King’s has four active Impact Acceleration accounts from AHRC, EPSRC, ESRC and MRC. The awards help our researchers to enhance the impact of their research by:

• Strengthening user engagement
• Strengthening the exchange of knowledge through culture and capability development, including through the development of skills for knowledge exchange activity
• Supporting knowledge exchange and commercialisation at early stages of progressing research outputs and outcomes to the point when they would be supported by other funding
• Supporting new, innovative and imaginative approaches to knowledge exchange and Impact, including processes that enable “fast failure” and appropriate learning
• Supporting activities that enable impact to be achieved in an effective and timely manner, including secondments and people exchange

UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) supports Impact Acceleration Accounts as a strategic award to provide funding to research organisations to use creatively for a wide range of impact activities. You can find out more on the UKRI website.

King's has been successful in an application for an Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Impact Acceleration Account (IAA). This award provides £450,000 and currently runs to the end of March 2026 to expand the scale of impact and knowledge exchange work in Arts & Humanities across King's.

Our priorities for this funding include collaborations with publics underrepresented in the Academy (eg low-income, first-generation attendees, LGBT+, and BAME stakeholders) and developing strategic partnerships with internal and external partners, especially focused on socially engaged activities that meet the needs of publics in London and globally.

Internal staff can find out more about the King's AHRC IAA here.

Contact: ah-impact@kcl.ac.uk

King’s College London has been awarded more than £1.1M as part of an Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). This new 3 year award (currently running until end of March 2026) will provide the support for researchers to transfer ideas and technologies developed from previous EPSRC-funded grants out into society.

The funding will be used to support prototype development, skills enhancement and training, placements and knowledge exchange, and to strengthen links with businesses and end users.

You can find out more about the King's EPSRC IAA here.

The Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) funds Impact Acceleration Accounts in order to strengthen engagement between researchers and research users, support new, innovative and imaginative approaches to knowledge exchange and impact, and strengthen research organisations’ knowledge exchange through raising researchers’ awareness, skills and confidence.

The ESRC IAA is the principal mechanism for supporting King’s social science researchers in their knowledge-exchange and engagement activities with external partners. IAA funding (currently running from 1st April 2023 to 31st March 2028) is open to all social science projects that focus on impact and knowledge exchange with non-academic audiences and partners.

Internal staff can find out more about the King's ESRC IAA here.

The Medical Research Council (MRC) Impact Acceleration Accounts (IAAs) provide strategic funding to research organisations with the aim to speed up the transition from discovery research to translational development projects. King's College London has been awarded £1.8m MRC IAA funding and is currently running until the end of March 2026.

The King's MRC IAA enables researchers to explore and develop innovative designs that may lead to new therapies or diagnostics or interventions with the potential to transform human health.

The fund is designed to support preliminary translational work, accelerating the transition from discovery science to the early stages of therapeutic/biomarker development, and aims to establish the viability of an approach before seeking more substantive funding from established bodies.

Internal staff can find out more about the King's MRC IAA here.