Applications are now open for the UK-based Industrial Biotechnology Catalyst supported by BBSRC, the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

The first IB Catalyst call will fund support for major integrated research and development projects involving collaborations between the academic and business communities.  The IB Catalyst will allocate funds of up to £45M in 2014-15, to support collaborative R&D efforts between business and academia or cross-disciplinary academic collaboration funded by the BBSRC (£20M), TSB (£15M), and EPSRC (£10M).

Total project sizes can range from up to £250k for feasibility studies to up to £10M for experimental development. The aim is to build this investment to a scale comparable to the £180M Biomedical Catalyst already in existence.