CRC future rounds announced

The federal government has announced the future timing for the next funding round for Cooperative Research Centres and the next three rounds of CRC-Project (CRC-P) funding.

Round 19 of the CRC Programme will be opened in May 2017 for funding from July 2018. The next round of CRC-Ps will be opened in August this year and close in September. Funding should be available in January 2017.

“Business and academic participants in the CRC Programme can now plan their bids with confidence,” said Tony Peacock, CEO of the CRC Association. “It is fundamental to allowing industry to take the lead, to make sure everyone knows the timing of future rounds so they can plan appropriately.”

The list of compliant applications in Round 18 of the CRC Programme was also announced. Further details on the round are not expected before the federal election on 2 July. Dr Peacock does, however, expect the results of the first round of CRC-Ps to be announced prior to the election.

“The new CRC-Ps are extremely exciting,” said Dr Peacock. “Obviously they suit industry really well, given the 91 applications in the first round.

“The speed of the turnaround in a decision and the time frame and scale of the CRC-Ps is in line with modern innovation. There are brilliant opportunities to support the start-ups sector, the innovation needed to support new areas of trade and building Australia’s defence capability industries, for example. The possibilities are huge.”

The full list of compliant applications, and the anticipated schedule for future CRC and CRC-P selection rounds, is available at business.gov.au.