ICUK中心设有三百万英镑的合作发展基金用于支持科研人员互换交流，项目可行性研究，概念验证项目研究和有商业潜力的研发项目。在ICUK项目经理的帮助下，合作院校的科学家和他们的中国合作伙伴要联合发掘市场需要的研发项目，申请ICUK合作发展基金。在中国进行的研发工作将由中国科学技术部协调提供相应的资金支持。
ICUK合作发展基金被分成两种基金，合作院校的科学家可以申请：
对以上基金的申请征集将会定期举行。第一轮概念验证基金的申请征集在2007年11月20日ICUK启动仪式上正式发布。
合作基金的申请由ICUK项目执行组评估；概念验证基金的申请由ICUK合作发展基金评审委员会定期评估。
Prof. Ping Wang from Queen Mary, University of London
"ICUK support is very important for the collaboration of applied technologies between UK and China. China has biggest potential market and uprising technology platform. In our case, the research groups in UK and China are leading groups in the field and have been strongly supported by their national research grants. However, our grants are not supporting technology transfer that is badly needed to transfer the collaborative research to collaborative development. ICUK can fill in this gap and lay a platform of collaborative technology development between UK and China."
