News

Innovate UK has released its delivery plan for FY 2016-2017. It will focus on 4 sectors: Emerging and enabling technologies; health and life sciences; infrastructure systems; and manufacturing and materials. £150 million is allocated for infrastructure systems including:

• 2 competitions of up to £15 million (July 2016 and January 2017) including intelligent mobility, sustainable energy delivery, solutions for challenges in urban areas and resilience of infrastructure and cities to environmental and societal pressure
• ERA-net competitions including Sustainable Urbanisation
• A Future Cities mission to India
• Collaborative R&D on Cities Integrated by Design
• Future Cities catapult core funding

The World Bank Group's Climate Change Action Plan, adopted on 7 April 2016, is designed to help countries meet their Paris COP21 pledges and manage increasing climate impacts. A key focus is boosting the resilience of people and communities to climate shocks, with new efforts to expand early warning systems, climate-smart social protections, and urban and coastal resilience. The Bank Group is ramping up action in renewable energy, sustainable cities, climate smart agriculture, green transport and other areas, with targets for 2020.

CSIRO’s Data61, the largest data innovation group in Australia, is partnering with Cyber London (CyLon), Europe’s first cyber security accelerator and business incubator, to strengthen cyber collaboration between Australia and the United Kingdom.

Professor Ian Guymer has taken up the post of Institution of Civil Engineering academic-in-residence to help the professional body to turn civil engineering knowledge into action.

The Research Councils have published a collective Strategic Priorities and Spending Plan. The document provides a summary of the ambitions, strategic direction and investment themes for the Research Councils' collective and individual activities. We have created a table listing teh priorities of each funding council, this can be downloaded here.