Engineering Biology Access to Infrastructure Pilot
Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), will invest up to £5 million to scale engineering biology innovations through this competition.
This competition is part of UKRI’s Engineering Biology Programme and funded by the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST).
The funding total is subject to a sufficient number of high-quality applications being received.
The aim of this competition is to support projects that enable scaling of lab proven engineering biology innovations by:
- enabling SMEs to scale innovations to pilot or demonstration scale
- facilitating affordable access to specialised UK engineering biology scale-up capabilities in the public and private sectors, such as catapults, bio-foundries and CMOs
- validating technical and economic viability of scaling engineering biology innovations in commercially relevant settings
Your project must focus on developing or applying engineering biology solutions to one or more of the following themes:
- Health
- Agriculture and Food
- Chemicals and materials
- Low Carbon fuels
- Waste and environment
- Cross cutting technology, service development
Competition opens: Monday 7 September 2026
Competition closes: Wednesday 21 October 2026 11am
