GrantRadar

UK Research and Innovation

UKRI Enabling AI adoption across science and engineering

UKRI funding, under its IS8 AI Programme, for ambitious, exploratory one-year projects that pair an AI expert with an expert from another discipline to test how AI could transform research on a clearly defined challenge. The challenge must be in one of five priority areas: engineering biology, advanced materials, quantum technologies, medical research or fusion energy. The project lead must be at a UK research organisation eligible for UKRI funding. Projects can cost up to £250,000 full economic cost (UKRI pays 80%) and run for up to 12 months from 26 April 2027. Funding is subject to Full Business Case approval, and applications are judged by distributed peer review, so each team must review other applications.

Apply on the funder’s site
You could get
£1 – £250,000
Deadline
44 days left
1 December
Effort
Heavy
budgets, references, often several stages

Who can apply

  • Open to organisations with standard UKRI eligibility; UKRI individual eligibility rules apply
  • The project lead must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for UKRI funding, and only the lead research organisation can submit
  • Teams are expected to bring together an AI expert and an expert from a non-AI discipline, who must set out the research challenge
  • Because EPSRC is a lead funder, international researchers can only be project co-lead (international) under the UKRI-RCN (Norway) Money Follows Cooperation agreement or the UKRI-IIASA agreement
  • All other international collaborators, and UK partners not at approved organisations, take part as project partners
  • Each person can be involved in no more than two projects
  • By applying, the team agrees to take part in distributed peer review, so do not apply if you would prefer not to
  • No institutional matched funding is required beyond the standard 20% of FEC

What it funds

Ambitious, exploratory projects that understand, demonstrate or evaluate how AI could address an important domain-specific research challenge in one of these priority areas:

  • Engineering biology (particularly AI-enabled biotechnologies for sustainable food systems, clean growth, health and environmental solutions, such as identifying novel biological components, modelling cellular and metabolic systems, predictive genome design, automation and high-throughput phenotyping, and biosecurity)
  • Advanced materials
  • Quantum technologies
  • Medical research
  • Fusion energy
  • Costs including a contribution to the salary of the project lead and co-leads, research, technical and project management staff, research consumables including compute costs, travel and subsistence (including cohort activities such as the annual workshop and networking), data preservation, sharing and dissemination, and estates and indirect costs

outcomes may include feasibility demonstrations, prototype tools, workflows or proof-of-concept approaches, identification of data, infrastructure or benchmarking needs, new interdisciplinary capability, and research roadmaps. Joint leadership is allowed, but one administrative project lead submits. Additional grant conditions will be communicated when awards begin.

What it will not fund

  • Projects that focus primarily on advancing AI methods, models or algorithms without a clear link to accelerating progress within a research domain
  • Incremental advances
  • PhD studentship costs
  • Equipment over £25,000 per item (including VAT)
  • Uninvited resubmissions of projects already submitted to UKRI or any other funder

How to apply

  1. Make sure your research organisation is registered on the UKRI Funding Service (you cannot apply on Je-S)
  2. Read the distributed peer review rules and guidelines before applying
  3. Start an application on the UKRI Funding Service (https://funding-service.ukri.org/OPP1328/apply/1355), confirm you are the project lead and sign in or create an account
  4. Answer the questions: summary, core team, Vision and Approach (uploaded PDF), applicant and team capability to deliver (R4RI), project partners, facilities, resources and cost justification, ethics and RRI, animals, genetically modified organisms, human participation, risk and reward, nominate reviewers, data management and sharing, and Trusted Research and Innovation
  5. In 'Nominate reviewers', name the team members (including the project lead) who will review, ideally covering both AI and domain expertise; they must be available throughout January and February 2027
  6. Send the application to your research office for checking; they submit it to UKRI by 4pm on 1 December 2026
  7. Nominated reviewers review their assigned applications (about eight per team, split between reviewers), with three weeks for each review

the applicant webinar was on 14 October 2026 and has passed; it was not compulsory. Failing to submit reviews on time leads to automatic rejection of your own application, except in extenuating circumstances. There is no applicant response or panel stage.

Have ready

  • Vision and Approach: a single PDF of no more than four sides of A4 (11-point Arial, 2cm margins), plus one optional page for a diagrammatic workplan, no larger than 8MB, named with the Funding Service number followed by 'Vision and Approach'
  • Project partner letters or emails of support: a single PDF, in English or Welsh, up to two sides of A4 per partner, if you have partners

other sections are answered in Funding Service text boxes (applicant and team capability 1,650 words, data management 1,500, risk and reward 1,000, resources and cost justification 1,000, summary 550, facilities 250, nominate reviewers 200). Do not include letters of support from the host or co-leads' research organisations.

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