KIAT Regional Industry Strategic R&D Program

Regional Industry Strategic R&D Program channels KIAT and MOTIE funding into industry-specific consortia rooted in Korea's regional innovation system. It is tied to the 14 free economic zones, regional techno-parks, and industry-academia cooperation centres, with projects aligned to local strategic industries such as the Pohang AI hub linked to POSTECH, the Gwangju AI cluster, and the Changwon robotics zone. The programme is built to push regional firms, universities, and government-funded research institutes into applied work with commercial outcomes. The instrument is a grant, with awards from KRW 300 million to KRW 2 billion on an annual cycle. Eligibility is limited to Korean registration and operations, with for-profit applicants required and universities, non-profits, and research organisations allowed as partners. The programme requires consortia, asks for 25 percent matching support, and places applicants in a TRL 5 to 8 band for projects that usually run two to three years. KIAT judges these projects on revenue, exports, jobs, and manufacturing capacity rather than publication counts, so successful teams need a regional anchor and a clear industrial path. The strongest proposals connect a cluster location to a real production or scale-up bottleneck and pair a firm with a university or government-funded research institute that can move the work into use. Applicants fit best when the local industry base and the research team are already aligned around a named regional priority.

Each grant below is a distinct funding opportunity with its own eligibility, scope, and deliverables.