“As set out in our Strategy 2030, we are building a university where ideas move seamlessly from discovery to application, supported by stronger innovation pathways, enhanced research translation, and deep partnerships across industry, government, and the NHS. The new Innovation Development Award will empower our researchers to overcome critical barriers and help ensure that groundbreaking work at King’s delivers meaningful benefits for society.”
Professor Sebastien Ourselin, Assistant Principal (Innovation)
18 February 2026
King's launches £500k Innovation Development Award
The Innovation Development Award is a new funding opportunity to advance proof-of-concept technologies and solutions, delivered by King’s Innovation Catalyst.
King’s College London is proud to announce the Innovation Development Award, a new scheme that accelerates the development of innovative technologies, products, processes and services created from King’s research.
The award offers up to £50,000 for projects lasting up to 12 months. It helps technologies or solutions at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 4-7 to overcome critical pinch points in product development.
The fund is open to researchers across King's to address specific barriers that prevent technologies from advancing to the next stage of commercial readiness. It champions projects to:
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progress to an increased Technology Readiness Level
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address feedback from innovation grants, potential investors or licensees
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improve patentability by exemplifying current claims or providing additional evidence
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enhance commercial readiness through stakeholder engagement, health economics, market assessments, etc.
Applications for the Innovation Development Award close on 15 May 2026. For more information on how to apply, please see the award page.
Visit King’s Innovation Catalyst’s event page to register for the award’s launch events running on 18 and 23 March, where you can hear about the call and ask questions.
Building on the successes of the Commercial Development Fund (CDF), which bridged the innovation gap for medical innovations, the Innovation Development Award opens these opportunities to a wider range of disciplines and innovation types across the university.
This transformative support at this critical mid-point of development has been proven to accelerate solutions to the next level. With this funding, Reza Razavi, Professor of Paediatric Cardiovascular Science, was able to further commercialise his AI-assisted foetal scanning tool. It allowed him to hire a consultant to assist with the regulatory aspects of clinical use and support his team to build the user interface and run usability studies.
“The support was the crucial enabler of turning promising research into viable commercial and clinical proposition. It allowed leverage of substantial Wellcome Trust and EPSRC research funding into a successful start-up that has obtained external follow-on investment and regulatory approval for its quality management system and first product.”
Professor Reza Razavi, CEO of Fraiya
As a direct result of the funding, Fraiya Ltd was launched in 2024 with licensed intellectual property, and the venture received £675K of external fundings from investors and subsequently 2.75M of non-diluting further grant and financial support.
Similarly, Julia Schnabel, Professor in Computational Imaging and AI in Medicine, needed to bridge the gap between funding at a crucial moment for her spinout, XRnostics:
“Following the end of the grant funding, the market for seed funding was extremely challenging in the current financial climate. [The award from the university] was able to provide funding to support software development and preparedness for the quality management system support required towards regulatory approval. This came at a critical point for an early start up. Without the funding academic and NHS-borne start-ups geared towards improving outcomes to patients taste the risk of immediate demise.”
Professor Julia Schnabel, Founder Director and Chief Scientific Officer at XRnostics
Thanks to the award, the team secured the next stage of grant funding for further regulatory approval, spun out XRnostics and kept key development staff engaged in the venture.
The guidance notes, application form and portal can be found on King’s Innovation Catalyst’s intranet pages. If you would like support to apply to the Innovation Development Award, please reach out at innovation@kcl.ac.uk.
In this story
Assistant Principal (Innovation)
Vice President (Research)
Chair in Computational Imaging