Working with business

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Co-creation of research proposals

Over 2,000 businesses work with us as partners on research projects we fund. These include large companies, small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs), charities and the public sector.

Many of them have been involved in research programmes from the beginning, helping the academic teams they work with shape and direct the research outcomes towards an area of business need; accelerating the impact of our research programmes and leveraging government research investment.

Co-creation of research programmes with academia can benefit your company by helping mitigate some of the risk of undertaking fundamental and early stage applied research that could give your company an advantage in the future.

We invest in around £800 million-worth of projects a year across Engineering, Physical Sciences and Technology and you can add value to your businesses research by engaging with academic institutions and EPSRC in collaborative research programmes.

Our online data visualisation tools can help you find the right academic group to work with.

Our portfolio managers can also assist you, putting you in touch with academic experts to talk to. UK Research and Innovation’s Gateway to Research tool can also provide you with information of some of the outcomes and impacts of our research.

Funding routes

You can find further information on the types of research activity you can engage with, through collaboration with academics.

Prosperity Partnerships

We created Prosperity Partnerships to support existing, strategic, research-based partnerships between businesses and universities. Each ‘Prosperity Partnership’ will comprise co-investment by EPSRC and industry in large-scale collaborative research programmes that have been co-created by both the business and academic partners. The programmes are business-initiated and are co-created between business and academia, focusing research activity in world-leading, focusing discovery science (TRL 1-3) on meeting long-term industrial challenges and delivering real business benefit.

Read our quick guide to Prosperity Partnerships, or find out more about how the Prosperity Partnerships support the collaboration of business and researchers.

Last updated: 27 November 2023

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