Imperial in 2024–25: Powering research

Through strategic partnerships, significant grant successes and the launch of new initiatives, we continue to push the boundaries of scientific discovery and address pressing global challenges.

Convergence Science

In June 2025, we launched a new approach to interdisciplinary collaboration at scale that combines the university's strengths across science, technology and business to address some of the most urgent global challenges: the School of Convergence Science.

New research and innovation communities have been created across: 

• Health and Technology
• Space, Security and Telecoms
• Sustainability
• Human and Artificial Intelligence

These will supercharge scientific discovery and drive economic growth, bringing even greater focus and impact to the global challenges of the 21st century.

Much of our current research directly connects with the scope and multidisciplinary approach of the School of Convergence Science, working across their broad and interconnecting themes. In this section, we take a look at the research already taking place at Imperial that aligns with the challenges our new approach will address.

Deep tech entrepreneurship

Imperial is a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem that continuously results in success for Imperial startups and spinouts that are transforming groundbreaking research into real-world impact. This enabling environment includes Imperial’s Enterprise Lab, our Institute for Deep Tech Entrepreneurship and our network of hackspaces, incubators and accelerators.

In 2025, this entrepreneurial pipeline saw Imperial spinout Polaron win the very first Manchester Prize, a government-run competition supporting breakthroughs in artificial intelligence for the public good. The company will receive funding to continue developing AI tools to accelerate the design of advanced materials for applications such as batteries and high-performance alloys. Breathe Battery Technologies, another successful spinout with its origins at Imperial, has worked with top car manufacturers to develop adaptive battery charging software and, during the year, secured investment to push its software earlier in the battery development process.

During the year, we began work to establish Science Capital Imperial, a new venture fund to provide Imperial’s entrepreneurs access to capital and proof-of-concept funding to realise the full potential of their businesses. With support from alumni and investors, we expect the fund to launch in 2026.

Early Career Researcher Institute (ECRI)

Established in October 2024, the ECRI brought together the former Graduate School, and Postdoc and Fellows Development Centre to form a single institute.

In 2025, the ECRI launched its inaugural strategy and held a showcase to celebrate the research carried out by Imperial’s Early Career Research community. As a practitioner member of the Research Supervision Project, ECRI is actively contributing towards the national discussion on the quality of supervision. In collaboration with Imperial Global, ECRI also contributed to the delivery of the Global Fellows Programme at multiple international locations, including Imperial Global Ghana, the Institute of Science Tokyo, and the Technical University of Munich (in partnership with Nanyang Technological University, Singapore).