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.
Our research model
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Opportunity spaces Opportunity spaces are areas we believe is likely to yield breakthroughs. An ARIA opportunity space must be highly consequential for society, under-explored relative to its potential impact, and ripe for new talent, perspectives, or resources to change what’s possible. |
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Programmes Within opportunity spaces, we build multi-year R&D programmes designed to advance complex, large-scale ideas that require coordinated investment and management across disciplines and institutions. |
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Opportunity seeds Outside of programmes, we award seed funding to individuals or teams pursuing research aligned with their opportunity space. With smaller budgets and less structure than programmes, seeds support researchers to uncover new pathways that might otherwise fall through the cracks. |
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Activation Partners Activation Partners inject entrepreneurial talent, capital, and ideas to help propel our research – and the UK – to impact. |
What our Programme Directors do
Our Programme Directors are tasked with defining opportunity spaces, building programmes and allocating funding within those spaces.
We fund differently to change what's possible.
We do our best to maximise the chance of breakthroughs by aligning the research we fund with viable paths to deployment and minimising barriers to scale. This means:
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We fund the best ideas and talent, across professional backgrounds, types of organisations and geographies
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We do not retain IP rights to the work we fund
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We generally do not require match funding
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We do not take any equity ourselves and place a cap on the equity that organisations we fund can hold in spinouts commercialising ARIA-funded IP
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We take an active role in managing projects and foster connectivity between them
What is an ARIA Creator?
ARIA funds and supports research teams, known as Creators, to achieve breakthroughs. They could be anyone, from individuals doing their own research and PhD students at a university, to startups and large organisations. You can meet the Creators we're funding on our opportunity seed and programme pages.
“Our funding terms are designed to encourage inventor-led start-ups and provide a stimulus for science entrepreneurship in the UK.”
Funding opportunities
Learn more about how we fund and explore our current and past funding opportunities.
About ARIA
From climate change to AI, society faces challenges that can be uniquely addressed by science + technology.