Digital Catapult Fellowship Programme

University research into the 'Digital Economy' looks at the transformational impact that digital technologies can have on aspects of community life, cultural experiences, future society, and the economy. The Fellowship Programme proposed will enable researchers working in this area to spend time in the Digital Catapult, a national centre set up to accelerate the best digital ideas into new products and services. Within the Catapult, Fellows will work alongside technology companies and other user groups, to rapidly integrate their research with user needs in order to deliver actual technologies and products that can be adopted by users.

There will be two levels of Fellowship. Junior Fellows will be relatively early in their academic career, and be based in the Catapult full-time, taking forward their research interests within one of the Catapult's existing projects. Senior Fellows will be individuals with a long track record of relevant research. They will help to develop new Catapult projects and activities alongside their own research, on either a full-time or part-time basis. The Programme will have two calls for applications each year, and will award up to four fellowships each time.

Alongside the individual projects, Programme staff will run a range of events designed to give Fellows the chance to network with one another and share experiences. Events will also be used to promote the Programme, the benefits of working with the Catapult, and the broad impacts of Digital Economy-related research, to both the academic and the wider community. Each Fellow will have responsibility for producing a case study of their project; these will be important components in demonstrating the breadth of impacts of DE research, and the speed at which these result when academics and industry work in close collaboration with one another.

As a Programme, the Digital Catapult Fellowship Programme will support impact generation and user outreach within the DE Theme, while also supporting better integration across academic actors active in DE research, including DE Research hubs, DE Network+s, and research centres with strong DE research portfolios.

The Digital Catapult Fellowship Programme will deliver impact across the breadth of DE research stakeholders (both existing and potential users), from Universities, to in particular the industrial and commercial communities, Government and the wider public.
Through enabling excellent junior and senior academics active in DE Theme based research to engage with the Digital Catapult and its industrial and commercial partners, the Fellowship Programme is designed to provide a direct route to impact for cutting edge DE research, to boost its adoption by users and maximise tangible real world benefits associated with the research. To ascertain the considerable potential of thusly increasing the speed to market and speed to use of DE research outputs, it is sufficient to consider the rapidly growing business and public discussion around the ever-increasing use of personal data (from Experian to the NHS).
Fostering strong engagement between DE researchers and users will lead to improved products and services in and beyond the UK, in turn increasing competitiveness of for example UK companies and putting the UK at the leading edge of the rapidly developing digital economy. The strong interdisciplinary track record of DE research will also enable users from both from the industrial/commercial and the institutional space to benefit directly through improved policies (e.g., around data privacy) both internally and externally.
The same engagement arising from the Fellowship Programme between DE researchers and users which will benefit the users will, at the same time, directly & positively impact the UK research base by informing and co-shaping the research agenda. The latter will support the delivery of high-quality, high-impact research and give the individual fellows (as well as their institutions and the UK research base generally) an edge over many of their peers, enabling career progression and future leadership.
Finally, the users, the researchers and the UK as a whole will benefit from increased communication and collaboration between users and research, resulting in long term extended impact and providing high-value return for the funds invested into the fellowship programme.