Innovation Accelerator Projects - Glasgow City Region

The pilot UK Innovation Accelerator Programme has provided a share of £130 million go towards 11 ambitious local projects:

A share of £100 million for an initial 11 projects.
A £30 million extension funding to take forward seven of the initial projects.

The Projects

1. Museums in the Metaverse

Virtual museums can escape the physical and geographical constraints that curtail traditional museums, which usually limit exhibitions to less than 10% of the objects that are held in collections, and limit audience reach by cost, distance, and accessibility.

Read the UKRI case study.

The Museums in the Metaverse project seeks to address these challenges with a two-sided platform, lowering costs and catalysing sustainable user growth: one side of the proposed platform is for visitors who gain access to a rich array of museums, sites, objects, and novel and dynamic experiences; the other is for virtual curators, where experts and novices alike can build enriching and entertaining narratives using objects and venues that have never before been placed together in the real world.

This project aims to untap the potential of virtual museum experiences. This should extend the access to collections for those who cannot – for a wide variety of personal, political, and economic reasons – physically access collections that already exist, but it will also make possible exhibitions which cannot physically exist. The benefits for audiences is greater, more diverse, and more engaging access to cultural heritage. The benefits for collections and the cultural heritage sector are a vastly expanded, and diversified, audience for their collections, and through that a new and saleable revenue stream.

2. Fusing a Future

This project, led by the University of Strathclyde, is transforming Glasgow’s manufacturing sector, leveraging its rich heritage in engineering and shipbuilding to drive innovation in the net zero transition.

Traditionally, welding and inspection of high-integrity joints are separate, sequential, often manual processes in both manufacturing and repair.

Ultimately, this reduces productivity, throughput, schedule certainty and increases rework if defects are only detected at completion, a challenge similarly found in modern additive manufacturing.

Additionally, the energy required to re-heat then repair these structures significantly increases the commercial and environmental costs of manufacturing. Furthermore, a shrinking and ageing skilled workforce, along with a desire to reduce hazardous working, drives process automation. Automated in-process ultrasonic inspection during welding aims to deliver high-integrity structures right, first time, every time, overcoming current technical and process limitations. It offers significant reductions, estimated from current industrial data of: > 55% in weld process time; > 50% in overall weld cost; > 75% in man hours.

Three large-scale, reconfigurable testbeds have been established in Glasgow to facilitate collaboration between industry partners and researchers. These test-beds provide a platform for testing and validating new manufacturing processes to ensure that the developed technologies are relevant to real-world applications.

3. ReMake Glasgow

The ReMake Glasgow project, led by the University of Strathclyde-operated National Manufacturing Institute Scotland (NMIS), will create a pipeline of highly skilled green jobs and reduce waste and carbon emissions.

A first-of-its-kind national ReMake hub is now based within the Digital Factory at the NMIS HQ in Renfrewshire. It is supporting manufacturers to embrace the circular economy and extend the life of their products and systems through value retention approaches including remanufacturing refurbishing, repairing and direct reuse. This is being achieved by using disruptive technology, innovation support, and digital infrastructure that provides traceability of emissions and faster certification routes.

Currently only 1.9% of UK manufactured products incorporate any value retention process despite their vast environmental, economic, and social benefits.

The ReMake programme is driving impact across high-integrity sectors by combining advanced technologies, new business models and skills development. Through demonstrator projects and collaborative research, the programme is advancing circular economy practices that reduce waste, cut emissions, and create economic opportunities for manufacturers of all sizes.

The project consortium includes global manufacturing giants Boeing, BA Maintenance Glasgow, SSE renewables, Baker Hughes Howden and ATS Global.

4. Financial Regulation Innovation Lab (FRIL)

The Financial Regulation Innovation Lab (FRIL) is an industry-led collaborative research and innovation programme focused on leveraging new technologies to respond to, shape and help evolve the future regulatory landscape in the UK and globally.

Read the UKRI case study.

FRIL provides an environment for participants to engage and collaborate on the dynamic demands of financial regulation, explore test and experiment with new technologies, build confidence in solutions and demonstrate their ability to meet regulatory standards worldwide.

This partnership bid between the universities of Strathclyde and Glasgow and FinTech Scotland will establish a Centre for Financial Regulation with the aim of promoting economic growth, job creation, productivity gains, and innovation capability in the FinTech and Financial Services sector. The Adam Smith Business School will contribute to Actionable Research, and Skills and Education, drawing on this to design and implement research-informed professional education.

Researchers will investigate and evaluate how companies and regulators can better plan, implement and scale innovation in regulation and compliance for FinTech and Financial Services sectors as focused on Glasgow City Region. The research is part of an overall programme that addresses Innovate UK’s innovation accelerator challenge to city regions. Combined with associated training in skills and education, this research will address productivity and employment gains as the FinTech and Financial Services sector or ecosystem embeds itself in the City Region.

5. Data-driven Design and Manufacturing CoLAB (D3M_CoLAB)

The D3M_CoLAB project combines the industry-focused data and design teams at the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland (NMIS) Digital Factory with researchers and students in the University of Strathclyde’s Industrial Informatics Cluster (IIC).

This project aims to bridge the gap between manufacturing and data science by growing a cohort of individuals, embedded in industry, who can apply data science to solve industrial problems and then supporting them to deploy solutions.

They will develop a hub to provide manufacturers with advanced data analytics capability to improve their design, decision making, and operational effectiveness, ultimately making them more productive and competitive. It will place Glasgow City Region at the forefront of smart manufacturing by delivering skills and graduate placement programmes, collaborative support from NMIS and ICC experts and innovative technology vendors.

The programme will allow companies to safely explore ideas to drive forward data-driven transformation within their businesses by enabling them to replicate their physical and digital infrastructure without impacting daily business operations. Project partners include Babcock, BAE systems, Infor and Anaconda.

6. The Critical Technologies Accelerator (CTA)

Huge growth is predicted for the photonics and quantum markets in coming decades. This project is building an engineering capability, led by the University of Glasgow’s James Watt Nanofabrication Centre (JWNC), that will aid the growth of the Scottish photonics and quantum cluster. It has appointed design, test and manufacturing engineers to build on the embedded expertise and skill of the JWNC and senior University of Glasgow researchers, and is enabling industry to deliver innovative products that open up new markets.

Read the UKRI case study.

The Critical Technologies accelerator bridges the gap between academia and industry to accelerate the development and commercialisation of critical technologies in the UK. By facilitating cross-supply chain collaborations and developing proof-of-concept photonic systems, the CTA aims to deliver cutting-edge technologies such as AI, quantum tech, robotics and automation, advanced materials and biotechnology that support emerging applications in computing, communications, space, fintech, healthcare and defence.

The team are very focused on the continued advancement of this key technological area and are part of one of the Glasgow City Region Investment Zone project bids to continue developing their vital work.

7. Chemify

Chemify, a spin-out from the University of Glasgow, is pioneering on-demand chemical synthesis using chemputation technology. It’s scaling up rapidly in Glasgow, aiming to revolutionise chemical production for pharmaceuticals, materials, agriculture and green energy. With a growing team of over 120 employees, Chemify is focused on developing automated systems that can synthesis chemicals on demand, controlled entirely by computer algorithms.

Read the UKRI case study.

In June, 2025, Chemify opened the world’s first Chemputation Facility in Maryhill. The new Chemifarm site unites Chemify’s AI-driven molecular design engine with industrial-scale -scale robotic synthesis, compressing the journey from concept to compound and accelerating the discovery of small-molecule medicines and next-generation materials for partners tackling society’s toughest challenges.

This facility will serve as a precursor to a massive ‘chemical giga factory’, capable of producing trillions of unique chemicals on demand for applications ranging from pharmaceuticals and high-value materials to agriculture and green energy.

Chemify has also achieved incredible private investment after the injection of funding from the Innovation Accelerator Programme. With its initial Series B funding raising $43m and its most recent Series B funding announced in October 2025 having raised over $50million.

Additional Projects

Additional projects that were funded as part of the initial two-year funding, but not part of the 2025-2026 extension, include:

Stratellite – Transforming space and photonics manufacturing

Led by the Lightweight Manufacturing Centre, part of the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland, which is operated by the University of Strathclyde, Stratellite will develop a flexible space and photonics manufacturing facility in conjunction with the Glasgow site of Thales UK.

The partnership will deliver a combined manufacturing engineering and testing facility, fully supported by a collaboration space that helps the workforce of today and tomorrow advance their skills in data-driven manufacturing. Companies in the space and photonics sectors will be further assisted by the development of a business and technical support programme.

The project will promote the growth of the Regional supply chain in these areas, and fund researchers’ time to engage and develop capability projects to ensure Glasgow City Region and Scotland’s suppliers are leading the way in advanced, cost-effective manufacturing.

Next-Gen Remote Sensing Technologies

The Next Generation Remote-Sensing Technologies project aims to explore the viability of new technologies in uncooled infra-red detectors, novel edge processed high-definition imagers and the latest laser sensing techniques. These early-stage technologies hold the potential of being developed, matured and integrated into a new generation of world class remote sensing equipment.

Future products derived from these technologies could become significant disruptors, allowing world class systems to be produced to meet emerging capability requirements identified for military, medical diagnostic, energy monitoring, net-zero, security and surveillance applications. They are estimated to be worth an anticipated £40m in the UK market and £120m from exports over a decade.

Industrially-Led Quantum Computing Accelerator

Quantum computing is considered a strategic technology by world leading economies. It offers a new approach to information processing with significant societal and economic gains projected. It will provide a route to solve classically hard problems encountered across a diverse range of sectors, including financial services (e.g. portfolio optimisation), energy (e.g. network design and energy distribution), logistics (e.g. route planning), and IT (e.g. search, machine learning). Industrial end users are forecast to gain substantially through cost savings and revenue opportunities.

Whilst global technological progress is advancing the timeline is uncertain with long lead times and high risk. Unlocking commercial investment and economic opportunity requires the identification and demonstration of end user problems where quantum computation offers advantage. This requires a unique combination of hardware fit for commercial demonstration and an ability to define and translate end use cases.

M Squared and the University of Strathclyde formed a strategic partnership to target the commercialisation of industrially relevant neutral atom quantum computing based on a jointly developed hardware and software platform. Neutral atom quantum computing has emerged as scalable and flexible approach with potential to address valuable commercial problems in the short- to medium-term. The aim of the project is to benchmark the commercial quantum computing system and test industrially relevant end user problems thus accelerating steps towards an industrially relevant quantum computing system. An end goal is to establish an industrial quantum demonstrator platform in Glasgow that is competitive with leading international systems. Glasgow has the key ingredients to be a global leader in quantum computing due to its world class Universities; RTOs; skills; and global supply chain companies. The economic potential from this project includes new commercial activity, workforce and skills development, and inward investment. M Squared has found itself at the forefront of global commercial quantum technologies by drawing together a combination of investment, skills and ambition, and taking a lead in establishing a quantum sector from Glasgow. This project will cement Glasgow City Region’s global leadership in quantum computing, whilst addressing gaps currently unfunded to accelerate desired economic impacts and outcomes.

Risk Stratification Tool for Colorectal Polyp Surveillance

Bowel screening is used to find bowel cancer and pre-cancerous lesions called polyps in patients without symptoms. The aim of screening is both to catch bowel cancers early and to prevent cancers by removing pre-cancerous polyps.

Read the UKRI case study.

This project is part of the INCISE collaboration, which aims to develop a tool which will more accurately predict a patient’s risk of developing a future polyp, and therefore the need for a colonoscopy, using the latest advances in artificial intelligence, sequencing, and pathology.

This new tool will reduce the number of people needing repeated colonoscopy, reducing unpleasant experiences and complications, improving access to colonoscopy by reducing costs to the NHS, while maintaining a safe follow up regime for patients.