Enterprise Fellowships assessment criteria and policies

The Academy is the UK’s National Academy for engineering and technology and seeks to increase the potential positive benefit that innovations can have for society, whilst reducing the risks of harm.

Hence, in all our activities, we seek to minimise the risk that technology developed as part of work that we support could be misused by a foreign state to build a capacity to target UK interests in a hostile fashion or to control or repress their population.

There is a risk that for some grant activities, failure to protect IP and a lack of due diligence into collaborators could result in sensitive technology being transferred to and misused by a hostile or repressive foreign state.

As such, all applicants should ensure they are familiar with the Academy’s Policy on National Security-Related Risks. 

The Academy has aligned with other UK funders around the use of generative AI tools in funding applications through the Research Funders Policy  

Group joint statement 

Regarding the use of AI, applicants are fully responsible for all the content presented in their grant applications. The grant process does not penalise the use of generative AI tools, but it is imperative to ensure that the application reflects the applicant's own voice and ideas.

It is not acceptable to solely rely on generative AI tools to write the entire grant application from start to finish. While these tools may be used to assist in various aspects, the application must primarily represent the applicant's own work. Applicants must provide clear acknowledgement if they have used generative AI tools in the process of writing their grant applications.

This includes disclosing the name of the tool used and describing how it was utilised.  

The UK subsidy control regime began on 4 January 2023. As part of this regime, the Academy is required to report to the UK Government on how award funding is used when applications that collaborate with commercial enterprises are awarded.

The regime determines the lawfulness of monetary awards made using public sector resources when given to businesses and other organisations that are engaged in economic activity.  

Enterprise Fellowships University Routes, i.e. Researchers and International PhD student routes, are considered to be Subsidy Schemes and for these a principles assessment has been conducted to ensure subsidies issued are compliant with the principles of the Subsidy Control Act. 

Research involving human participants is governed by principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki, the Nuremberg Code, and the Council for International Organisations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS), all of which set out requirements concerning the rights and safety of research participants and standards for research design and conduct.

Academy requires researchers to have the relevant regulatory and ethical approvals in place before the relevant research begins, although you may apply for funding before this. In the event of an award being made, commencement of any research involving human participants or tissue will be subject to these approvals being in place and sent to the Academy. 

Where the Academy funds research involving the use of animals, it maintains that a high regard for animal welfare should be adhered to in all research. Our expectations for any research funded by the Academy mirror those set out by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in  

Research (NC3Rs) in their documents on Responsibility in the use of animals in bioscience research and the non-human primate accommodation, care and use. Applicants are expected to detail how the number of animals to be used was decided, plans to minimise experimental bias, and provide information on statistical aspects of the study including statistical power and appropriate statistical analysis.

Applicants must use the NC3Rs Experimental Design Assistant when designing their experiments, and the ARRIVE guidelines for improving the reproducibility and reporting of research involving animals.