Through our Innovation Seed Fund grants, we aim to pump-prime innovative research into the causes, treatment and diagnosis of hearing loss, tinnitus and other hearing-related conditions.
We want to support novel research ideas with the aim of making them more competitive and able to secure follow-on funding.
The fund will also support small-scale projects at the translational stage, such as proof-of-concept studies or pre-clinical validation studies, again with the aim of making novel approaches more competitive for further funding.
We are working with Fight for Sight this year to co-fund small projects that will support innovative research into the mechanisms, diagnosis, prevention or treatment of conditions affecting both vision and hearing. If you are based in the UK and your research is in this area, please apply for funding through Fight for Sight’s Small Grants scheme.
All proposals should be able to demonstrate how they will contribute to ultimately bringing benefit to people with hearing loss, tinnitus or other hearing-related conditions. They should be highly novel and/or innovative – potentially risky ideas are welcome.
Awards are usually made in March each year.
Recent projects we have funded
- Real-time monitoring of listening effort and fatigue in older adults, Lancaster University, UK
- Uncovering the ‘Hidden’ Genetics of Childhood Hearing Loss: A Pilot Study for Detecting Complex Structural Variants, University of Granada, Spain
- Reversing Deafness: Repairing the Cochlear Battery to Restore Hearing, King’s College London, UK
- Hyperactive Auditory Pathways: Disentangling Neural Noise and Central Gain Dysregulation in Hyperacusis and Tinnitus, Ghent University, Belgium
- Speech encoding in the cochlear nucleus and the role of neuronal inhibition during aging, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Germany
Summary of grant
Deadline
Wednesday 4 November 2026 (17:00 GMT)
Value
Up to a maximum of £10,000
Eligibility
Applicants can be from a university, research institute, or small or medium enterprise based anywhere in the world
In the last Innovation Seed fund round (March 2026), we received 36 applications and awarded funding to 5 projects.
How to apply
All applications should be submitted via our online grant management system, Flexi-Grant. There’s further guidance on complete your Flexi-Grant application below.
If you have any questions about the scheme, please contact us as soon as possible before the deadline so that we have time to help you.
Please note: As part of the application process, you are required to obtain approval to submit from an authorised representative at your institution. We will not extend the deadline to allow you to secure this approval, so please allow plenty of time for this. See the Flexi-Grant user guide (below) for more details.
Download these documents:
- 2026 Innovation Seed Fund call and guidelines (PDF 94kb)
- Innovation Seed Fund sample application form (PDF 205kb)
- Innovation Seed Fund standard terms and conditions (subject to review) (PDF 189kb)
- Flexi-Grant user guide (PDF 613kb)
Selection procedure
All proposals are reviewed by our Innovation Seed Fund review panel (usually three members per proposal), who are asked to rate the scientific value of the proposal, as well as its novelty and feasibility. They are asked to assess the proposal against the following criteria:
- Relevance to people with hearing loss or tinnitus/potential to lead to benefit for people affected by hearing loss or tinnitus in the short- or long-term
- Novelty and originaliy/likelihood of leading to new understanding
- Quality of background information provided
- Appropriate project design, methodology, analysis and ethical considerations (for research involving people or animals)
- Feasibility – timescale and budget
- Research team – expertise and resources
- Adequate justification of costs requested
A subset of the panel will then meet to discuss the proposals receiving the highest scores and recommend which of those projects should be funded.
Applicants will be notified of the outcome as soon as possible, usually within three months of the application deadline.
All members of the Innovation Seed Fund panel must agree to abide by our conflicts of interest and confidentiality policy (PDF) for panel members, at all stages of the assessment process.
Innovation Seed Fund review panel
- Emma Kenyon, University of Swansea
- Haruna Suzuki-Kerr, University of Auckland
- Joseph Sollini, University of Nottingham
- Magdalena Zak, University College London
- Richard Gault, Queens University Belfast
- Samuel Webb, University of Sheffield
- Soha Garadat, University of Jordan, Amman/University of Michigan
- John Newell, Macquarie University
- Chris Hardy, University College London
- Emanuele Perugia, University of Manchester
- Michael Mather, Newcastle University
- Adam Carlton, University of Sheffield
- Carlos Francisco Aguilar Hernandez, University College London
- Rudiger Land, Hannover Medical School
- Rebecca Vos, University of Salford
- Vassilis Pelekanos, University of Nottingham
- Hannah Keppler, Ghent University
- Sriram Boothalingam, Macquarie University
- Sherylanne Newton, University College London.
- Sarah Hool, University of Sheffield
Europe PubMed Central (Europe PMC) and open access publications
RNID is a member of the Europe PMC Funders’ Group. We support open access publications and require RNID grant holders to make their publications open access.
Read our open access publication policy for more information and visit the Europe PMC website.
Contact us
For more information about the Innovation Seed Fund review panel, please email us.