Scalable Neural Interfaces
Neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders have overwhelming societal and economic impacts. We need a new suite of tools that enable us to interface, at scale, with the human brain.
Core beliefs
The core beliefs that underpin this opportunity space:
Targeted interaction with the human brain can improve the human condition across an incredibly wide range of disease states and cognitive domains → we need to dramatically and safely increase the throughput (no. procedures per day/£) at which these technologies can be deployed to understand their full potential and deliver them at scale.
Current paradigms for interfacing with the human brain trade off precision for invasiveness of the procedure → there’s no fundamental reason we can’t build technologies that are both highly targeted and minimally invasive.
To fully understand and treat disorders of the brain, we’ll need neural technologies that simultaneously offer chemical, temporal, and spatial specificity → this is achievable only by connecting the frontiers of engineered hardware with the frontiers of engineered biology.
Observations
Some signposts as to why we see this area as important, underserved, and ripe.
Programme spotlight: Precision Neurotechnologies
Many neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders are neural circuit-level disorders, or problems with the ‘wiring’ of the brain. Current technologies lack the precision to treat this and most are highly invasive. Backed by £69m, this programme seeks to develop next-generation neurotechnologies that operate at the circuit level, across distributed brain regions and with cell type specificity.
These technologies could yield breakthroughs in disease understanding and diagnosis, unblock bottlenecks, and move us closer to a world in which personalised brain health care is available to everyone.
This programme is currently closed for applications.
Meet the programme team
Our Programme Directors are supported by a Programme Specialist (P-Spec) and Technical Specialist (T-Spec); this is the nucleus of each programme team. P-Specs co-ordinate and oversee the project management of their respective programmes, whilst T-Specs provide highly specialised and targeted technical expertise to support programmatic rigour.
Jacques Carolan
Programme Director
Jacques is an applied physicist and neuroscientist. Prior to joining ARIA as a founding Programme Director, he was a Discovery Fellow at UCL and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at MIT. Jacques’ work involves applying the principles of physics and engineering to create next-generation, scalable tools that aim to radically change our understanding of the brain and ultimately be used to repair it.
Tom Yates
Programme Specialist
Tom’s background is in management consultancy and defence technology, having spent three years driving operational improvements in large companies at Newton Europe and a year deploying autonomous sentry equipment in overseas bases with Anduril Industries. Tom supports ARIA as an Operating Partner from Pace.
Gillian Koehl
Technical Specialist
Gillian, a bioengineer, is passionate about advancing health through neurotechnology. She brings expertise in neuromodulation product development and biomaterials from her time at Blackrock Neurotechnology and Imperial College London.
Our other opportunity spaces
Our opportunity spaces are designed as an open invitation for researchers from across disciplines and institutions to learn with us and contribute – a variety of perspectives are just what we need to change what’s possible.