University knowledge exchange (KE) is central to the UK’s innovation and economic growth agenda, supporting the government’s growth mission, modern industrial strategy and Post 16 Education and Skills white paper. Understanding, measuring and improving how universities translate research and expertise into economic and social value is essential to long term system health. Stronger insights into the conditions and drivers of high quality KE, including the role of policy and funding, are critical to improving institutional practice and underpin effective decision making by funders and policymakers, including UKRI.
To this end, Research England (RE), on behalf of UKRI, is leading a national KE metrics programme to design and deliver next generation KE measures. This work will strengthen the UK KE ecosystem by providing better insights for universities, creating a consistent and transparent national evidence base, and enabling more targeted, impact driven policy and funding decisions.
The UK already has globally leading KE data infrastructure, including the world’s only national longitudinal KE-wide dataset (Higher Education Business and Community Interaction), and a world-first University Spinout Register led by RE’s metrics programme. However, continued innovation in datasets, analytical tools, and frameworks is needed to maintain their integrity and robustness. These need to keep pace with university practice, current policy priorities including those unique to RE as a nationwide institutional funder and ensure they are maximising the use of emerging technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
To achieve this we must work in partnership. We need skilled, knowledgeable individuals with deep academic rigour in conceptualising national KE datasets, leading KE domain expertise, as well as the ability to unlock, action and understand the insights the data enables. This will support RE, as part of UKRI, as a data-driven global leader in understanding the KE funding system and towards our goal of building a shared national evidence base for research and innovation.
RE is launching this call to secure a leading expert unit (or consortium) as its national KE metrics advisors, to design and exploit novel and ambitious KE data tools that will drive development in policy and practice to achieve UK-wide growth and prosperity.
This should include:
- core advisory unit with deep expertise on KE system-level data and metrics, specifically commercialisation, including for use in policy and institutional funding
- ambitious vision for the transformation of national KE datasets and measurement with RE, built on extensive experience and understanding of the higher education KE sector and national policy priorities
- deep technical and analytical capabilities, focussed on KE and commercialisation datasets, to design and prototype novel approaches using emerging technologies and AI tools that are viable for implementation in national datasets and for policy
This should be complemented by a strong convening or commissioning role to access wider and deeper expertise across the country as needed to benefit work of the programme.
The next phase of the KE Metrics Programme aims to significantly enhance the quality, breadth, and usefulness of KE data and evidence across the UK higher education system. This work delivers value to universities, policymakers, investors, and government, and underpins RE and UKRI’s evidence-led approach to policy and funding. Aligning data development to national policy drivers to support government priorities for economic growth.
Within KE and specific priority domains specified by RE, the work will likely include:
- novel research, including to characterise ‘success’ in a variety of domains to form the basis of future metrics
- design of new KE and commercialisation metrics suitable to inform institutional decision-making, integration into institutional funding methods, and assessment of the impact of public funding
- devising of conceptual frameworks that relate to system-wide data and use for policy
- design and prototyping of new datasets and data architecture, suitable for system-level collection
- working with national agencies to deliver new national data products (for example the spinout register), that reflect national standards and potential for official statistics designation
- use of emerging technologies and AI-based approaches to metric design, analysis, and insights
- data analysis to produce rich insights, including from new datasets
- deep evidence studies, including to inform policy
- international comparisons and benchmarking studies
- convening expert groups, data leaders, and data users. Including leading, with RE, annual Innovation Data Summits to convene leading experts and share advancements (first held in 2025 focusing on spinout data)
- commissioning of wider expertise and projects as needed
- the production of accessible and actionable advice and recommendations to RE appropriate for informing policy work
Expected domains of focus, including priority evidence gaps
Across KE data, metrics, and insights the unit or consortium will:
- design and prototype new pilot data collections tools to better capture resources, capabilities and impacts of KE beyond the annual HE-BCI survey, based on rigorous conceptual consideration
- create novel metrics to characterise, measure, and evidence success in local economic development and regional growth contributions of university KE, including to inform local growth strategies and practice, and for use in institutional funding
- identify university KE contributions across the Industrial Strategy priority sectors (IS-8)
- characterise growth contributions and success measures for university-business partnerships and collaborative research and development
- develop novel exploration of data and evidence to capture different actors involved in and conducted KE, including academics, KE practitioners, students, and company founders. National data is currently lacking and therefore limits understanding of best practices and successful policy interventions
- through understanding and characterisation of the skills of KE professionals, drive sector practice and policy interventions, ensuring high-quality KE and contributions to growth
- through effective system characterisation and monitoring, support UKRI’s mission by demonstrating how KE activities contribute to long-term system health and economic growth
Commercialisation data, metrics, and insights
Across commercialisation data, metrics, and insights the unit or consortium will:
Improve national university patent and wider IP datasets to better characterise sector activity, identify meaningful success measures, and delivering novel insights and evidence studies to drive policy and practice. (Current RE programme is designing a first UK university patent register, delivery in 2026.)
Improve national spinout datasets and depth of richness from these including but not limited to:
- novel approaches to conduct evidence studies using the spinout register
- viable novel techniques to enhance the quality and depth of national data in or alongside the spinout register, to improve efficiencies in existing data architectures (for instance, use of Companies House, HMRC, Office for National Statistics, commercial datasets)
- further development of approaches to nationally showcase and share insights from the spinout register, including building on the Data Digest to create a spinout dashboard hosted by RE
Create an ambitious new programme to characterise student entrepreneurship with greater rigour, including the research, design, and early prototyping of new data assets and evidence studies to capture the important growth contributions of these ventures.
Across all of the above activity commercialisation data areas, devising improved indicators of success based on academic rigour and deep domain expertise to present viable national collectable metrics. For example, work could include:
- a particular focus on spinning out
- evidence studies and prototyping of ‘technology velocity’
- novel metrics of ‘speed’ across various commercialisation activities in the innovation pipeline, noting faster clock speed highlight in the recent Hickson review on deepening university-investor links
- measurement of new forms of value-movement from universities to society that might arise as workforces become more enabled by agentic AI
- characterisation of the journey from research to invention, to innovation and contributions to growth, and key markers and drivers of success including public investment in this journey
- technical advice on increasing the join-up of national, including UKRI, datasets to capture this journey
Requirements
The requirements of the unit or consortium are outlined below, and applications must focus on evidencing the following knowledge, skills, and capabilities when completing the template provided:
Globally leading expertise in KE and commercialisation system-level data, including specifically for national policy purposes
We expect you to demonstrate these skills:
- deep understanding of RE’s role as an institutional funder, within the dual support system and wider KE policy ecosystem, and the importance of robust data and evidence in our approaches (in order to appropriately provide advice to us)
- deep understanding of institutional KE practice and structures, and how these are or can be represented in data capture
- drawing on previous experience of working with the higher education KE sector to deliver streamlined responses to data creation and development
- strong research-based understanding of KE domains (including priority areas set out above) and the conceptual underpinnings of new and meaningful metrics
- strong research-based understanding of university commercialisation (including priority areas set out above) and the conceptual underpinnings of new and meaningful metrics, with specific experience of both spinout and patent data
- production of rapid, expert advice and production of policy-relevant, insight-rich reports
- conducting evidence studies, including international comparative work
- translating complex and rich technical insights into clear, impactful reports and recommendations for national policy use
- advocate and showcase the UK’s leadership in rich characterisation of KE
Ability to commission and convene specialist expertise
We expect you to demonstrate these skills:
- consideration of effective and efficient approaches to commissioning other experts where very focussed and deep expertise is needed, or on domains where the core unit is not the primary expert in the field
- convening other leading experts to work collaboratively to solve system-level KE data challenges which may include characterisation of national evidence issues, identification of solutions, and co-design of outputs
Advanced technical data capabilities and use of novel techniques including AI
We expect you to demonstrate these skills:
- strong demonstrable experience of complex data analytics, specifically in analysing KE and commercialisation data, to produce recommendations and insights
- expertise in designing meaningful and robust system-level KE metrics (including commercialisation, specifically spinout performance)
- ability to ensure data can be collected consistently across the UK, including for use in institutional funding (Higher Education Innovation Funding, HEIF) and institutional performance measurement such as the KE Framework (KEF)
- experience in prototyping new datasets, analytical tools, and metric designs, based on deep conceptual understanding and technical rigour, including ability to work closely with RE throughout
- the vision and understanding of the opportunity spaces for transformational novel AI-based techniques
- demonstrable curiosity but also criticality of new AI technologies that are emerging, to explore novel and complex approaches in real time but that remain focussed on delivery and aligning to national standards
- familiarity with advances in data collection and analytical inference technologies enabled by AI assisted code development, agent-based retrieval, LLM summarisation, and online dashboarding
- this may include familiarity with relational, graph and vector databases, traditional deterministic programming approaches and agentic based approaches using emerging standards like Model Context Protocol
- strong capability to interrogate, numerical and textual data, structure and navigate sparse or incomplete datasets and generate useful insights within uncertainty bounds and contribute to novel metric design
- flexibility and clear plans to recruit and secure necessary deep technical capabilities using our investment, where these may not already be held by core applicant team
Agility and flexibility
Priorities and deliverables for the total funding period will be confirmed annually, in agreement with RE. However, the nature of both novel working and effective advising for policy purposes will require our partner to be able to work with high levels of agility and respond rapidly to emerging priorities.
We expect you to demonstrate these skills:
- agility to prioritise and deprioritise domain areas as the policy landscape evolves and RE’s role in delivering against these develops, including supporting RE in identifying shifts in need and opportunities. Ensuring to display these capabilities through demonstrable evidence of previous experience
- flexibility in pivoting and responding to new policy priorities, as requested by RE
- capacity to adapt approaches in response to emerging technical complexity, and unpredictable development timelines that is inherent to novel development work
- rapid, expert provision of advice, both ad hoc and in response to arising priority areas
- demonstrable ability to co-design activities, create actionable insights for different users and a commitment to learn from your activities as part of iterative development of datasets and tools
- ability to provide an appropriate and accessible website for tangible outputs and consideration of wider dissemination activities to ensure insights are publicly available and reaching relevant stakeholders across the sector for maximum impact
Strategic and trusted partnerships
We expect you to demonstrate these skills:
- demonstrate good knowledge of the aims of the metrics programme, and the context it operates in including RE’s role as national institutional funder
- objectivity in building strong trusted relationships with a range of relevant stakeholders, including but not limited to institutional leadership, KE practitioners, government and funders, for example to co-develop solutions and garner meaningful evidence
- evidence of collaborating with diverse stakeholders, that recognises the different needs, purposes, and considerations of different data providers and users
- a partnership model involving RE (policy and architecture), HESA (data collection and systems delivery)
- provision of advice and skills transfer as required to RE and HESA colleagues, to ‘annualise’ new approaches including analysis that has been designed and prototyped by expert advisors
Activities that are not eligible for funding
We will not fund the following activities:
- activities outside of those agreed with RE
- any ongoing activities currently active within your institution or organisation
Funding
Up to £5 million is available for one successful application over a five-year funding period starting in January 2027 until the end of March 2032. RE expects the costs and activities of your proposal to be fully justified by need, evidence and demonstrate value for money.
Funding is expected to be primarily revenue. Capital costs, if applicable, should be clearly justified and essential to delivery. This could include such activities as purchasing specialist data or system licences.
Costs
You should understand and be able to justify your costs, including indirect costs. We do not determine a costing format. Due to the agile nature of this grant, in your funding request provide costings up to the maximum threshold you anticipate requiring (not to exceed the £5 million total funding limit).
Proposals can only be for expenditure on eligible activities.
