Opportunity spaces
Our opportunity spaces are critically important but underexplored areas of research that we believe are ripe for breakthroughs.
They each serve as a bedrock for multi-year programmes directed by our Programme Directors, as well as additional flares of seed funding to support researchers pursuing bold ideas.
Even if you are new to a topic, we urge you to dive in below – a variety of perspectives are just what we need to change what’s possible.
Sculpting Innate Immunity
As the body’s first line of defence, the innate immune system has enormous therapeutic potential, sensing and initiating responses to infection, injury, metabolic stress, and chronic inflammation. Modulating innate immunity with precision and accuracy could unlock a new paradigm in human health.
Scalable Neural Interfaces
Neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders have overwhelming societal and economic impacts. We need to build highly targeted, minimally invasive technologies that enable us to interface, at scale, with the human brain.
Bioenergetic Engineering
Genetic engineering now lets us control life’s information, yet the engineering of life’s energy remains underdeveloped. New tools could bridge the gap, enabling breakthroughs ranging from treatments for neurodegenerative disease to biohybrid solutions for environmental remediation and resilience.
Extending Our Perception
The world is rich with information hidden from human senses and not captured by our algorithms. The next era of AI will require Hypersensory Intelligence – AI and novel sensors engineered together to perceive reality in fundamentally new ways, catalysing breakthroughs across disciplines.
Trust Everything, Everywhere
Trust 'building blocks', like encryption, enable digital industries to flourish securely, but they don't extend into the physical world. With emerging technology blurring the line between digital and physical, a new trust infrastructure that straddles both worlds could unlock cyber-physical markets.
Mathematics for Safe AI
We don’t yet have known technical solutions to ensure that powerful AI systems interact as intended with real-world systems and populations. A combination of scientific world-models and mathematical proofs may be the answer to ensuring AI provides transformational benefit without harm.
Nature Computes Better
We can redefine the way computers process information by exploiting principles found ubiquitously in nature. In doing so, we can better understand how the natural world around us performs computation and build dramatically more efficient computers.
Collective Flourishing
Our tools for navigating the future haven't kept pace with its growing complexity. Creating new systems that integrate a deep understanding of people, profound advances in modelling and foresight, and expressive interfaces could help us see, reason, and choose a better future together.
Scoping Our Planet
Understanding the Earth system is limited by serious measurement gaps that lead to significant uncertainties in predictions. What if we could cultivate frontier technologies, from measurement platforms to AI models, to generate actionable knowledge that serves society in diverse and impossible ways?
Programmable Plants
Plants enable human life and offer solutions to key challenges like food insecurity, climate change, and environmental degradation. Programmable plants can secure our future, ensuring food and a sustainable biosphere for future generations.
Engineering Ecosystem Resilience
Living organisms underpin our food, climate stability, and materials – ecological collapse threatens the foundations of civilisation. By pairing advanced monitoring with resilience-boosting interventions, we could halt biodiversity loss and enable people and nature to thrive.
Future Proofing Our Climate and Weather
If an abrupt alteration in our climate system were to unfold, we would have no tools to mitigate the effects. Through careful research, we can expand our options for adaptation and lay the groundwork for informed choices in a crisis.
Smarter Robot Bodies
Throughout history, humans have used tools and machines to reduce the burden of physical labour. We are entering a new era with robots smart enough to act independently in complex and dynamic environments. But to reap the benefits of smarter machines, we need smarter bodies.
Manufacturing Abundance
Ages of human history are defined by materials that transformed societies and mark breakthroughs in mastery over matter. Rather than a single material, the next age will be defined by our ability to assemble molecules into bespoke solutions for today’s challenges and unlock sustainable abundance.
Join our third cohort of Programme Directors
Applications for our third cohort of Programme Directors will open in August 2026 for a May 2027 start date. Learn more about what we're looking for and register your interest so you can be the first to hear updates on the application process.
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How we work
We seek out exceptional scientists and engineers with the curiosity to explore uncharted territory, then empower them with the resources and autonomy to turn their ideas into reality.
Programme Directors
Our Programme Directors drive our pursuit of breakthroughs. They define bold visions for how science + technology could shape the future and direct the review, selection, and funding of a portfolio of projects.