Synthetic biology for transparent materials

This Centre for Defence Enterprise (CDE) themed competition is looking for highly innovative, ambitious proposals using synthetic biology approaches to produce transparent materials for defence and security.

The best ideas could share up to £1 million to develop them further in a second phase of the competition.

There is a need in the military for transparent armour that is highly robust, maintains its optical properties despite impact, and is compatible with night vision.

Synthetic biology applies engineering principles to biology to develop new biological devices and new materials.

CDE is seeking ideas in two areas:

• novel transparent materials
• adhesives and interlayer materials to use with transparent materials

Proposals must have a synthetic biology component in their approach and phase 1 projects should produce enough material to demonstrate the proof of concept.

Total Funding

• Up to £750,000 is available for phase 1 of this competition.
• The CDE expect to fund a number of projects around £40,000 to £80,000 with research lasting up to 9 months, with phase 1 deliverables completed by the end of February 2018
• Up to £1 million will be made available for phase 2. This will only be to projects funded through phase 1 of the competition and will be considered on a per-project basis

Additional Information

• The competition is open to any organisation and is for fully funded development contracts
• Contracts in the first phase are expected to be worth between £40,000 and £80,000 and to last up to 9 months
• Competition briefing events take place on 1 December and 5 December 2016