

Prof Phil Burrows (Particle Physics) – Chair

Prof Armin Reichold (Particle Physics)

Prof Dimitra Rigopoulou (Astrophysics)

Prof Carly Howett (Atmospheric Oceanic and Planetary Physics)

Quality assessment criteria (not listed in any priority order):

  • Potential size of the impact - could be financial and/or social
  • Timescale to impact - will this project and proposed follow up reduce the lead time to impact
  • Likelihood of impact – does the project involve appropriate activities and partners
  • Clarity of plan to achieve the project aims
  • Good value? Impact per £
  • Risk involved in the project - high risk not necessarily a negative; management of risk

Accelerator applications – additional considerations:

  • Demonstrates synergy across STFC - EPSRC remits
  • Highly likely to deliver outputs needed to progress beyond TRL4 and gain follow on support

Please email stfciaa@mpls.ox.ac.uk with any enquiries.

 

STFC IAA FAQ

Can I share details of my IAA plans with external partners? What should I do about management of intellectual property related to my project?

Applicants are strongly encouraged to contact the relevant Technology Transfer Manager at OUI (if applicable) at the earliest possible stage, to discuss the proposed project and the intellectual property management plan.

Applicants should not refrain from working with external partners solely due to fears around protection of the IP; all the necessary contractual arrangements can and will be put in place to ensure that IP is appropriately protected. This may include confidentiality agreements for pre- and post-application discussions, collaboration agreements or secondment agreements, amongst others. The terms of any IP agreement will take into consideration the funding, the work being carried out by the parties and any relevant background IP introduced and will always be in line with the University’s approach to IP.     

Am I eligible to apply for IAA funding? I am an Early Career Researcher / a visitor / student

The Committee welcomes applications from Early Career Researchers.

PIs must be University employees holding a contract of employment and may be hosted by any department of the University. However, (early career) researchers requesting costs for their own salary cannot be a Principal Investigator on the application. Get in touch if you have questions about eligibility.

Researchers holding honorary or visiting positions, DPhil students (undergraduate students) are not eligible to apply.

Applicants should clarify their eligibility with their departments, and departmental approvers are required to check eligibility of their applicants before advancing any applications. 

 

Privacy notice: STFC Impact Acceleration Account

Our privacy notice below tells you what we are doing with your data and how we will keep it safe. We are processing your data for the purposes listed in the privacy notice only because you have given us consent to do so, by completing and submitting your application form. You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us at stfciaa@mpls.ox.ac.uk. In this event, we will stop the processing as soon as we can. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before your withdrawal of consent.

Data protection: STFC Impact Acceleration Account

We (the University of Oxford - the University’s legal title is the Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford) take your privacy seriously. This privacy notice tells you what we are doing with your data and how we will keep it safe. 

How will we use your data?

We need to process your data for the following purposes, related to the STFC IAA Fund: registering your application to the STFC IAA, carrying out remit checks or overlaps with other funds managed by the university, reviewing your submission, contacting applicants, announcing and sharing funding outcomes, sharing additional funding opportunities, exhibiting and publicising the project summary (successful applications), and evaluating the IAA project and portfolio. 

Applicant data (name, telephone number, and email address) will be processed for peer review, monitoring, evaluation and administration of the project and funding, and in order to contact the successful and unsuccessful applicants, and for dissemination of information about the IAA’s activities and events, for collecting partnership data for relevant to business engagement, and for collecting feedback for the project evaluation. 

Your data (name, department, and project title and lay summary) will be used to identify your IAA project, including on webpages displaying successful IAA-funded applications in the MPLS Division and departments. We may also use your data in publicity or promotional material related to the IAA, including on University websites. 

Optional Data

We will contact you separately to ask you to provide information about your age, gender, disability and race to assist us in auditing and evaluating the STFC Impact Acceleration Account. Providing this information is not a requirement for applying to the IAA. The University’s STFC-funded Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) aims to monitor access to IAA funding by Oxford’s academics and researchers. Understanding the diversity of our applicants is an important part of evaluating the access and benefits from IAA’s programme, support and funding.

If you choose to submit details of your age, gender, disability, and/or race or ethnicity, it will be used solely for evaluation of the IAA programme. It will not be shared with the panels assessing and allocating funding of applications or Oxford’s UKRI IAA Strategy Group, it will not be made public, and it will not be used in our publicity materials. Only aggregated (anonymous), data will be included in the evaluation report and in the IAA’s monitoring and reporting.

We are processing your data for these purposes only because you have given us consent to do so, by completing and submitting your application form, and for Optional Data, by completing and submitting Access Assessment form. You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us at [email TO BE ADDED]. In this event, we will stop the processing as soon as we can. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before your withdrawal of consent. 

Who has access to your data?

Access to applicant data within the University will be provided to those who need to view it as part of their work in carrying out the purposes described above. Your data may be shared publicly as described above, in relation to the STFC Impact Acceleration Account. 

How long will we keep your data?

We will only retain your data for as long as we need it to meet our purposes, including any relating to legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. If you choose to submit details of your age, gender, disability and/or race or ethnicity, we will keep it until the project evaluation is completed, at which point it will be deleted. 

How will we keep your data safe?

Your data will be held securely in accordance with the University’s policies and procedures. Further information is available on the University’s Information Security website

How will we store and use your data?

We store and use your data on University premises, in both a manual and electronic form. 

What are your rights?

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is designed to put you in control of how your personal information is collected and used. It gives you these rights: 

  • To see what information we have about you

The right to be informed allows you to ask for full details of the personal information we hold on you.

  • To change the information

The right to ask us to correct anything that you think is wrong with the personal information we have on file about you, or if it is incomplete.

  • To be forgotten

The right to erasure allows you to ask us to delete your personal information.

  • Stop us using the information

The right to object allows you to tell us to stop using your information.

  • Change how the information is used

The right to restrict processing allows you to ask us to only use or store your information for certain purposes.

  • Move the information

The right to data portability allows you to ask for and download your personal information electronically, so you can move it, copy it or keep it for yourself. 

Further information on these rights is available from the Information Commissioner’s Office. 

You can withdraw your consent for the processing or your data at any time by contacting us at stfciaa@mpls.ox.ac.uk. In this event, we will stop the processing as soon as we can. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before your withdrawal of consent. 

Contact

If you wish to ask any questions about our use of your data, or want to exercise any of the rights described above, please contact us at email stfciaa@mpls.ox.ac.uk. Please note that we may keep a record of your communications to help us resolve any issues which you raise. 

You can also contact the University’s Data Protection Officer at dataprotection@admin.ox.ac.uk