Grant Funding & Scholarships
Current UK–Italy grant funding is modest but impactful, showing how small schemes can seed dense, durable collaboration.
Overview
- The UK–Italy Trustworthy AI Visiting Researcher Programme supported 36 short exchanges and produced roughly 70 joint outputs.
- GREAT Scholarships and Royal Society–CNR cost-share grants broaden talent pipelines and senior research links, yet remain small and largely untargeted to AI, quantum or HPC.
- These Modest Collaborative Grants (MCGs) are effective “relationship builders” but do not yet fund shared infrastructure or multi-year flagship projects.
Turing Fellowships: Doctoral researchers and above
The UK-Italy Trustworthy AI Visiting Researcher Programme (2023–24) funded short research exchanges focused on ethical and trustworthy AI. It supported 36 researchers across healthcare, cybersecurity, and machine learning, delivered with The Alan Turing Institute and FAIR Foundation. Funded via the FCDO Tech Standard and Partnership Fund at roughly £86,000 total programme cost for the mobility component, the pilot showcases the value of a scoped thematic frame, collaborative governance, and a standardised short-stay envelope. Drawing from this model to develop cognate programmes in quantum and HPC — with FAIR’s role potentially taken by NQSTI or ICSC — could address early-career mobility constraints at marginal cost.
GREAT Scholarships: Taught masters students
UK GREAT Scholarships provide a tuition-fee contribution (typically ~£10,000 or more) for one-year taught postgraduate degrees at selected UK institutions, run by the British Council. The scheme opened to Italian students for the first time in 2025–26, funding 8 Italian students with scholarships worth at least £10,000 each, with 5 awards expected in 2026. Italian-focused awards are offered by named UK universities (e.g. Warwick, Bath, Leicester), sometimes at higher values.
Royal Society & CNR Co-funding
This scheme supports small, bilateral research collaborations between UK-based researchers and colleagues at Italy’s National Research Council (CNR), co-funded by the Royal Society and CNR. In practice these are usually 2–3-year joint research projects or cost-share grants of up to ~£12,000, paying mainly for short visits and travel. They are light-touch, flexible seed funds that help teams build relationships and position for larger joint grants. The scheme is small — 5 projects were selected for 2026-27 from 31 applications — and research leaders recommend expanding it with larger budgets or targeted themes like quantum and HPC.