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Surrey’s innovators receive £1.2m boost from UKRI Impact Acceleration Account

15th June 2022

The University of Surrey will receive £1.2m from the UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI’s) Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) to accelerate bright ideas into global opportunities and jumpstart knowledge exchange, translation, and commercialisation. 

 

IAA funding allows UK teams to unlock the value of their work, including early-stage commercialisation of new technologies and advancing changes to public policy and services.  

 

Now in its tenth year, the IAA supports critical early-stage translation of UK research to real impacts, transforming public services, creating new jobs, attracting private investment, and forging new partnerships with business and charities. Examples from Surrey of IAA funding unlocking impactful research include developing an international financial compliance regulator, a trustworthy electronic voting system, and the science that detects drugs from a fingerprint.  

 

Professor David Sampson, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation at the University of Surrey said: 

 

“I am delighted that the University has been awarded vital funding for accelerating the translation of our world-leading research into impactful solutions across the fields of engineering, physical sciences, and medicine. So much of our research benefits from that extra push and focus provided by the IAA to achieve positive effects on our wider communities.” 

  

Dr Alexandra Lewis, Director of Research Strategy at the University of Surrey, said: 

 

“As a testament to our University’s fantastic culture of research and collaboration, Surrey was recently ranked 33^rd in the UK Research Excellence Framework in 2021, with 41% of our submitted research rated as world-leading and 55 impact case studies submitted across 14 Units of Assessment. These new IAAs will help us build on from this strong foundation and deliver even stronger impact from our world class research; leading to even greater success in future REF exercises.” 

 

Dr William Lovegrove, Director of Innovation Strategy at the University of Surrey, said: 

 

“The University of Surrey’s 2021-2024 institutional strategy – ‘Forward thinking. And doing’ – has placed an emphasis on scaling our institution’s innovation activities. IAAs are critical to our plans. They enable our researchers to deliver new technologies, new products, new services and new ideas into society – and in doing so change the world for the better. It’s an exciting time to be working in knowledge exchange and impact creation at Surrey.” 

 

UKRI, a government body responsible for delivering £8 billion research and innovation funding each year, is investing £118m in the latest round of IAAs to translate research across 64 universities and research organisations.