Funding Opportunity

The Space for Smarter Government Programme (via the UK Space Agency) is making up to £700,000 (inc VAT) available for new innovative technology solutions that contribute towards its goals of helping the public sector create sustainable operational services from satellite data and enable smarter, more efficient operations, reduce risk and enhance policy making.

NERC is inviting proposals that address the issues and opportunities around green infrastructure (GI) in the planning and investment decisions that are made by local policymakers, local planners and organisations responsible for developing the built environment (construction, house builders, developers).

The Global Food Security (GFS) programme is hosting a community building event in light of the call launch for applications to the ‘Resilience of the UK food system in a Global Context’ programme. This programme has been co-designed by BBSRC, ESRC, NERC, Defra and FSA in partnership with wider stakeholders to address the major food security challenge.

NERC are working with Arup through our strategic partnership to co-fund proposals through Arup’s annual Global Research Challenge around future cities, circular economy and evidence-based decision making in urban environments. 

The call focuses on four areas:

• Enabling the urban circular economy
• Evidence-based decision making in cities
• Low carbon multimodal mobility
• New approaches to financing city infrastructure

NERC studentships can be delivered in collaboration with non-academic partners from the private, public and third/civil sectors; where studentships are delivered in collaboration they are referred to as 'CASE studentships'. CASE studentships provide the PhD students with enhanced training opportunities by ensuring they spend between three and eighteen months in total with their CASE partner in a workplace outside the academic environment.

This call is now open. The closing date is 16:00 Wednesday 8 July 2015.

DFID and NERC invite interested parties to a workshop on June 4th 2015 at etc.Venues in Paddington, London. The outputs of this workshop will inform a call for proposals that will be announced under the SHEAR programme in June 2015. This one day event will give attendees the opportunity to consider the scope of the call announcement. It will also facilitate networking and discussion, thereby enabling researchers to share ideas on key research questions relevant to the call.

The next BiodivERsA call, cofunded by the European Commission will cover the two following themes:

• Theme #1: Understanding and managing the biodiversity dynamics of soils and sediments to improve ecosystem functioning and delivery of ecosystem services
• Theme #2: Understanding and managing biodiversity dynamics in land-, river- and sea-scapes (habitat connectivity, green and blue infrastructures, and naturing cities) to improve ecosystem functioning and delivery of ecosystem services

As part of the Environmental Risks to Infrastructure Innovation Programme, NERC is launching an innovation call in this area by inviting expressions of interest (EoI) for short-term feasibility studies and longer-term translational projects. Successful applicants at EoI stage will be asked to submit a full proposal.

NERC has a budget of up to £1m to fund proposals on the following themes:

ACQUEAU Open Call supports projects with the potential of developing breakthrough innovations in the water sector. ACQUEAU Open Call is a two-stage submission and evaluation process.

Funding areas:

ACQUEAU Open Call is  open to any project idea in the context of the water cycle and the Blue Book.

Eligibility criteria:

In March 2015, Securing Water for Food announced its third call for innovations. This $12.5 million call for proposals focuses on identifying market-driven, low-cost, and scalable solutions that will enable us to improve water efficiency and wastewater reuse; enhance water capture and storage; and reduce the impacts of salinity on aquifers and food production.