Funding opportunity

Funding opportunity: National PET Imaging Platform: Data Platform

Opportunity status: Upcoming Funders: Medical Research Council (MRC), Innovate UK Funding type: Grant Total fund: £4,700,000 Maximum award: £4,700,000 Publication date: 16 March 2026 Opening date:

1 April 2026 9:00am UK time

Closing date:

17 June 2026 4:00pm UK time

Apply for funding to host the National PET Imaging Platform (NPIP) Data Platform.
You must be a member of the consortium bid developed and approved by NPIP and based at a UK research organisation eligible for Medical Research Council (MRC) funding.

The Data Platform will make NPIP’s imaging and research data findable, accessible, interoperable and reuseable, provide services and tools to users and support sensitive data linkage.

The full economic cost (FEC) of your project can be up to £4.7 million. MRC will fund 100% of the FEC.

Funding is available for 42 months with a fixed start date of 1 October 2026.

You must be invited to apply for this funding opportunity.

Who can apply

You can only apply for this funding opportunity if we have invited you to do so.

This funding opportunity is open to organisations with standard eligibility. Check if your organisation is eligible.

Who is eligible to apply

To be eligible to apply to host the NPIP data platform you must:

• be a member of the Data Platform consortium bid developed and approved by NPIP
• be employed by an eligible research organisation
• show that you will direct the project and be actively engaged in the work
• have the relevant infrastructure development expertise and experience to evidence you can deliver the NPIP Data Platform. Evidence of successful development of infrastructure will be prioritised over research success
• be collegiate in your approach to bringing together NPIP’s data assets and resources for the benefit of NPIP and the UK total-body PET imaging research community
• be collaborative in your approach to ensuring the data platform has the capability to connect to other data assets, such as other sources of sensitive health data
• be inclusive to support wider engagement with the research and infrastructure community in the UK and overseas to prioritise agile development approaches in meeting NPIP’s and other users’ needs

• there is no limit to the number of co-leads per application, but it must be clear from the application what unique contribution each co-lead will make to the success of NPIP’s Data Platform
  For applicants who do not have a contract of employment for the duration of the proposed project, by submitting an application the research organisation is confirming, if it is successful:

• contracts will be extended beyond the end date of the project

• all necessary support for the project and the applicants will be provided, including mentorship and career development for early career staff
  The initial leadership team must convene and represent consortium members across a partnership of eligible organisations.

Who is not eligible to apply

The project lead for the NPIP Data Platform funding opportunity is not expected to be a director of an affiliated NPIP PET scanner site (irrespective of funding source for that site).

If you are employed by these organisations you cannot apply as project lead or project co-lead, but can participate as project partners on an application led by an eligible UK organisation such as:

• businesses
• charity and third sector organisations

International infrastructure developers

While international organisations cannot lead an application, it is possible for international infrastructure developers to apply as part of the leadership team, as an international co-project lead. We expect international co-leads to make a major intellectual and technical contribution to the design or conduct of the project and to provide clear indicators of commitment to the NPIP data platform.

Read the UKRI project co-lead (international) eligibility for more details. Please contact us if you are uncertain about eligibility.

You should include all other international collaborators (or UK partners not based at approved organisations) as project partners.

Equality, diversity and inclusion

We are committed to achieving equality of opportunity for all funding applicants. We encourage applications from a diverse range of researchers.

We support people to work in a way that suits their personal circumstances. This includes:

• career breaks
• support for people with caring responsibilities
• flexible working
• alternative working patterns UKRI can offer disability and accessibility support for UKRI applicants and grant holders during the application and assessment process.

What we're looking for

Aim

Positron emission tomography (PET) is a well-established nuclear medicine biomedical imaging technology for the molecular, functional, and quantitative imaging of living tissues and organs. The National PET Imaging Platform (NPIP) is a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Infrastructure Fund investment whose aim is to keep the UK at the cutting edge of imaging research.

Complementing NPIP’s (and others’) investments in total-body PET scanners across the UK to date, the NPIP Data Platform will provide a unified repository to collate, curate and manage total-body PET imaging and associated research data derived from the total-body PET scanners in the NPIP network.

Consortium approach

Working together as a consortium encompassing current NPIP partners and others to deliver the Data Platform will allow organisations with complementary strengths (even those that may normally compete) to share knowledge and pool expertise. It will reduce duplication, share risks, and achieve outcomes none could deliver alone.

By focusing on collective impact rather than individual advantage, the partners will build long-term strategic relationships that cement trust, accelerate innovation, and create value that benefits the wider UK community.

Establishing a simple, transparent set of ground rules will help ensure that every organisation has an equal voice and contributes fairly to the success of the Data Platform.

The aim is to create a trusted, high performing consortium where shared goals, transparent communication, and mutual respect underpin every interaction. Importantly, these will also support onboarding new members into the consortium as NPIP expands and new opportunities arise.

To ensure all organisations participate fairly and confidently, the spirit of the following ground rules (as a minimum but not limited to) are recommended for adoption across the consortium and should be embodied in a draft charter which will form part of the final consortium agreement in due course, these are:

• shared purpose and goals: all partners commit to a common mission and a clear set of objectives
• equal voice and representation: each organisation has the same opportunity to contribute ideas, feedback, and decisions
• transparent communication: information, decisions, and updates are shared openly and in a timely manner
• fair and proportionate contribution: time, expertise, data, and resources are contributed in line with agreed expectations
• respect for organisational boundaries: sensitive information is protected, and competitive integrity is preserved
• collaborative decision making: major decisions are made collectively, using agreed processes to manage divergent opinions and drive towards consensus
• accountability and follow through: partners deliver on commitments and review progress regularly against shared milestones and key performance indicators
• constructive and professional behaviour: interactions remain respectful, solution focused, and aligned with the Data Platform’s purpose within NPIP
• future facing and welcoming to new members and new ideas or ways of working

Data Platform scope

As well as supporting NPIP sponsored studies (both commercial, academic and NHS, including clinical trials), the Data Platform will provide a single front door for researchers wishing to access that data for secondary research use, providing the services and tools needed to support them.

To maximise the value from NPIP studies, the Data Platform must be future facing, permeable to new members and opportunities, and capable of managing connection to other research data including sensitive health data (such as from routine electronic health records) across the UK.

The application should outline the UK clinical research imaging landscape and explain how the proposed consortium will create an inclusive environment to share total-body PET imaging data (where permitted), enabling broader access and benefit across the biomedical and clinical research communities.

The application should set out existing and planned data infrastructure investments that the platform will partner with to deliver NPIPs and users’ data aspirations and why. Please articulate how this will reduce duplication of effort and resource and ensure FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, re-useable) principles are upheld.

In all cases, the use of existing solutions (infrastructure, governance, services, tools, data management approaches etc) should be prioritised over developing new bespoke solutions.

Priority should be given to the adoption of existing, open-source approaches where feasible and practical, and establishing mechanisms to prioritise the development of new services and tools only where needed.

The Data Platform, as part of NPIP, will:

• engage with academia, industry, NHS, public research organisations and other relevant stakeholders to understand needs and opportunities
• design and establish a data infrastructure that can manage NPIP’s data collection, curation, including but not limited to quality management systems, audit and harmonisation of total-body PET imaging and associated research data produced from NPIP studies
• ensure data from NPIP studies are made available for re-use in an agile and cost-effective architecture for both NPIP contributors and data users. This will mean balancing availability of different types of image data (such as list mode versus processed image formats) and approaches to data access and federation (cloud versus on-premises or hybrid solutions) against expected volumes of different use cases within available resources
• ensure it can deliver against the stringent requirements for national and international commercial studies, including ensuring NPIP data is compliant with essential information and regulatory standards and frameworks as required by study sponsors
• ensure NPIP’s data is FAIR where permitted, including by users outside of NPIP’s affiliated partners
• identify relevant data and metadata standards, only developing new standards where essential, to ensure reliability, comparability and usability of NPIP’s imaging data and support best practice
• develop the common services and tools, including support for advanced analytics such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, required by data controllers and users to work with NPIP data
• support linkage and federated approaches to other sources of sensitive and non-sensitive, health and non-health data, particularly routine health data, through adoption of relevant infrastructure architectures and standards, achieving necessary accreditations where needed
• develop appropriate governance structures to manage data platform activities, such as security and compliance, ethics, equity
• develop a monitoring and evaluation plan that will allow funders to assess the benefits realised from this infrastructure investment It is accepted that this scope does not represent a detailed technical specification and that requirements, priorities and specific approaches may require change. The consortium is expected to work closely with stakeholders to rapidly develop and refine a more robust technical specification that will be implemented in the first instance, with ongoing agile development methodologies applied as the Data Platform matures.

You should ensure that you provide enough information on your understanding of what an initial offering may look like to deliver the tasks listed above. That should be set alongside a clear articulation of how you will make agile decisions to drive progress forwards and manage delivery risks and issues such that feasibility of delivery can be assessed as current and future requirements are refined.

A credible plan for the long-term sustainability of the data platform investment will be an important aspect of the successful application. This will become part of the over-arching sustainability plans for NPIP. You should articulate your high-level plans for developing:

• effective and transparent cost recovery models, both commercial and non-commercial, for data platform activities
• effective sharing of infrastructure and equipment to maximise use and outputs of capital investments in NPIP and beyond
• training and career development to ensure a skilled workforce
• approaches to support environmental sustainability goals for an extended useful lifespan of the data platform

Out of scope

We will not consider applications that:

• describe the development of a separate legal entity to deliver this activity
• request substantial building works
• request funding for research, except those infrastructure research and development costs required to establish and deliver the data platform For more information on the background of this funding opportunity, go to the Additional information section.

Duration

The duration of this award is 42 months.

Your project must start by 1 October 2026.

Funding available

The FEC of your project can be up to £4.7 million.

MRC will fund 100% of the FEC.

What we will fund

You can request funding for costs such as:

• a contribution to the salary of the project lead and co-leads
• support for other posts such as an infrastructure manager and technical staff
• equipment to manage data collection and curation, storage, access and analysis, including cloud computing
• meeting and travel costs
• data management costs including collection, curation, and sharing to ensure data is FAIR, including achieving compliance with national and international commercial clinical study or trial delivery
• development and provision of tools and services to support NPIPs and users’ needs, prioritising open-source approaches in the first instance and seeking to re-use existing infrastructure, tools, services and approaches over developing new bespoke solutions unless strictly necessary
• supporting excellence in information governance requirements, including compliance with 5 Safes and other accreditation standards applicable to infrastructures supporting the use and federation of sensitive health, and other data
• knowledge mobilisation and dissemination costs to build an active engaged community and develop new user contacts
• public, including patient, and practitioner involvement and engagement costs
• estates and indirect costs

What we will not fund

We will not fund:

• research costs, except those infrastructure research and development costs required to establish and deliver the data platform
• animal costs
• publication costs
• any kind of studentships or fellowships, including stipends

Project partner

A project partner is a collaborating organisation in the UK or overseas, including partners based in the EU, who will have an integral role in the proposed research. You may include project partners that will support your research project through cash or in-kind contributions, such as:

• staff time
• access to equipment
• sites or facilities
• the provision of data
• software or materials
• recruitment of people as research participants
• providing samples, such as human tissue, for the project Each project partner must provide a statement of support. If your application involves industry partners, they must provide additional information if the relationship falls within the industry collaboration framework.

Find out more about subcontractors and dual roles.

Who cannot be included as a project partner

Any individual included in your application core team cannot also be a project partner.
Any organisation that employs a member of the application core team cannot be a project partner organisation. This includes other departments within the same organisation.

If you are collaborating with someone in your organisation, consider including them in the core team as project co-lead, or specialist. They cannot be a project partner.

Supporting skills and talent

We encourage you to follow the principles of the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers and the Technician Commitment.

Trusted Research and Innovation (TR&I)

UKRI is committed in ensuring that effective international collaboration in research and innovation takes place with integrity and within strong ethical frameworks. Trusted Research and Innovation (TR&I) is a UKRI work programme designed to help protect all those working in our thriving and collaborative international sector by enabling partnerships to be as open as possible, and as secure as necessary. Our TR&I Principles set out UKRI’s expectations of organisations funded by UKRI in relation to due diligence for international collaboration.

As such, applicants for UKRI funding may be asked to demonstrate how their proposed projects will comply with our approach and expectation towards TR&I, identifying potential risks and the relevant controls you will put in place to help proportionately reduce these risks.

See further guidance and information about TR&I, including where applicants can find additional support.

How to apply

We are running this funding opportunity on the new UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Funding Service so please ensure that your organisation is registered. You cannot apply on the Joint Electronic Submissions (Je-S) system.

The project lead is responsible for completing the application process on the Funding Service, but we expect all consortium members and project partners to contribute to the application.

Only the lead research organisation can submit an application to UKRI.

To apply

You can only apply for this funding opportunity if we have invited you to do so. The start application link will be provided via email:

1. Confirm you are the project lead.
2. Sign in or create a Funding Service account. To create an account, select your organisation, verify your email address, and set a password. If your organisation is not listed, email support@funding-service.ukri.org Please allow at least 10 working days for your organisation to be added to the Funding Service. We strongly suggest that if you are asking UKRI to add your organisation to the Funding Service to enable you to apply to this opportunity, you also create an organisation Administration Account. This will be needed to allow the acceptance and management of any grant that might be offered to you.
3. Answer questions directly in the text boxes. You can save your answers and come back to complete them or work offline and return to copy and paste your answers. If we need you to upload a document, follow the upload instructions in the Funding Service. All questions and assessment criteria are listed in the How to apply section on this Funding finder page.
4. Allow enough time to check your application in ‘read-only’ view before sending to your research office.
5. Send the completed application to your research office for checking. They will return it to you if it needs editing.
6. Your research office will submit the completed and checked application to UKRI. Please be aware that research office and finance teams undertake checks on hosting arrangements and financial eligibility. The ultimate responsibility for ensuring compliance with all opportunity requirements lies with the applicant. Where indicated, you can also demonstrate elements of your responses in visual form if relevant.

When including images, you must:

• provide a descriptive caption or legend for each image immediately underneath it in the text box (this must be outside the image and counts towards your word limit)
• insert each new image on a new line

• use files smaller than 5MB and in JPEG, JPG, JPE, JFI, JIF, JFIF, PNG, GIF, BMP or WEBP format
  Images should only be used to convey important visual information that cannot easily be put into words. The following are not permitted, and your application will be rejected if you include:

• sentences or paragraphs of text

• tables

• excessive quantities of images
  A few words are permitted where the image would lack clarity without the contextual words, such as a diagram, where text labels are required for an axis or graph column.

For more guidance on the Funding Service, see:

• how applicants use the Funding Service
• how research offices use the Funding Service
• how reviewers use the Funding Service

References

References should be included within the word count of the appropriate question section. You should use your discretion when including references and prioritise those most pertinent to the application.

Hyperlinks can be used in reference information. When including references, you should consider how your references will be viewed and used by the assessors, ensuring that:

• references are easily identifiable by the assessors
• references are formatted as appropriate to your research
• persistent identifiers are used where possible

General use of hyperlinks

Applications should be self-contained. You should only use hyperlinks to link directly to reference information. You must not include links to web resources to extend your application. Assessors are not required to access links to conduct assessment or recommend a funding decision.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI)

Use of generative AI tools to prepare funding applications is permitted, however, caution should be applied.

For more information see our policy on the use of generative AI in application and assessment.

Deadline

MRC must receive your application by 17 June 2026 at 4:00pm UK time.

You will not be able to apply after this time.

Make sure you are aware of and follow any internal institutional deadlines.

Following the submission of your application to this funding opportunity, your application cannot be changed, and submitted applications will not be amended. If your application does not follow the guidance, it will be rejected.

Personal data

Processing personal data

MRC, as part of UKRI, will need to collect some personal information to manage your Funding Service account and the registration of your funding applications.

We will handle personal data in line with UK data protection legislation and manage it securely. For more information, including how to exercise your rights, read our privacy notice.

Sensitive information

If you or a core team member need to tell us something you wish to remain confidential, email paul.colville-nash@mrc.ukri.org copied to informatics@mrc.ukri.org.

Include in the subject line: NPIP Data Platform; sensitive information; your Funding Service application number.

Typical examples of confidential information include:

• individual is unavailable until a certain date (for example due to parental leave)
• declaration of interest
• additional information about eligibility to apply that would not be appropriately shared in the ‘Applicant and team capability’ section
• conflict of interest for UKRI to consider in reviewer or panel participant selection
• the application is an invited resubmission For information about how UKRI handles personal data, read UKRI’s privacy notice.

Institutional matched funding

There is no requirement for matched funding from the institutions hosting the project lead, project co-leads or other staff employed on the application. Expert reviewers and panels assessing UKRI funding applications must not consider levels of institutional matched funding as a factor on which to base recommendations. Direct and in-kind contributions from third party project partners are encouraged.

This policy does not remove the need for support from host organisations who must provide the necessary research environment and infrastructure for award-specific activities funded by UKRI. For example, research facilities, training and development of staff.

Publication of outcomes

MRC and Innovate UK, as part of UKRI, will publish the outcomes of this funding opportunity at board and panel outcomes. NPIP will publish details of the successful award on the NPIP website.

If your application is successful, we will publish some personal information on the UKRI Gateway to Research.

Summary

Word limit: 550

In plain English, provide a summary we can use to identify the most suitable experts to assess your application.

We usually make this summary publicly available on external-facing websites, therefore do not include any confidential or sensitive information. Make it suitable for a variety of readers, for example:

• opinion-formers
• policymakers
• the public
• the wider research community

Guidance for writing a summary

Clearly describe your proposed infrastructure solution in terms of:

• context
• the challenge the project addresses
• aims and objectives
• potential applications and benefits

Core team

List the key members of your team and assign them roles from the following:

• project lead (PL)
• project co-lead (UK) (PcL)
• project co-lead (international) (PcL (I))
• specialist
• grant manager
• professional enabling staff
• research and innovation associate
• technician
• visiting researcher
• researcher co-lead (RcL) Only list one individual as project lead. If you include more than one project lead your application will fail at the checking stage.

Where the key member identifiers and role guidance refer to “research” or “researcher” this is to be construed in the context of data infrastructure research and development and not in the context of wider biomedical or life sciences research which is out of scope of this funding opportunity.

UKRI has introduced a new addition to the ‘Specialist’ role type. Public contributors such as people with lived experience can now be added to an application.

Find out more about UKRI’s core team roles in funding applications

Application questions

Vision

Word limit: 550

What are you hoping to achieve with the proposed infrastructure?

What the assessors are looking for in your response

Explain how the proposed infrastructure will:

• be timely, given current trends and context
• convene knowledge and expertise across NPIP and beyond
• meet the evidenced needs of clearly identified user groups
• will embed EDI considerations into the programme, and outline how these will guide your aims, as well as other activities such as stakeholder engagement, engagement, events and networking
• have measurable impact
• enable high quality and important research
• meet the strategic aims of the funder or government
• offer training opportunities
• enhance, benefit and complement the existing landscape
• support innovation in research
• be of international importance (if applicable)
• identify the potential local, regional or national impacts, both direct and indirect, and who the beneficiaries might be
• enhance the UK’s research and innovation capabilities through local and or regional activity
• be future facing, being welcoming to new consortium members and able to take advantage of new opportunities and address challenges as they arise Within the Vision section we also expect you to identify potential improvements in human or population health, whether through contributing to relieving disease or disability burden, improving quality of life or providing benefit to the health service or health-related industry.

References may be included within this section.

You may demonstrate elements of your responses in visual form if relevant. Further details are provided in the Funding Service.

Approach

Word limit: 6,000

What are your plans to manage and deliver the proposed infrastructure?

What the assessors are looking for in your response

We expect you to show how your approach includes:

• a credible management plan including strategic and operational matters
• a legal model, including a draft consortium charter setting out how members will work together
• details of governance, including plans for public involvement and engagement
• feasibility of the project plan including a work plan, milestones, and deliverables in the form of a Gantt chart or similar
• identification of risks and appropriate mitigation in the form of key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine the delivery of outputs and outcomes
• plans for support and maintenance of the proposed infrastructure over the estimated life span, identifying future needs and potential upgrades
• details of access and usage particularly where a culture of infrastructure sharing may extend use to the research community
• training and development of staff and those who may interact with the infrastructure, including research technical professionals
• a description of the working environment
• identification of how accessibility and inclusiveness have been incorporated into the design of the project
• plans for operational sustainability and legacy beyond the end of UKRI funding. These could include cost recovery models, securing additional funding, development or expansion after the initial period of funding

• has been designed so that it will generate local, regional or national impacts
  Within the Approach section we also expect you to demonstrate:

• access to the appropriate services, facilities, infrastructure, or equipment outside of the resources requested to deliver the project

• your approach to agile infrastructure development including prioritisation in developing and onboarding new capabilities, services and tools

• an understanding of the implications of cloud versus on-premises storage and compute solutions in making NPIP data FAIR

• an understanding of relevant data and metadata standards that may be applied to PET images and how they may be implemented by the data platform

• an understanding of the common approaches to PET image analysis used by researchers and what services and tools you will provide to support them

• an understanding of requirements to support national and international commercial clinical studies and trials

• an understanding of how your data platform could support federation and linkage to other data such as sensitive health data from routine health records
  References may be included within this section.

You may demonstrate elements of your responses in visual form if relevant. Further details are provided in the Funding Service.

Contextual information

NPIP’s data strategy is under development. The Data Platform will need to play an integral part in that development to deliver against NPIP user requirements. Your application should demonstrate a strong commitment to engaging in that development in your understanding of the needs for agile infrastructure development and how that would be implemented.

Initial consultation with sites hosting total-body PET scanners suggest each site will generate 20-50Tb of data per year, each a mix of processed DICOM images and a more limited number of images consisting of list data, both with limited accompanying clinical research information.

There are currently four active or planned UK total-body PET scanner sites, but it is expected this network will grow significantly. You should explain how your Data Platform architecture will take into account both the nature of the PET images and associated data generated by NPIP, the current and future capacity requirements and your understanding of the capabilities needed to support federation and linkage to other sources of data, such as routine NHS health data.

Guidance

Your attention is drawn to the MRC Digital Research Infrastructure vision statement in “Additional Information”.

Data management and sharing

Word limit: 1,500

How will you manage and share data collected or acquired through the proposed research?

What the assessors are looking for in your response

Provide a data management plan which should clearly detail how you will comply with MRC’s published data management and sharing policies, which includes detailed guidance notes.

Provide your response in the text box following the headings in the MRC data management plan template. You are not required to upload the document to your application.

The length of your plan will vary depending on the type of study being undertaken, as follows:

• population cohorts, longitudinal studies, genetic, omics and imaging data, biobanks, and other collections that are potentially a rich resource for the wider research community: maximum of 1,500 words
• all other research, less complex, the plan may be as short as 500 words

Applicant and team capability to deliver

Word limit: 2,000

Why are you the right individual or team to deliver and manage the proposed infrastructure?

What the assessors are looking for in your response

Evidence of how you, and if relevant your team, have:

• the relevant experience (appropriate to career stage)
• the right balance of skills and expertise
• the appropriate leadership and management skills and your approach to develop others
• contributed to developing a positive research environment and wider community You may demonstrate elements of your responses in visual form if relevant. Further details are provided in the Funding Service.

The word limit for this section is 2,000 words: 1,500 words to be used for Résumé for Research and Innovation (R4RI) modules (including references) and, if necessary, a further 500 words for Additions.

Use the R4RI format to showcase the range of relevant skills you, and if relevant, your team (project and project co-leads, researchers, technicians, specialists, partners and so on), have and how this will help to deliver the proposed work. You can include individuals’ specific achievements but only choose past contributions that best evidence their ability to deliver this work.  You are encouraged to include ORCID iDs for individuals where relevant, as this can help to demonstrate and verify their achievements.

Complete this section using the R4RI module headings listed below. You should use each heading once and include a response for the whole team, see the UKRI guidance on R4RI. You should consider how to balance your answer, and emphasise where appropriate the key skills each team member brings:

• contributions to the generation of new ideas, tools, methodologies, or knowledge
• the development of others and maintenance of effective working relationships
• contributions to the wider research and innovation community
• contributions to broader research or innovation users and audiences and towards wider societal benefit

Additions

Provide any further details relevant to your application. This section is optional and can be up to 500 words. You should not use it to describe additional skills, experiences or outputs, but you can use it to describe any factors that provide context for the rest of your R4RI (for example, details of career breaks if you wish to disclose them).

You should complete this section as a narrative. Do not format it like a CV.

The roles in funding applications policy has descriptions of the different project roles.

Project partners

Add details about any project partners contributions. If there are no project partners, you can indicate this on the Funding Service.

A project partner is a collaborating person or organisation who will have an integral role in your proposed research. This may include direct contributions for example cash, donated equipment and resources, or staff seconded to the project, or indirect and in-kind contributions for example use of project partner’s equipment, datasets, or facilities. Project partners may be in industry, academia, third sector or government organisations in the UK or overseas, including partners based in the EU.

A project partner is not anyone in your core team or anyone from your organisation or any of the other organisations represented by core team members.

Add the following project partner details:

• the organisation name (searchable via a drop-down list or enter the organisation’s details manually, as applicable)
• the project partner contact name and email address
• the type of contribution (direct or in-direct) and its monetary value If a detail is entered incorrectly and you have saved the entry, remove the specific project partner record and re-add it with the correct information.

If there are specific circumstances where project partners do require funding for minor costs such as travel and subsistence, these project partner costs should be claimed and justified within the resources and costs section of your application.

Important information

If you are adding a project partner to this section, you must ensure they provide you with a letter or email of support and you upload it to ‘Project partners: letters or emails of support’.

If your project partners are from industry or a company, you must also complete the ‘Industry Collaboration Framework (ICF)’ section.

For audit purposes, UKRI requires formal collaboration agreements to be put in place if an award is made.

Project partners: letters (or emails) of support

Word limit: 10

Upload a single PDF containing the letters or emails of support from each partner you named in the ‘Project partners’ section. These should be uploaded in English or Welsh only.

What the assessors are looking for in your response

If you do not have any project partners, you will be able to indicate this in the Funding Service.

What supporting statements we are looking for

We are looking for you to provide letters or emails of support from all your identified project partners.

What we are not looking for

We don’t want any other letters (or emails) of support, from people who are not your identified project partners, such as those simply expressing general support for your project. If these are included by you, they will be ignored by us and will not be used in the assessment process.

Important information

You should only provide letters or emails of support from people you have identified in the project partner section of your application, who will have an integral role in your proposed research.

What each project partner letter or email of support must include

Each project partner letter or email you provide should:

• include the name of the project partner organisation and contact information
• explain the project partners’ commitment to the project
• explain the value, relevance, and possible benefits of the proposed work, to them
• describe any additional value they will bring to the project
• not exceed two sides of A4 per project partner Project partner letters and emails of support are not required to be on headed paper or include handwritten signatures (electronic signatures are acceptable).

The Funding Service will provide document upload details when you apply.

Project partners from industry or a company

Industry or company project partners are required to download and complete the industry or company letter of support template. You must also complete the ‘Industry Collaboration Framework (ICF)’ section.

Find out more about ICF

Project partners responsible for recruiting research participants or providing human tissue or samples

If the project partner is responsible for the recruitment of people as research participants or providing human tissue their letter or email of support should include:

• agreement that the project partner will recruit the participants or provide tissue
• confirmation that what is being supplied is suitable for the proposed work
• confirmation that the quantity of tissue being supplied is suitable, but not excessive for achieving meaningful results (if applicable)

Agreement with your project partners

Ensure you have prior agreement from project partners so that, if you are offered funding, they will support your project as indicated in the ‘Project partners’ section.

For audit purposes, UKRI requires formal collaboration agreements to be put in place if an award is made.

Industry Collaboration Framework (ICF)

Word limit: 1,500

Does your application include collaboration with industry or company project partners?

What the assessors are looking for in your response

The assessors are looking for you to confirm if your proposed work involves collaboration with an industry or company project partner. If it does, you will need to follow the MRC industry collaboration framework (ICF).

By ‘industry or company’ we mean an enterprise that puts or has intention to put goods or services on a market.

For guidance to assist your decision if your proposed work requires you to follow ICF, you should explore the ICF decision tree and find out more about ICF which includes:

• collaboration agreements
• definitions of basic or applied research
• internationally based companies
• subsidy control
• intellectual property (IP) arrangements
• fully flexible and gated contributions
• the ICF assessment criteria Enter ‘Yes’ in the text box if you have industry or company project partners and you are likely to follow ICF. You should also confirm your answers to the ICF questions one to nine in the text box for each ICF project partner.

Contact informatics@mrc.ukri.org if you are unsure if your application should follow ICF.

In addition to the project partner information completed in the previous section, the assessors are looking for information relating to the nature, goals and conditions of the collaboration and any restrictions or rights to the project results that could be claimed by the industry or company project partner.

Confirm your answers to the ICF questions in the text box, repeat this process for each ICF project partner.

1. Name the industry or company project partner considered under ICF.
2. Indicate whether your application is basic research or applied research.
3. Explain why, in the absence of the requested UKRI funding, the collaboration and the planned research could not be undertaken.
4. State whether your application is under the category of fully flexible contribution or gated contribution (based on the IP sharing arrangements with the industry or company partner).
5. Outline the pre-existing IP (‘background IP’) that each partner, including the academic partner, will bring to the collaborative research project and the terms under which partners may access these assets.
6. Outline the IP that is expected to be developed during the collaborative research project (‘foreground IP’) and briefly outline how it will be managed, including:

• - - who will own this IP
  • what rights industry or company partners will have to use academically-generated foreground IP during and after the research project, for internal research and development or for commercial purposes
  • any rights of the academic partner to commercialise the foreground IP, including foreground IP generated by industry or company partners

1. Outline any restrictions to dissemination of the project results, including the rights of the industry or company partner to:

• - - review, approve or delay publications (including the time period associated with such rights)
  • request or require the removal of any information

1. Declare any conflicts of interest held by the applicants in relation to the industry or company project partners and describe how they will be managed.
2. Justify collaborating with an overseas industry or company under ICF (if applicable). Failure to provide the information requested for industry or company partners under ICF could result in your application being rejected.

You are recommended to discuss the goals and conditions of any collaboration with an industry or company with your technology transfer or contracts office before applying.

For audit purposes, UKRI requires formal collaboration agreements to be put in place if an award is made. You must provide us with a copy of the collaboration agreement, signed by all partners, before an ICF award starts.

If this does not apply to your proposed work, you will be able to indicate this in the Funding Service.

Trusted Research and Innovation (TR&I)

Word limit: 100

Does your proposed work relate to UKRI’s Trusted Research and Innovation principles?

What the assessors are looking for in your response

Demonstrate how your proposed work relates to UKRI’s Trusted Research and Innovation principles including:

• - - list any dual-use (both military and non-military) applications to your research
  • if this project is relevant to one or more of the 17 areas of the UK National Security and Investment (NSI) Act, of the UK National Security and Investment (NSI) Act, please list the area(s)
  • please read the academic export control guidance and confirm if an export control license is required for this project and the status of any application(s)
  • if your project involves any items or substances on the UK strategic export control list, please list these We may ask you to provide additional TR&I information later, in line with UKRI TR&I Principles and funding terms and conditions (RGC 2.6.2, 2.7.1 and 2.7.2).

International collaboration

Word limit: 100

Does the proposed work involve any international collaboration or engagement?

What the assessors are looking for in your response

Provide details about your expected international collaboration or engagement, including:

• - - a list of the countries your international project co-leads, project partners, visiting researchers, or other collaborators are based in
  • details of any subcontractors or service providers If your proposed work does not involve international collaboration or engagement, you will be able to indicate this in the Funding Service.

Ethics and responsible research and innovation (RRI)

Word limit: 500

What are the ethical and RRI considerations, implications and issues relating to the proposed work? If you do not think that the proposed work raises any ethical or RRI issues, explain why.

What the assessors are looking for in your response

Demonstrate that you have identified and evaluated:

• - - the relevant ethical and RRI considerations, including both the research or topic area itself and the design and delivery of the project
  • the wider implications of the proposed work, and how you will maximise the positive societal, environmental, and economic benefits arising from the project, whilst minimising unintended negative impacts, such as research misuse or accidental harm
  • how you will manage these considerations throughout the lifecycle of the project Consider the MRC guidance on ethics and approvals.

You may demonstrate elements of your responses in visual form if relevant. Further details are provided in the Funding Service.

Please refer to the UKRI position statement on funding ethical research and Responsible innovation for more information around our expectations on ethical and responsible research and innovation.

Resources and cost justification

Word limit: 1,000

What will you need to deliver and manage the proposed infrastructure and how much will it cost?

What the assessors are looking for in your response

Justify the application’s more costly resources, in particular:

• - - project staff
  • significant travel for field work or collaboration (but not regular travel between collaborating organisations or to conferences)
  • any consumables beyond typical requirements, or that are required in exceptional quantities
  • all facilities and infrastructure costs
  • if applicable, disposal or decommissioning costs
  • all resources that have been costed as ‘Exceptions’
  • if applicable, subscription costs
  • support for public and patient involvement and engagement. Payments to public partners can be included under the exceptions fund heading
  • support for international co-leads, demonstrating this is within the 30% costs cap for co-leads from high-income countries, India and China. There is no cap on costs requested for international applicants from DAC list countries This funding opportunity is not subject to full economic costing. We will fund 100% of the justified costs and all costs should be entered as exceptions.

You can request costs associated with reasonable adjustments where they increase as a direct result of working on the project. For further information see Disability and accessibility support for UKRI applicants and grant holders.

Assessors are not looking for detailed costs or a line-by-line breakdown of all project resources. Overall, they want you to demonstrate how the resources you anticipate needing for your proposed work:

• - are comprehensive, appropriate, and justified
  • represent the optimal use of resources to achieve the intended outcomes
  • maximise potential outcomes and impacts

How we will assess your application

Assessment process

We will assess your application using the following process.

Examination of applications

All applications will be examined to ensure they meet the eligibility criteria and scope of the funding opportunity. If your application is deemed to be outside the scope of the funding opportunity you will be advised by email, and your application will be rejected. We aim to notify you of a rejection around two weeks after the closing date of the funding opportunity.

Panel

Your application will be assessed by a panel of experts with expertise in managing large infrastructure investments and those with data management expertise. The panel will interview you after which the panel will make a funding recommendation .

We expect interviews to be held week commencing 27 July 2026.

MRC will make the final funding decision.

For more information on how we prioritise applications for funding please visit How we make decisions.

Timescale

We aim to complete the assessment process within four months of receiving your application, with awards required to start 1 October 2026.

Feedback

We will give feedback with the outcome of your application.

Principles of assessment

We support the San Francisco declaration on research assessment and recognise the relationship between research assessment and research integrity.

Find out about the UKRI principles of assessment and decision making.

Using generative artificial intelligence (AI) in expert review

Reviewers and panellists are not permitted to use generative AI tools to develop their assessment, including to correct language, spelling, grammar and formatting. Using these tools can potentially compromise the confidentiality of the ideas that applicants have entrusted to UKRI to safeguard.

For more detail see our policy on the use of generative AI.

We reserve the right to modify the assessment process as needed.

Assessment areas

The assessment areas we will use are:

• Vision
• Approach (including data management)
• Applicant and team capability to deliver
• Ethics and responsible research and innovation
• Resource and cost justification Find details of assessment questions and criteria under the ‘Application questions’ heading in the ‘How to apply’ section.

Contact details

Get help with your application

If you have a question and the answers aren’t provided on this page

The helpdesk is committed to helping users of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Funding Service as effectively and as quickly as possible. In order to manage cases at peak volume times, the helpdesk will triage and prioritise those queries with an imminent opportunity deadline or a technical issue. Enquiries raised where information is available on the Funding finder opportunity page and should be understood early in the application process (for example, regarding eligibility, content or remit of a funding opportunity) will not constitute a priority case and will be addressed as soon as possible.

Contact details

For help and advice on costings and writing your application please contact your research office in the first instance, allowing sufficient time for your organisation’s submission process.

For questions related to this specific funding opportunity please contact Paul.Colville-Nash@mrc.ukri.org copying in informatics@mrc.ukri.org

For general questions related to MRC funding including our funding opportunities and policy please contact rfpd@mrc.ukri.org

Any queries regarding the system or the submission of applications through the Funding Service should be directed to the helpdesk.

Email: support@funding-service.ukri.org
Phone: 01793 547490

Our phone lines are open:

• Monday to Thursday 8:30am to 5:00pm
• Friday 8:30am to 4:30pm To help us process queries more efficiently, we request that users highlight the council and opportunity name in the subject title of their email query, include the application reference number, and refrain from contacting more than one mailbox at a time.

For further information on submitting an application read How applicants use the Funding Service.

Additional info

Background

UK Government’s Life Sciences Sector Plan

This MRC-led investment will deliver on the government’s plan for life sciences as set out in its Life Sciences Sector Plan, supporting the repair and transformation of both the nation’s economy as part of the government’s Industrial Strategy, and the nation’s health in alignment with the commitments set out in the 10 Year Health Plan. It will be supported over the lifetime of the Spending Review by government funding of over £2 billion, alongside funding from UKRI and NIHR.

The Life Sciences Sector Plan focuses on three core, interconnected pillars of:

• enabling world class R&D
• making the UK an outstanding place in which to start, grow, scale, and invest
• driving health Innovation and NHS reform NPIP, a UKRI Infrastructure Fund investment, cuts across all three of these pillars and will ensure that academia, the NHS and life sciences industrial partners have access to the cutting-edge total-body PET imaging needed to support groundbreaking biomedical and clinical research and to improve patient care.

NPIP is a UK-wide network of cutting-edge total-body scanners, offering imaging technology up to 40 times more sensitive than conventional systems, with significantly reduced scanning times and radiation exposure. This advancement enables safer diagnostics for vulnerable groups, including children and pregnant women, and facilitates earlier disease detection and faster treatment.

Groundbreaking discoveries enabled by NPIP, have the potential to improve diagnosis and support the development of life-saving treatments – significantly enhancing healthcare outcomes across the nation while delivering economic growth.

Objectives for the national total-body PET Imaging Platform

NPIP’s overarching objective is to drive UK biomedical research through the establishment and deployment of a national total body PET capability.

Underpinning this overarching objective are four more specific sub-objectives. These are to:

• make PET a world-class provision in the UK and elevate the UK for globally important clinical trials
• increase clinical translation and commercialisation of PET technology and novel radiotracers
• enable better access to state-of-the-art imaging facilities for academia, industry, and small and medium sized enterprises (SME)s

• drive improved patient outcomes and increased healthcare efficiencies
  The investment into a national platform will overcome many of the existing barriers to PET innovation and translation and deliver the long terms benefits, these are to:

• enable healthcare advancements through the broader application of PET in new disease areas

• unlock novel chemistry to reinvestigate radioligands not previously translatable

• maintain the UK’s position at the forefront of biomedical imaging

• form a focus for collaboration, for global users

• provide economic benefits and provide industry access to this advanced imaging technology

• create new opportunities for cross-sector & cross-discipline scientific research, data collection, analysis and modelling

• provide a platform for skills development and training

• enhance the scale of clinical research projects by increased number of scans per day

• stimulate the development and growth of small-medium enterprise and commercial translation.

A UK vision for a transformed DRI landscape

In considering investment strategies for digital research infrastructure within MRC’s remit, MRC (together with NIHR) previously published the following vision statement (noting recent NHS developments to establish the Health Data Research Service):

Across the UK, the landscape is changing rapidly, in particular development of the NHS Data for R&D Programme including the secure data environment network, developments arising as a result of reviews and reports in health data science (notably Data Saves Lives and the Goldacre Review) and other funders developing their own research data strategies (for instance, Cancer Research UK).

If activities to support, manage, link, share and access data at scale for use in cutting edge data science intensive research are to harness these advances, it is vital that funders such as MRC and National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) can meet these increasing demands for infrastructures, including software, that can generate, share, link, support and analyse data at increasing scale and of increasing complexity.

To guide investments and sign-post directions of travel for the community, we are developing a roadmap driving towards a 2035 vision for a transformational UK digital research infrastructure landscape that will position the UK as a global leader in life science data-intensive research. To achieve this ambitious vision, we will:

1. Support an ecosystem underpinned and driven by a societal recognition and appetite for use of sensitive data at scale in the public good.
2. Support recognition of the benefits from making data available for use, and recognition of the harms/lost opportunities from not doing so to support decision on risk that allow data availability.
3. Develop a skilled and accredited workforce, operating to the highest standards and able to understand, develop, implement, and evaluate data science approaches and tools needed to support our aims.
4. Facilitate collection and use of data that is truly representative of the UK population through mandating requirements to address issues of equality, diversity and inclusivity, including capturing hard to reach, under-represented, under-served or digitally excluded communities.
5. Support an understood system of trusted information governance by accredited UK review bodies that meets the Five Safes Framework, where each decision is trusted by many to reduce duplication of effort while retaining public trust and the confidence of data custodians in decision making:

• - safe data: data is appropriately managed in accredited environments to address confidentiality while securing interoperability and fitness for purpose
  • safe projects: agreed approaches to secure single project review
  • safe people: agreed frameworks to support one-time researcher or research team project review
  • safe settings: researchers or research teams work in and across secure data environments (SDEs) or trusted research environments (TREs) that trust each other through accreditation
  • safe outputs: outputs from analyses are approved to ensure they are non-disclosive using cutting edge decision support tools that can work across multiply different analytical approaches including advanced computational approaches and across multiple simultaneous environments being used in analyses

1. Ensure that all life sciences data are supported to seek to meet ‘FAIR’ standards at depth, noting importance of metadata standards to support both feasibility and analyses.
2. Support an ecosystem with a minimal number of mandated tools/systems which support data discovery and access:

• - Data and metadata catalogues for all UK life sciences data
  • support for feasibility studies without the need to secure (sensitive) data access (which may include synthetic data models)
  • directions to open source and science tools, reproducible analytical pipelines and other forms of secure digital repositories of knowledge
  • support to build expert communities of interest and practice

1. Develop a truly federated data science ecosystem (that is, data doesn’t move for analysis) supported by accredited and evaluated data science tools to enable such from access to analysis to outputs, including systems to enable the development of next generation solutions.
2. Support a system of accredited TREs or SDEs that host life science relevant data and can seamlessly work together to support data intensive research and development and innovation, including agilely adapting to innovation in both infrastructure design and analytical capabilities.
3. Support development of systems of indexation through privacy enhancing technologies that enable related individual data at population scale to be linked across multiple data assets at different scales.
4. Support development of systems of common data models that have community buy-in.
5. Support development of a system where funders can identify and understand where their funding has been used and made a difference, including to provide reassurance to support new ways of funding data and digital research infrastructures.
6. Support development of a system where data custodians and public participants can identify and understand where their data has been used and for what, including ensuring acknowledgements of their role in such use for those that require such acknowledgements.

Research and innovation impact

Impact can be defined as the long-term intended or unintended effect research and innovation has on society, economy and the environment; to individuals, organisations, and the wider global population.

Disruption due to COVID-19

We recognise that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused major interruptions and disruptions across our communities. We are committed to ensuring that individual applicants and their wider team, including partners and networks, are not penalised for any disruption to their career, such as:

1. 1. - breaks and delays
   • disruptive working patterns and conditions
   • the loss of ongoing work
   • role changes that may have been caused by the pandemic Reviewers and panel members will be advised to consider the unequal impacts that COVID-19 related disruption might have had on the capability to deliver and career development of those individuals included in the application. They will be asked to consider the capability of the applicant and their wider team to deliver the research they are proposing.

Where disruptions have occurred, you can highlight this within your application if you wish, but there is no requirement to detail the specific circumstances that caused the disruption.

Timeline

1 April 2026 9:00am Opening date 17 June 2026 4:00pm Closing date Week commencing 27 July 2026 Interviews August 2026 Funding decision meeting September 2026 Informed of funding decisions

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• Corporate policies and standards
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• Infrastructure Fund projects
• National PET Imaging Platform (NPIP)

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