Mid-range equipment for biosciences research: ALERT 2026

Full Job Description

Opportunity status: Upcoming

Funders:

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)

Funding type: Grant

Total fund: £13,000,000

Award range: £200,000 - £1,500,000

Publication date: 12 October 2026

Opening date:

22 October 2026 9:00am UK time

Closing date:

14 January 2027 4:00pm UK time

Apply for funding to purchase mid-range equipment for research across BBSRC’s scientific remit.

This is an equipment only grant. Applications must request a single piece of equipment to be widely used and well supported, promoting access, collaboration and equipment sharing.

You must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for BBSRC funding. Research technical professionals are eligible as project leads or project co-leads.

The full economic cost (FEC) of your application can be up to £1.5 million. BBSRC will fund 100% of the FEC.

Awards last for 12 months and must start by 3 August 2027.

Eligibility

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

Check if you meet the individual eligibility criteria.

Demand Management

Organisations may submit a maximum of three applications to this funding opportunity. Potential applicants are advised to contact their research office at the earliest opportunity. We encourage organisations to discuss and prioritise their submissions, to ensure high-quality applications that are competitive for funding.

An individual may only apply as the project lead on one application, and as project co-lead on one other application. As applications will be in direct competition with each other, this approach is generally not recommended unless the applications are in distinctly different research areas.

Applications involving two or more collaborating research organisations are welcome but must be submitted as one application on the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Funding Service by the lead research organisation.

Research Technical Professionals

Building on the Technician Commitment UKRI Action Plan and the UKRI people and teams action plan, we particularly encourage applications from research technical professionals as either project leads or project co-leads. In line with UKRIs individual eligibility policy, a research technical professional can be listed as a project lead or project co-lead, provided they can:

• demonstrate the expertise, skills and capability to deliver the proposed application

• show how they will achieve the proposed outcomes, including appropriate project management, leadership and knowledge

If you are unsure whether you are eligible, contact bbsrcalert@bbsrc.ukri.org

International Researchers

International researchers are not eligible to apply for funding as part of this funding opportunity, but they can be included as project partners or international collaborators if relevant.

Resubmissions

We will not accept uninvited resubmissions of applications that have previously been submitted to UKRI. Find out more about application resubmissions.

If you have submitted a similar application that has either been assessed or is currently under assessment by another funder, please contact bbsrcalert@bbsrc.ukri.org as soon as possible. We will advise whether your new application is eligible for submission to ALERT 2026. Eligible resubmissions must clearly address previous panel feedback and have been prioritised for submission to ALERT 2026 by the lead research organisation.

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.

Demand Management

Demand management is being applied to this funding opportunity. Further details are provided in the ‘Who can apply’ section.

Scope

The BBSRC Infrastructure Strategic Framework highlights the fundamental importance of supporting a diverse range of infrastructure to ensure the continued success of the UK biosciences. A key component of this is advanced, multi-user equipment that addresses the shared needs of research organisations, industry and end user communities.

Equipment funded through ALERT plays a vital role in driving the ambitions set out in BBSRC’s Forward Look for UK Bioscience, which calls for strategic, future facing investment in the technologies and skills that underpin discovery and challenge-led research.

We recognise that new technologies, tools and approaches, often spanning several disciplines, are revolutionising biology and are providing unprecedented opportunities to:

• advance understanding of the complex, dynamic processes that govern life

• apply that knowledge for the benefit of society and the economy

To support this approach, this funding opportunity encourages you to apply for:

• equipment that will be widely used and underpins capability for scientific areas within BBSRC’s remit

• equipment that promotes collaboration and increased access for users in industry and other public sector institutions

• emerging research technologies or the use of equipment in new ways

• equipment that upgrades or replaces existing ‘workhorse’ equipment

Read more about the BBSRC remit.

Duration

The duration of this award is a maximum of 12 months.

Projects must start by 3 August 2027.

Funding Available

This is an equipment only grant. The FEC of your award can be between £200,000 and £1.5 million, including VAT if applicable.

BBSRC will fund 100% of the FEC.

Funding must be requested under the ‘Exceptions – equipment’ heading only. Do not request costs under the ‘Directly Incurred – equipment’ heading. No other cost types are eligible under this funding opportunity, and applications with costs under any other heading will be rejected without consultation.

Contributions from host organisations and other external sources are welcome but not mandatory. These may take the form of cash contributions, running costs or staff resourcing associated with the equipment, for example, managing, operating, or providing training on the equipment. Any contributions from elsewhere must be secured at the time of submission.

What We Will Fund

Only one piece of equipment may be funded. This can include equipment that requires assembly or involves several components (not necessarily physically linked) provided they meet one of the following criteria:

• a pipeline: an end-to-end experimental process made up of several components that may require assembly

• a platform: a single piece of experimental equipment that may be constituted from multiple parts

You must contact us to check eligibility of any pipeline or platform before submission at bbsrcalert@bbsrc.ukri.org

If you plan to apply for a pipeline or platform, your application must provide robust justification for why it should be considered as such. Applications consisting of several components that are not considered to meet either of these definitions will be rejected.

In a large multi-component application that is otherwise in scope, one or more small components costing under £10,000 may be requested. These must be from the same supplier with all components forming a single invoice. If they cannot be sourced from the same supplier, your research organisation will need to fund each component under £10,000 separately.

Costs such as initial installation or service maintenance contracts can be included if they are one-off costs and part of the manufacturer’s offer. These costs should be included in the equipment quotation. Service maintenance contracts can be up to three years in duration and must be paid within the duration of the grant. We expect that organisations will make longer term arrangements to ensure appropriate ongoing support over the lifetime of the equipment.

Refurbishment or installation costs may be eligible providing these are critical to the proper functioning of the equipment, for example, a ventilation system or cold room. These costs must be itemised in the application and fully justified.

All equipment requested must be on the market at the time of submission.

What We Will Not Fund

The following applications are excluded from ALERT 2026. We reserve the right to reject such applications without consultation:

• applications where the principal beneficiaries are outside BBSRC remit

• applications where the principal beneficiaries are outside the UK

• applications that request any other costs apart from capital funding and associated maintenance costs (for example running costs, staff costs, consumables, estate, and indirect costs)

• applications that request costs with a total value below £200,000 or above £1.5 million (including VAT)

• applications that exceed 12 months in duration

• applications for single-user or single-project equipment

• unsolicited resubmissions of applications that have previously been considered by BBSRC or any other funder

• applications that are similar to another application currently under assessment by another funder

• applications where additional contributions are dependent on the outcome of applications to other funders or partners that are still under consideration

• multi-component applications that do not meet our pipeline or platform definition

• requests for the purchase of equipment that constitute common elements of a well-found laboratory (such as centrifuges, fridges, incubators)

• applications where the specified equipment is scheduled for market release after 14 January 2027

• applications for technology development (although the use of new or emerging technologies is encouraged)

• applications that include general maintenance costs or depreciation costs

Additional Funding Considerations

Service maintenance contracts may extend a maximum of 24 months past the end date of the award (36 months in total), but the contract cost must be paid within the lifetime of the grant (12 months). Where a compelling case can be made for warranties and service contracts extending beyond 36 months, these will be considered if appropriately justified.

We expect that institutions will make longer-term arrangements to ensure appropriate ongoing support over the lifetime of the equipment. Separately negotiated service contracts are not eligible for this funding opportunity.

The application must not request costs for staff or other ineligible costs. However, you should indicate the % full time equivalent allocated to each applicant named on the project within the application.

You must obtain three quotes for the equipment, from multiple suppliers where possible, and use these as the basis for completing the ‘Resources and cost justification’ section.

You are not required to attach quotes to your application. However, if you are successful, we may ask you for quotes prior to award.

We recommend you make use of equipment databases when deciding on what equipment to request, such as the Equipment Data Service operated by Jisc.

Managing VAT exceptions on equipment is the responsibility of the research organisation. If the research organisation is confident that they meet HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) criteria for exemption, then they can submit without VAT. In such cases, if the value is pushed just below the minimum £200,000 threshold because VAT has been excluded, then this will be accepted.

Open Research And Alert

Open research is integral to UKRI’s mission to deliver economic and social benefit. We aim to promote open sharing of all research data, including data arising from ALERT-funded equipment.

To help maximise the impact of our funding, we encourage you to consider manufacturers who provide openly accessible data formats with their equipment.

Use of open formats ensures that deposition of data in public data repositories is as easy as possible and eliminates the need for costly and time-consuming data conversion steps when data is submitted to public repositories. Using these formats helps to enhance transparency, openness, verification, and reproducibility in research supported by ALERT.

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)

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has a long-standing and continuing commitment to supporting and enabling safe and effective collaboration in research and innovation. UKRI is equally committed to ensuring that this takes place with integrity and within strong ethical frameworks.

Our Principles and expectations set out the principles that UKRI applies to TR&I and our general expectations of the research organisations (including businesses, research institutes, and research technical organisations) that we support. Organisations supported by UKRI should be able to provide evidence that their internal controls and processes meet these expectations.

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 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 team members and project partners to contribute to the application.

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

To Apply

Select ‘Start application’ near the beginning of this Funding finder page.

• Confirm you are the project lead.

• Sign in or create a Funding Service account. To create an account, select your organisation, verify your email address, and set a password.

• 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.

• Allow enough time to check your application in ‘read-only’ view before sending to your research office.

• Send the completed application to your research office for checking. They will return it to you if it needs editing.

• 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

BBSRC must receive your application by 14 January 2027 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 may be rejected.

Processing Personal Data

BBSRC 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 bbsrcalert@bbsrc.ukri.org

Include in the subject line: [the funding opportunity title; 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

BBSRC as part of UKRI, will publish the outcomes of this funding opportunity at BBSRC Funding Application Outcomes.

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 work in terms of:

• context

• the research the equipment will enable

• aims and objectives

• potential outcomes 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)

• specialist

• professional enabling staff

• research and innovation associate

• technician

• researcher co-lead (RcL)

Only list one individual as project lead.

The core team should only include those individuals involved in the delivery and operation of the requested equipment. Details of users and projects should be provided in the ‘Vision’ section. Any suppliers, manufacturers or industrial partners that have an integral role in the grant should be included in the ‘Project partners’ section and should provide a letter of support.

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.

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

Check if you meet the individual eligibility criteria.