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In 2022, UEA secured a Medical Research Council (MRC) Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) totalling £496,800. UEA was one of only 35 universities to receive an MRC IAA award.
In REF2021, UEA’s impact was judged as 100% World-leading and Internationally Excellent in 10 out of 13 Panel C (Social Sciences) and D (Arts and Humanities) units of assessment, with 3 Units, ranked first in the UK for world-leading impact.
Through this we will demonstrate the benefits of our research to society, culture, health, and the economy.
UEA MRC IAA aims and objectives
Ensuring that fundamental science is translated into new therapies, diagnostics and medical devices, MRC’s IAA aims to accelerate the transition from discovery science to the early stages of therapeutic and biomarker development and rapidly de-risk projects across the translational lifecycle, so that they become competitive for substantial funding bids from competitions or other sources.
The MRC IAA award provides funding to support a diverse portfolio of translational projects and to respond to institutional needs and opportunities. The projects supported should aim to generate sufficient or critical preliminary data to establish the viability of an approach before seeking more substantial funding, for example, from the MRC Developmental Pathway Funding Scheme (DPFS).
The MRC IAA recognises that collaborative working and cross-sector skills flow are often key to successful translational development. Credit will be given where projects demonstrate these features.
Priority will be given to projects where matching funds from commercial or other non-UEA partner are offered providing added value. In this sense the awards are intended to complement other UEA funding streams, including the UEA Innovation Development Fund.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) is of critical importance to the Medical Research Council (MRC) and UEA and we ensure EDI is embedded across all MRC and UEA work. The success of our research depends on the diverse skills, understanding and experience of our community. It is crucial that efforts are taken to understand and recognise barriers to inclusion and that policies and practices are undertaken to mitigate barriers to participation. Applicants are asked to outline how they plan to address issues of equality diversity and inclusion in their project.
The MRC IAA Board comprises:
Louise Jopling (MRC IAA Board Chair & Commercial Director at Health Innovation East)
Colin Cooper (MRC IAA Grant Holder, Associate Dean for Innovation (ADI, FMH)
Kenny Lang (MRC IAA Board Secretary & Relationship Manager, Medical and Life Sciences, UEA)
Jason Mellad (Chief Executive Officer, Start Codon)
Justin O’Grady (Senior Director of Translational Applications, Oxford Nanopore)
Lisa Patel (Chief Executive Officer, Istesso)
Charles Ffrench-Constant (ProVC Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences, UEA)
Sheng Qi (Associate Dean for Innovation (ADI), SCI. Professor of Pharmaceutical Material Science & Technology, UEA)
Joita Dey (IP Manager, UEA)