The most uplifting grant funding announcement I have seen ever! Thanks to the colleagues across Failure Modes of Engineering (FeME) for making this happen and congratulations to all the seed funding recipients, I am so excited to see what comes next!
Meet the 2026 FeME Seed Fund cohort Nineteen projects. Four continents. One shared question: what does it take to make engineering more inclusive, more grounded in lived experience, and more responsive to the climate and biodiversity challenges we face? In early 2026, FeME awarded seed funding across three streams — Challenge Discovery, Data for Change, and Represent and Innovate — to teams working from Machakos to Milpa Alta, from the Lake District to Lin-Lin Island, from Fair Isle to Fancy. The projects share something simple but radical: they treat lived experience as technical expertise. Women smallholder farmers in Uganda. Indigenous communities in Yucatán. Youth in rural Bamenda. Island residents on Fair Isle and Shetland. People most affected by climate change shaping the engineering responses to it. Read about all 19 projects in our latest News & Insights piece - link to article in the comments. Over the next few weeks we'll be sharing more — how FeME funds differently, the women leading work across the network, and a view of climate-engineering challenges across the regions where these projects sit. The University of Edinburgh Heriot-Watt University University of Glasgow University of Edinburgh School of Engineering James Watt School of Engineering, University of Glasgow
