Since launching in January 2023 our primary focus has been to assemble our first cohort of Programme Directors (PDs). We put out a global open call for applicants, with the aim of bringing together a diverse group of scientists and engineers, capable of thinking differently and pushing the limits of the possible.
With a successful search and selection process now complete, we look forward to announcing our founding cohort in the early Autumn, and our first programmatic activity later this year.
Alongside the selection process, we spent this early period building the foundational team, systems, and infrastructure needed to enable operations at scale. Recognising the need for ARIA to operate flexibly at pace, we have prioritised building a small team in key operational roles, investing in more flexible outsourced support via a number of operating partners to keep our functions lean.
For core functions (executive, procurement and finance), we worked with talent suppliers to recruit from a range of different backgrounds and pools, to bring a broad array of expertise into ARIA. This includes recruiting from startups, nonprofits, VCs and the public sector.
In line with our commitment to transparency, ARIA will continue to report on our expenditure and costs, on a quarterly basis, including information on funded projects once these have commenced.
In this quarter, we formally announced and began to onboard our founding cohort of PDs: the scientists and engineers who will design and lead ARIA programmes. Our PDs joined us from around the UK and further afield, with a broad range of academic expertise and professional experience.
To ensure PDs could hit the ground running once in post, over this period we continued to build out our core operational team, and invest in the necessary infrastructure to support the development of complex, multi-year, geographically diverse R&D programmes. ARIA programmes will deliberately reach across disciplines, sectors and institutions, so our operations are designed to facilitate and support that ambition.
With PDs now in post, we’re laser-focused on programme development. While some PDs have joined with an emerging thesis underpinning a potential programme, for others that insight will emerge by seeking input and inspiration from different parts of the R&D ecosystem. We will share updates as PDs move through formal stages of the programme lifecycle, and continue to report on expenditure and costs on a quarterly basis.
We will also publish a procurement pipeline at the end of the next quarter outlining anticipated contract and grant opportunities.
Since our PDs joined at the start of Q3, we have accelerated programme development, working to define our opportunity spaces – the areas we believe are likely to yield breakthroughs. From certifying the safety of advanced AI systems to developing next generation neurotechnologies, we spent this period developing a set of visions for transformative technologies aimed at tackling society’s most pressing issues, and getting ready to launch funding opportunities to bring these visions to life.
Over this quarter, we continued to invest in bespoke operational and technical support to prepare for upcoming market solicitations (both programme and seed funding); assist PDs in finalising, managing and delivering a set of complex project portfolios; and minimise any barriers to scaling our activities this year.
The procurement pipeline published with Q3 data reflects the scale of our ambitions for funded activity by showing a forward look of our anticipated contract and grant sourcing activity over the next three months.
We will continue to report on our expenditure and costs, including information on funded projects once these have commenced.
Over the last quarter our focus has been on programme development and launching funding opportunities. All of our opportunity spaces are now live for feedback – spanning areas such as neurotechnology, robotics, and climate science – and have now launched our first two funded programmes: Scaling Compute and Safeguarded AI.
To maximise our chances of breakthroughs, in this period we’ve also launched opportunity seeds, where we fund high potential proposals that sit outside programme areas with up to £500k each. We’re in the process of selecting the first round of R&D Creators (recipients of ARIA funding) in our opportunity space Nature Computes Better.
In tandem, to ensure our research leads to tangible impact, we’ve been exploring mechanisms to drive entrepreneurial talent and venture creation in our opportunity spaces, and kicked off work to design and deliver an R&D challenge prize.
Throughout this process, our PDs have engaged with the R&D community through workshops, public calls for feedback, visits, and discovery calls with scientists, researchers, entrepreneurs, and engineers across the UK and beyond. Our core operational team and operating partners have supported PDs in the discovery and programme development process, while continuing to build the infrastructure needed to support live R&D programmes and projects.
Our procurement pipeline for the next three months reflects our immediate priorities: launching more multi-year programmes and opportunity seed awards, designing and activating science entrepreneurship activities, and working with partners who can help us deliver on these priorities.
We will continue to report on our expenditure on cost on a quarterly basis, including information on funded projects. In the next quarter, we’ll also be publishing our first corporate report, offering a comprehensive overview of our activities to date.
This register of Board, Committee Member + Programme Directors interests includes public appointments, directorships, business interests and affiliations.
Personal shareholdings, interests of minimal value, recently expired interests, and the interests of connected individuals, have been disclosed but not published. We’ll refresh and publicly update this register every quarter.
ARIA’s mission is to pursue new technological options that are currently intractable but have transformative potential for humanity. Research at the edge of the possible often means there is limited research or societal consensus, and requires a highly responsible approach.
Find out more about our approach to ethical and social responsibility in the design and delivery of programmes, and how we handle the professional ethics and integrity of the research we support.
This policy sets out the principles and rules for declaring and managing conflicts of interest at ARIA. ARIA’s objective is to ensure that the influence of third parties does not compromise our decision making or independent judgement.
Find out more about this policy, which is applicable to anybody working with ARIA.