UK Compute Roadmap – Community Centres of Excellence

Upcoming UKRI funding opportunity · Grant. Opens 2026-11-03; closes 2027-01-12. Total fund £20 million. Opportunity page: https://www.ukri.org/opportunity/uk-compute-roadmap-community-centres-of-excellence/

Apply for funding to establish a Community Centre of Excellence (CCE) that will provide a world class service layer for researchers and innovators to utilise the UKRI National Compute Resources (NCRs). A CCE is a mechanism for providing services and or resources that build an additional community-owned service layer or custodianship of a platform layer embedded between users and NCRs. CCEs will combine community stewardship, deep service provision and access to ensure research communities succeed.

The full economic cost (FEC) of your project can be up to £2 million for three years. UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) will fund 100% of the FEC.

What we're looking for Aim

Community Centres of Excellence (CCEs) will collectively provide users with high-quality services and resources that enable them to maximise benefits from the UK compute ecosystem.

UKRI investment in National Compute Resources (NCRs) marked a step change in provision of national compute capability, moving away from supporting vertically integrated and disciplinary-specific compute systems, to a more holistic set of compute resources made up of diverse architectures to suit multiple community needs at the system level. Therefore, to make effective use of the NCRs and ensure there is professional service support and a wide-ranging support offer to users, UKRI is providing funding to establish CCEs.

CCEs will deliver the ambitions of the UK Compute Roadmap 2025 by providing user-centred support, resources, expertise and community coordination, while enabling challenge-driven communities to address strategic cross-disciplinary research and innovation challenges through focused, outcome-oriented collaboration.

CCEs will embed specialist skills and expertise within research and innovation…