Government launches £60 million Regional Innovation Fund to boost research and development

By Nicky Godding

4 October 2023

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A £60 million Regional Innovation Fund that will boost support for universities in areas with lower levels of research and development investment is among new measures to support the research sector and wider public, the government has announced today.

Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan unveiled the scheme alongside a commitment of a further £8 million towards artificial intelligence (AI) scholarships to fund 800 more people to train in the sector.

The RIF – relative to the size of each UK nation – will see £48.8 million go towards 110 universities across England and will be delivered by Research England.

A further £5.8 million for Scotland, £3.4 million for Wales and £2 million for Northern Ireland will be allocated to devolved administrations to support local and regional economies.

The review will be led by Professor Alice Sullivan of University College London. Its terms of reference will be agreed in the coming weeks and is expected to conclude by next Spring.

Meanwhile £8 million will go towards a further 800 scholarships on the study of AI, building on the more than 1,800 scholarships delivered in the last three years from £18 million of government funding.

Eligible students can study a range of master’s courses across England which teach practical AI and data science skills, coding, programming, machine learning, health data science and AI ethics – preparing them for jobs of the future and boosting Britain’s ambition to become a world leader in AI safety.

Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) is also reviewing the department’s approach to connecting Very Hard to Reach premises (VHTR) – including rural areas that are unable to access an ultrafast broadband connection – across the UK. This will establish the case for government support and intervention, why VHTR places require a different approach to Project Gigabit and how the policy interacts with the broadband USO.

By Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe.

After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts.

She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.