Commissioned Research Programme
A total of £1.35m of funds have been made available for the commissioned research programme, which will be administered through six funding mechanisms.
Systematic Reviews
InterAct will fund four Systematic Reviews (two per year). The purpose of Systematic Reviews is to provide a coherent summary of established knowledge from both academia and practice, on the application and potential benefits of industrial digital technologies in the manufacturing setting. The outputs of the reviews should provide a solid foundation for the future research direction.
Each award will be up to £60,000 and will have up to four months for delivery. The first award was launched in January 2022 and closed in March 2022, the second round and final round is now closed.
Early Career Researcher (ECR) Fellowships
ESS research can often be inexpensive requiring basic travel and subsistence, survey costs, or support to attend critical conferences and workshops. Lack of funding can prove a barrier to ECRs carrying out ESS research, particularly in a manufacturing context.
As part of the InterAct research programme, we have provided numerous ECR Fellowships of £5,000 to support the development of ECRs. The final call has now closed.
Storytelling Fellowships
Storytelling Fellowships was hosted at The Storytelling Academy at Loughborough University. Each Fellow had the opportunity to attend workshops and receive technical support to enable them to create their own digital stories. All InterAct digital stories can be accessed on our YouTube channel.
Actionable Insights Fund
The Actionable Insights Fund has now been distributed to nine project teams who are undertaking activities to help promote the insights generated from existing research to industry and policymakers. Find out more about the ongoing Actionable Insight Fund projects here.
Sandpit
The InterAct Sandpit was held 15 – 17 May 2023, at Burleigh Court Hotel, Loughborough, Leicestershire. Full details of the successful proposals can be viewed here.
Open funding call
The InterAct Open Funding Call is a single Commissioned Research call with a budget of £400,000. There is no minimum value for a request, but the maximum that shall be awarded to any single project is £62,500 (at 100% FEC), of which 80% will be funded by InterAct (i.e., £50,000 maximum funding for a single project). Our open call funding has now been distributed to teams and you can access the outputs published so far on our resources page.