Chair in Emerging Technologies

About the scheme

Funded by the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). The 2023/4 call was open for 17 weeks from 13 December 2022 to 11 April 2023. The total award request was £2.5 million over 10 years with an annual payment of £250,000 per annum.  The Academy reserve the right to amend the total funding amount.

In addition to covering employment and research costs for the Chair over a period of up to ten years, the award enables a sustained and strategic focus on advancing the technology to application.

Such awards require a powerful case to be made for the value of an extended long-term vision through to application of the technology. This in turn should show the value for funding that provides sustained support for a world-leading researcher, ensuring continuity of their focus across other grants and contracts and removing any expectation of duties that do not support the technology programme.

It is often the nature of an emerging technology that its potential is not widely appreciated until championed by a visionary individual who can set out clearly the opportunities it offers. Thus, the 2023/4 call was deliberately broad and open, and we encouraged applications that made a case for disruptive innovation in well-established areas or overlooked fields, as well as new emerging technologies.

Who should apply?

For the 2023/3 call, applications were welcomed from across a broad range of engineering and technology areas including research topics currently considered basic science, but which now require engineering ways of thinking to drive them towards applications. We also encouraged applications that focus on research topics in more established technology areas, where the applicant has identified a high-impact novel approach.

Evidence of proof of concept should already have been established, and a clear pathway to future impact described. Beyond this we are were not prescriptive about the Technology Readiness Level or similar assessment of innovation readiness expected of applications. However, we did require a clear ten-year research vision underpinning the proposal that would make a significant difference to how the emerging technology is taken forward and the consequent economic and social benefit to the UK.

Support for applicants

Access Mentoring

The Academy is committed to diversity, and encourages applications from women and other groups who are currently underrepresented across the engineering profession. 

To be eligible for Access Mentoring support, applicants must be either:

• Women
• Black people including those with any mixed ethnicity with Black ethnic background(s)
• Disabled people 

The Academy accepts applicants’ self-declaration on the above identified underrepresented groups under the host institution’s guidance.

Eligible applicants are not obligated to undertake Access Mentoring.

Overseas Applicants

The Academy welcomes applications from high-calibre researchers currently based outside the UK, in line with the UK Innovation Strategy to make the UK a global hub of innovation and to attract talent to the UK. This includes support for Global Talent visas.