NCRIS (National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy)

NCRIS (the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy) is the Australian Government program that funds and coordinates the country’s shared, large-scale national research infrastructure — equipment, digital platforms, data collections and specialist facilities that no single university or funder could justify building alone. It is administered through the Department of Education and delivered against a periodically updated National Research Infrastructure Roadmap that sets priority investment areas. NCRIS is not a grant a researcher applies for directly; it funds the infrastructure and the organisations that operate it, and researchers then get merit-based access to that shared capability.

What NCRIS actually funds

NCRIS money flows to lead agents — typically universities, publicly funded research agencies or dedicated not-for-profits — that build and operate a national facility or platform on behalf of the whole research sector. As of the program’s 20th anniversary in 2026, NCRIS was backing 26 major funded projects delivered through more than 400 partnerships and employing close to 1,900 technical experts and facility managers, spanning areas such as advanced imaging, genomics, high-performance computing, terrestrial and marine environmental monitoring, and research data infrastructure. Established in 2006, the program has received over $5.5 billion in cumulative Australian Government support across its history.

How researchers actually use it

Because NCRIS funds shared infrastructure rather than individual projects, researchers don’t submit an NCRIS grant application the way they would for an ARC or NHMRC scheme. Instead, they apply for time, capacity or access on a specific NCRIS-funded facility — a synchrotron beamline, a national compute allocation, a phenomics platform, a long-term environmental monitoring network — on a merit basis, generally through that facility’s own access process or the sector-wide Research Infrastructure Connected discovery portal. NCRIS supports roughly 90,000 domestic and 10,000 international users annually across its funded facilities.

Where NCRIS sits relative to ARC and NHMRC funding

NCRIS solves a different problem from Australia’s two main competitive grant funders. The Australian Research Council‘s Discovery and Linkage programs, and NHMRC’s Ideas, Investigator and Partnership Project schemes, fund a defined research project or a person’s salary and are awarded to an individual or team through a competitive peer-review round. NCRIS instead funds the standing national capability — the instrument, the dataset, the compute cluster — that many different funded projects, across many different institutions and funders, then draw on. A single ARC- or NHMRC-funded project might use NCRIS-funded infrastructure to actually carry out the research, without NCRIS itself having funded that specific project.

Example

A structural biology team holding an NHMRC Ideas Grant needs beamtime on a synchrotron to solve a protein structure. They don’t apply to NCRIS for money — their NHMRC grant already funds the project. Instead, they apply for merit-based access time on the Australian Synchrotron, an NCRIS-funded national facility, through its own access process. NCRIS funded the facility that makes the experiment possible; NHMRC funded the research question.

Counter-example

A sole investigator seeking money to run their own discrete research project — covering their salary, a research assistant, and consumables — is describing an ARC or NHMRC grant application, not an NCRIS one. NCRIS does not fund individual investigator-led projects or salaries; it funds the shared national infrastructure and the organisations that operate it for the whole sector’s benefit.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does NCRIS stand for?

NCRIS stands for the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy, the Australian Government program that funds and coordinates the country’s major shared national research infrastructure.

Can an individual researcher apply for NCRIS funding?

Not directly. NCRIS funds the lead agents that build and operate national facilities and platforms; individual researchers instead apply for merit-based access to those already-funded facilities, typically through the facility’s own access process or the Research Infrastructure Connected portal.

How is NCRIS different from an ARC or NHMRC grant?

ARC and NHMRC schemes fund a specific research project or a researcher’s salary through competitive peer review. NCRIS funds standing national infrastructure — equipment, platforms, data collections — that many different ARC- and NHMRC-funded projects can then draw on to carry out their research.

How much has NCRIS invested in Australian research infrastructure?

NCRIS has received over $5.5 billion in cumulative Australian Government support since it was established in 2006, backing 26 major funded projects delivered through more than 400 partnerships as of its 20th anniversary in 2026.