Grants of up to $200,000 to support collaborative university and industry research addressing Defence logistics challenges and progressing innovative concepts towards practical Defence capability applications.
On this page you will find
What is the Collaborative Research Grant (CRG)?
The Collaborative Research Grant (CRG) is a competitive Defence Science Centre (DSC) program supporting collaborative research aligned with Defence capability priorities.
The program supports projects that assess the scientific and technical viability of new concepts and progress them towards practical Defence application.
Round 8 focuses on Logistics Under Conflict, supporting research that can help sustain Defence capability when supply, movement, infrastructure, health support or local demand are disrupted by distance, environmental conditions or adversary action.
Projects must operate at early to mid-stage development, commencing at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 2 or higher and demonstrating a credible pathway towards increased maturity.
The program encourages collaboration between universities, industry and Defence stakeholders to deliver research that is technically credible, operationally relevant and positioned for further development, transition or adoption.
Collaborative Research Grant level of support
Funding amount
- Minimum funding: $50,000
- Maximum funding: $200,000
- Applicants do not need to request the maximum amount and should request only the funding required to deliver their proposed project and outcomes.
- DSC intends to fund as many suitable projects as possible, subject to available funding and the competitive assessment process.
Co-contribution
- Co-investment is not mandatory.
- Applicants should identify any cash or in-kind contributions provided by project partners.
- Contributions should identify their source, nature and indicative value and explain how they support project delivery and outcomes.
- Cash and in-kind contributions may also be considered as evidence of partner commitment during assessment.
Project duration and maturity
- Projects are expected to run for 12–18 months.
- Projects must commence at TRL 2 or higher.
- Projects must demonstrate a clear and credible pathway to increased TRL and maturity during the project.
Payment
- 80% of grant funding is paid upon execution of the grant agreement and provision of a tax invoice.
- The remaining 20% is paid at the conclusion of the project following provision of a completion report.
- Payment arrangements may be varied where agreed with DSC and specified in the grant agreement.
Collaborative Research Grant important dates
- Applications close: 5:00 pm AWST, 23 October 2026
- Evaluation of proposals: from 2 November 2026
- Successful teams notified: December 2026
- Co-design: following selection, before contracting
- Contract award: to be determined during contract negotiations
- Final project delivery: to be determined during contract negotiations
- Register your interest with GrantHelper
Collaborative Research Grant objectives
The CRG aims to:
- Support collaborative research aligned with Defence capability and Innovation, Science and Technology priorities.
- Assess the scientific and technical viability of new concepts with potential Defence applications.
- Progress technologies from early to mid-stage development towards practical Defence use.
- Address specific operational constraints, capability gaps or unmet Defence needs.
- Generate technically credible and operationally meaningful research outcomes.
- Strengthen collaboration between universities, industry and Defence stakeholders.
- Position promising research for further development, transition, adoption or follow-on investment.
- Support development of advanced and asymmetric capabilities relevant to Australian Defence needs.
For Round 8, projects should deliver practical sustainment benefits for Defence operations affected by disrupted logistics, infrastructure, health support, supply chains or local demand.
Projects and expenditure eligible for Collaborative Research Grant support
Round 8 focuses on the research theme Logistics Under Conflict.
Projects do not need to address every topic area but must address a specific constraint affecting Defence operations at range or in remote, northern, maritime, austere or contested environments.
Applicants should identify measurable sustainment benefits, which may include reduced fuel or power demand, longer shelf life, reduced resupply frequency, improved decision latency, faster recovery of logistics capacity or improved treatment-in-place.
Eligible topic areas include:
1. Decision advantage under disruption
Projects may address:
- Understanding demand, inventory, route availability and infrastructure status under uncertainty.
- Health network and maritime logistics considerations.
- Prioritisation under logistics stress.
- Modelling cascading failures across logistics networks.
- Appropriate integration of military and civil supply-chain data.
- Testing sustainment concepts through modelling, simulation or wargaming.
- Maritime resupply planning, including ship-to-ship, ship-to-shore and northern shore options.
- Decision-making when data is incomplete, delayed, contested or degraded.
- Logistics digital twins, forecasting, route and stock prioritisation tools and civil-military supply dependency analysis.
2. Physical infrastructure resilience
Projects may address:
- Maintaining ports, roads, rail, energy and supporting infrastructure during disruption.
- Detecting, monitoring and rapidly assessing infrastructure damage or degradation.
- Hardening, repairing or rerouting around damaged critical infrastructure.
- Understanding climate and environmental stresses on specific locations.
- Restoring infrastructure capacity within operationally relevant timeframes.
- Autonomous inspection systems.
- Rapid repair methods and materials.
- Predictive maintenance for critical physical assets.
- Route proving and high-resolution climate stress assessment and monitoring.
3. Disrupted health support
Projects may address:
- Casualty stabilisation when evacuation is delayed, contested or unavailable.
- Monitoring casualties and personnel where movement and evacuation are constrained.
- Supporting medical equipment in austere or degraded environments.
- Remote clinical decision support where connectivity is limited or unreliable.
- Reducing dependence on evacuation to preserve operational health.
- Innovative blood and critical resuscitation products.
- Treatment-in-place systems.
- Autonomous casualty monitoring and medical resupply.
- Resilient medical equipment and deployable stabilisation technologies.
Projects should focus on sustainment and operational health support rather than general clinical care.
4. Critical supply sovereignty, preservation and substitution
Projects may address:
- Maintaining temperature-sensitive or controlled-environment supplies.
- Protecting blood, pharmaceuticals and sterile medical supplies.
- Extending the useful life of stockpiled or deployed supplies in harsh, maritime or austere conditions.
- Assuring sovereign access to substitute materials, including medical feedstocks.
- Reducing dependence on long, thin or vulnerable supply chains for critical items.
- Degraded-environment storage and cold-chain life extension.
- Sterile packaging substitution.
- Passive or low-power thermal protection.
- Deployable testing of substitute materials.
- Small-batch sovereign production of selected consumables.
Projects should focus on maintaining operational capability under disrupted logistics rather than general manufacturing capability.
5. Demand reduction at point of need
Projects may address:
- Reducing fuel, water, food and other consumable demand without reducing operational effects.
- Producing, recycling or treating water at the point of need.
- Distributed food solutions, including enhanced or manufactured proteins.
- Integrated management of energy, water, health and food demand.
- Solutions suitable for hot, humid, dusty, remote, maritime or degraded environments.
- Geothermal heat or power where viable.
- Integrated energy-water management.
- Bare-base innovation.
- Reducing maritime and littoral dependence on frequent food, water, refrigeration and consumables resupply.
Eligible expenditure
Grant funding may be used for:
- Direct salary costs for researchers working on the project.
- Chief investigator salaries where specifically justified and approved by the Director, DSC.
- Salary on-costs up to 30% of direct salary costs, where consistent with organisational policy and appropriately itemised.
- Eligible on-costs including superannuation, payroll tax, payroll tax on superannuation, workers compensation, long service leave and maternity leave.
- Stipends or top-ups for Higher Degree Research students working on the project.
- PhD stipends where specifically justified and approved by the Director, DSC.
- Project equipment, software, materials and consumables.
- Researcher travel that is essential to undertaking the project.
Ineligible expenditure
Funding cannot be used for:
- Conference fees.
- Conference travel.
- Entertainment costs.
- Professional membership fees.
- Professional development courses.
- Visas.
- Teaching relief.
- Publication costs.
- Other indirect costs.
- Industry-partner equipment and consumables considered to be for broad general use or already held by the university.
Other Collaborative Research Grant important details that you will need to know
Organisations eligible for Collaborative Research Grant support
Each application must include:
- At least one WA public/DSC member university.
- At least one eligible industry partner.
Participating WA universities include:
- Curtin University.
- Edith Cowan University.
- Murdoch University.
- The University of Western Australia.
An eligible industry partner must:
- Hold a valid Australian Business Number (ABN).
- Not be exempt from income tax.
- Be registered as an Australian legal entity, such as a company or trust.
- Not be an individual.
- Be based in Western Australia; or
- Collaborate with a Western Australian university or Western Australian-based industry partner.
Additional university partners may participate where appropriate.
All project participants must be Australian citizens.
Universities and industry partners may decline to support researchers where reasonable concerns exist regarding national security, foreign interference, inappropriate technology transfer, conflicts of commitment or other risks to Australia’s national interests.
Collaborative Research Grant assessment criteria
Eligible applications will be competitively assessed against four assessment criteria.
The guidelines do not specify percentage weightings for these criteria.
1. Alignment
Applicants should demonstrate:
- Strong alignment with the Logistics Under Conflict research theme and relevant topic area.
- A clearly defined Defence need, operational constraint or capability challenge.
- A strong connection between the proposed research and the identified Defence challenge.
- Relevance to published Defence priorities and operational contexts.
- A clear explanation of the problem being addressed.
- How the proposed research contributes to Defence capability priorities.
2. Collaboration
Applicants should demonstrate:
- An appropriate combination of university, industry and, where relevant, Defence expertise.
- Clearly defined roles and responsibilities for each collaborator.
- Meaningful contributions from participating universities, industry partners and Defence stakeholders.
- Strong partner commitment and active participation.
- Any cash and in-kind contributions made by partners.
- An appropriate breadth and balance of capabilities across the project team.
- How collaboration strengthens the proposed project and supports delivery of its outcomes.
3. Feasibility
Applicants should demonstrate:
- The capability and experience of the project team.
- A track record of achieving relevant research outcomes within suitable timeframes.
- Existing evidence, previous research, experimentation or other work supporting the proposed approach.
- Appropriate identification and management of project risks.
- Access to the specialist resources, platforms, infrastructure, equipment and personnel needed to complete the project.
- A realistic project timeline.
- Appropriate milestones and deliverables.
- The likelihood that the proposed outcomes can be delivered within the requested funding and project timeframe.
4. Impact and Translation
Applicants should demonstrate:
- A clear and meaningful expected benefit to Defence capability.
- Identification of the intended Defence users or beneficiaries.
- Potential for Defence adoption, transition or further development.
- A credible pathway for project outcomes to progress beyond the funded research activity.
- Potential commercialisation or exploitation pathways where relevant.
- How the research may contribute to future Defence capability.
- Value for money relative to the outcomes proposed.
How do I get the Collaborative Research Grant support?
To put forward a competitive application, applicants should demonstrate:
- A clear and specific Defence operational constraint, capability gap or unmet need.
- Strong alignment with the Logistics Under Conflict theme and at least one relevant topic area.
- A practical and measurable sustainment benefit for Defence.
- A project commencing at TRL 2 or above with a credible pathway towards increased maturity.
- A technically sound and feasible research approach.
- Evidence or previous work supporting the proposed concept.
- Strong collaboration between an eligible WA university and industry partner.
- Clear and meaningful roles for each project partner.
- Appropriate team capability, experience and specialist expertise.
- Genuine partner commitment, including cash or in-kind contributions where available.
- A realistic 12–18 month project plan with clear milestones and deliverables.
- Appropriate identification and mitigation of technical and project risks.
- Access to the facilities, equipment, infrastructure and resources required for delivery.
- A clear Defence capability benefit and identification of intended users or beneficiaries.
- A credible pathway towards Defence transition, adoption, commercialisation or further development.
- Appropriate intellectual property arrangements agreed in principle between partners.
- Value for money relative to the proposed outcomes.
- Readiness to participate in post-selection co-design with DSC, DSTG and Defence stakeholders.
Information to prepare for the Collaborative Research Grant support
Applicants should prepare:
- Project title and a plain-English project summary of fewer than 60 words.
- Research theme/topic area.
- Requested funding amount.
- Proposed project duration.
- Lead applicant organisation.
- Lead researcher.
- Primary industry partner.
- Project description of no more than 1,000 words.
- Background and details of existing work.
- Technical approach.
- Expected project results.
- Proposed pathway to increase TRL.
- Explanation of alignment with the Defence challenge and Logistics Under Conflict theme.
- Roles and responsibilities of all project partners.
- Details of cash and in-kind partner contributions.
- Details of any Defence, DSTG or ADF engagement or support.
- Expected Defence capability impact.
- Potential transition, adoption or commercialisation pathway.
- Project milestones and delivery schedule.
- Project risks, assumptions and mitigation measures.
- Evidence or previous work supporting the approach.
- Details of required facilities, equipment and specialist expertise.
- Broad planned research expenditure.
- Proposed IP ownership, licensing, commercialisation and exploitation arrangements.
- Details of any access required to pre-existing IP.
- Any potential conflicts of interest.
- Reference list.
- Lead applicant and collaborator details.
- Initial and proposed final TRL.
- Confirmation that all participants are Australian citizens.
- Letter of support from each collaborating institution.
- Itemised salary on-cost information where applicable.
- Applicant declaration.
- University endorsement where the lead applicant is from a university.
Applying for the Collaborative Research Grant support
Applications must be completed using the Collaborative Research Grant – Application Form, Round 8 – 2026 and emailed to: DSC@dpc.wa.gov.au.
Register your interest with GrantHelper to explore your alignment with this program and how we can assist you to increase your chances of success.
Collaborative Research Grant resources
Is Your Business Eligible for This Government Grant?
GrantHelper can assist with your organisation’s grant application, no matter what stage of the funding journey you’re at.
Whenever You’re Ready, Here Are 4 Ways We Can Help You
- Grant Application Readiness
Assess your current position, identify gaps, and prepare your organisation to meet the stringent requirements of competitive grant programs. - Grant Application Strategy
Pinpoint the right grants, align your projects with funding priorities, and establish a roadmap that significantly boosts your chances of success. - Grant Application Writing
Our expert writers craft persuasive applications that showcase your strengths and align seamlessly with the funder’s goals and criteria. - Grant Application Management
End-to-end oversight of your grant journey — from planning and writing to submission and reporting — so you can stay focused on running your business.
Ready to get started?
Not Ready to Enquire Yet?
We understand that winning grants takes time—something many business owners and directors don’t have. That’s why we’re here to guide you every step of the way.
Our Insights showcase some of the grant-winning methods we employ at GrantHelper, and they will help you create a stronger grant application.
Explore our Insights page, or our Podcasts page, where you’ll find expert advice, actionable tips, and time-saving strategies to help you get grant-ready.
Alternatively, check out some of the Clients we’ve helped and what they had to say about us.
