This week we will be joined by Mike Madden from the Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) to speak about how DASA works and how you might want to get involved. Please see a brief outline below from Mike to see if this is something which is relevant to your company / innovation.

What DASA does

• The 2 main funding opportunities DASA has that may be of interest to you are our Open and Themed competition channels. From the DASA homepage you can select the ‘Apply for funding’ tab on the top right to navigate to information on our Open (innovator push) and Themed (customer pull) competitions.
• The Open competition cycles throughout the year and welcomes essentially any ideas that are of relevance to defence or security. For the Open competition, full details are on our Open Call webpage. The main caveat is that any project we fund needs to conclude at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 6.
• Themed competitions are demand-led activities and are time bounded. However, their expectations in terms of project value, target TRL and funding limits do vary, and may sometimes be more appealing regarding early-stages research than the Open Call generally is. Also, DASA will almost certainly periodically get Themed competitions that would be of interest to you.
• The Innovation Focus Areas (IFA) are notionally a sub-set of the Open Call, and have common opening and closing dates, but in reality, you should think of them as a bit like a ‘Themed Competition Lite’. In common with Themed they are topical and their requirements with regards to target TRL, project duration and costs will vary according to the needs of the IFA sponsors. However, they differ from most Themed Competitions in that they are normally open for a number of cycles, once again as required by the customer.
• Currently, DASA has only one IFA open but in the past have had up to 4 open at any given time.
• Keep an eye on any DASA opportunities by either setting up an alert to the website posts or by signing up to the DASA mail list.

Ideas Market Place
Please be aware of the Defence Innovation website. A number of organisations in the defence innovation ecosystem are signposted here, with some high-level descriptions of what they do. From this page you can also get to the new Ideas Marketplace and Collaboration Finder, which broadens the visibility of companies and their ideas to cross-government stakeholders and others in industry. This will enable you to seek out potential collaborations, but also allow others to find you. This is a new service, and the content is still growing, but I would certainly recommend you consider registering. It is worth you being aware that a company can have multiple registrants, perhaps based on the technical or business divisions the individuals come from within the company.

Defence Innovation Loans
DASA manages a Defence Innovation Loans (DIL) scheme too. DASA and Innovate UK Loans Ltd (Innovate UK) are working together to offer this competition. This service provides an opportunity for single small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with solutions to Defence themed problems to apply for a Defence Innovation Loan of between £100,000 and £2 million with a below market interest rate of 7.4% per annum. This loan can be used to cover up to 100% of eligible project costs to aid the commercialisation of the solution.

EMR
In addition to working with DASA you could take a look at directly working with the various Defence Science and Technology Laboratory programmes (Dstl). The work ranges from low technology readiness, proof of concept, projects, all the way to applied technologies for specific capability programmes. General information on working with Dstl can be found here, and there is a particularly useful digest on the various opportunities, by technical and environmental discipline, here. From the main landing page you can navigate to the main extant EMR frameworks that are currently in place, here. I might also suggest taking a look at RCloud, as this is used to help match customer needs with supplier research capabilities too. Also, on this page you can find a some details on published work completed by Dstl.

About Mike Madden
Mike is the Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) regional Innovation Partner for the South West of England.

Mike’s role is to work with network, academic and industry organisations, and individuals in the local innovation ecosystem to offer advice on DASA opportunities, to foster collaboration and partnering between innovators, and to provide guidance on how to work with DASA, as well as defence and security more widely. Mike talks to individuals from companies on a daily basis, and also presents at regional and national events, both in person and on-line, on a weekly basis.

Mike’s earlier careers in both the Royal Air Force and latterly in the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) have given him a wealth of experience and knowledge in defence and security capability management, acquisition, and cutting edge science and technology.

In the Royal Air Force, he specialised in guided weapon systems and force protection and spent the latter part of his career specialising in defence procurement in a variety of staff and programme management roles. Since joining Dstl in 2009, he has been in a variety of technical, programme management and leadership roles, including a 2-year loan to HQ Army as a Science Advisor for combat aviation.