Institutional grants will be awarded to 12 selected UK research organisations, enabling them to rapidly recruit and embed teams of international researchers by covering both relocation and research costs.
The research organisations that will be awarded funding from the Global Talent Fund are:
- Cardiff University
- Imperial College London
- John Innes Centre
- Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology
- Queen’s University Belfast
- University of Bath
- University of Birmingham
- University of Cambridge
- University of Oxford
- University of Southampton
- University of Strathclyde
- The University of Warwick
These research organisations will be attracting international researchers from across the industrial strategy priority areas. They are empowered to develop their own approaches and plans to spend their share of the Global Talent Fund to attract research talent from the around the globe. In addition to research costs, they will be able to cover visa and relocation costs for researchers and their family members.
The Global Talent funding will be awarded as institutional grants to 12 UK research organisations. Research organisations have been selected to receive this funding based on a bespoke formula, using criteria to determine organisational strength in:
- successfully receiving and using competitive international funding, assessed by the amount of European Research Council and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions funding received
- recruiting and retaining international researchers, assessed by the percentage of academic staff that are classed as international according to Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA)
- use of the Global Talent visa, which is the UK’s primary visa for researchers and specialists, assessed by the percentage of UKRI-endorsed Global Talent visa holders compared to total academic staff numbers according to HESA
HESA information is not available for research institutes. In these instances, total staff numbers were used instead.
All selected research organisations will be awarded an equal share of the available funding.
The selection of research organisations was guided by a requirement to be inclusive of all types of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) eligible research organisations, and to ensure a strong regional spread of research organisations across the UK.
Awarded organisations are encouraged to form partnerships with UK universities, public sector research organisations, other funders, and commercial organisations at their discretion.
Funding is used to support research within one or more of the eight industrial strategy priority areas:
- advanced manufacturing
- clean energy industries
- creative industries
- defence
- digital and technologies
- financial services
- life sciences
- professional and business services
It is at the discretion of research organisations whether one or multiple industrial strategy sectors are supported with this funding.
The ability of eligible research organisations to use this funding to conduct research and build capacity in industrial strategy priority areas has been determined by a UKRI validation panel.
Research organisations are responsible for identifying and recruiting researchers based on their own organisational strengths and requirements. The shapes and sizes of research teams will vary based on the requirements identified by research organisations across the eight Industrial Strategy areas.
This investment is part of a broader array of support across the UK research system to collaborate internationally and attract and retain international research talent. This support includes UKRI programmes, Horizon Europe association and National Academy fellowships