Our Programmes

These programmes bring together key stakeholders from across the materials community and government to stimulate and drive innovation that will lead to economic and societal benefits.

Many of these programmes create links between leading businesses, SMEs, Research and Technology Organisations (RTOs), local authorities and central government with goal of supporting the translation of research into new materials and technologies.

This collaborative model encourages a joined up ecosystem in materials innovation, providing a clear pipeline for the translation from fundamental research to technologies which can be scaled-up and integrated by industry.

We support projects at both national and regional scales in the UK to ensure our world leading facilities are being exploited by local innovation clusters while also providing impact at the national level.

Royce is engaged in a number of regional economic development initiatives and Innovation Accelerators, providing access to our national facilities, materials research expertise and support infrastructure through the programmes. 

These initiatives support the growth of local materials innovation networks which will help to anchor skills growth and investment in regions across the UK, supporting the Government’s levelling-up agenda.

Our regional projects include Innovation Accelerators such as the Centre of Expertise in Advanced Materials (CEAMS) through which Royce is addressing commercial exploitation and scale-up challenges for sustainable materials, and playing more focused roles in initiatives such as Future Homes, which will see Royce work with businesses in Greater Manchester to develop low impact construction products.

We also collaborate with other Institutions and RTOs on projects to reinforce more focused research challenges in regional centres, such as supporting rapid access funding schemes for energy research delivered in collaboration with the Faraday Institution.

These programmes empower local innovators to harness support and facilities available through Royce and other partners in order to address supply chain gaps in the provision of materials and to help to attract private R&D investment for future technologies.

National programmes supported by Royce represent major collaborative endeavours which run across multiple disciplines, institutions, and industries.

These projects stimulate research and innovation across entire sectoral landscapes with goals focused around unlocking funding to tackle the materials challenges constraining supply chains, bridging gaps across Technology Readiness Levels, and accelerating change in different sectors to support national agendas such as green manufacturing and process optimisation.  

Our national initiatives include membership of the Foundation Industries Sustainability Consortium (FISC), which is accelerating scale-up of the sustainable technologies urgently required by the Foundation Industries. While another project – the Defence Materials Center of Excellence (DMEx) – will research, create, and prototype new materials that can perform under harsh conditions with dozens of university and industry partners from across the UK, alongside the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (dstl).

Our national programmes are helping to establish technology translation pathways throughout the UK’s innovation ecosystem, ensuring a joint up model for materials innovation which can deliver real value to national competitiveness in the many sectors reliant on materials innovation.

Royce is leading a number of policy projects with the support of the community and government to develop a materials innovation strategy and to build research and innovation roadmaps against identified challenges in the UK. 

These projects have been established to provide a coherent approach across Government, industry and the wider materials technology community.

Royce roadmapping and landscaping activities are generating new research and reports to better understand technology gaps with the goal of stimulating new advanced materials research in the UK against a number of identified challenge areas.

Our policy work, including the National Materials Innovation Strategy,  will identify high-potential areas where materials innovation can make an impact in creating new and significant forms of value while addressing national priorities.

These policy and roadmapping projects are being undertaken to ensure the UK has a world-leading position in rapidly expanding materials markets, substantially enhancing the value of some of the largest UK-based industries and ensuring materials science researchers and innovators are supported.