Institutions of Innovation: Advanced Research and Invention Agency
'Institutions of Innovation' is a series of monthly interviews with the institutions driving the UK’s innovation policy.
Each contribution gradually pieces together the UK's innovation landscape; setting out the key actors, what they do, where they sit and how industry can engage, including through techUK.
This month's insight focuses on the Advanced Research and Invention Agency.
Further information about ARIA's work can be found on their website here.
These responses have been provided by Ilan Gur, Chief Executive Officer of ARIA.
I see the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) is an R&D funding agency built to unlock scientific and technological breakthroughs which could benefit everyone. What does this mean in practice?
ARIA’s job is ambitious but simple: activate the UK's science and technology ecosystem in new ways to radically improve the future of the UK and the world. We search for areas where a scientific breakthrough could drive a step change in social and economic prosperity but is unlikely to occur because the R&D needed is too speculative, bold, or interdisciplinary. Then we go after it – by identifying, connecting and funding individuals and teams across the UK and beyond who have ideas and determination that can help tackle that challenge.
What kind of relationship does ARIA have with its closest institutional neighbours?
We’re funding high-risk, outlier projects and working to connect the dots in new ways, but all of our work draws on and complements the world-class R&D system that already exists in the UK. So we work closely across the ecosystem with partners like UKRI, Innovate UK, learned societies, universities, startups, industry, and beyond. We intentionally don’t take IP ownership or equity in any of the projects we fund so that we’re not seen as competitive – we want our efforts to be multiplicative and boost the success of the entire system.
More broadly, how does ARIA work with external stakeholders, including organisations across the UK, to drive innovation?
We engage and fund across the full spectrum of disciplines and UK institutions – whether that’s start-ups, public labs, SMEs, corporates, or individuals at any stage of their career. We currently support work across seven opportunity spaces where we see potential for massive impact – areas ranging from compute hardware, to programmable plants and robotic hardware.
We provide two primary modes of funding: large (on the order of £50M) programmes that support a constellation of projects who can work in tandem to drive breakthroughs and small (up to £500k) seed awards for individual researchers or teams to embark on a bold new project. And as mentioned earlier, we aim to catalyse, not compete – we do not retain IP rights, take equity, or require match funding.
We also have activities that sit alongside our programmes and projects, built to help ensure a path to market and societal impact. Our mission requires us to translate highly speculative, early stage R&D into real new capabilities and products, and we believe the biggest driver for that translation will be entrepreneurs. So we see a real need to inject entrepreneurial talent, capital and ideas into the research areas we’re supporting. To help with that, we recently recruited a group of highly entrepreneurial organisations from across the UK and beyond to serve as Activation Partners for ARIA – extending our reach and catalysing entrepreneurship alongside our research programmes across the UK.
How can techUK’s 1000+ industry members best engage with ARIA?
Over the next six months, we’ll continue to launch funding opportunities across our programmes. We’re looking to fund researchers working across a broad range of institutions, sectors, and disciplines – including in the private sector – so we’d love TechUK members to keep a close eye on our social media channels and website for updates on future funding opportunities.
We'll meanwhile be working to develop new programmes and projects, both in our existing opportunity spaces and in new ones that will be launched in the first half of next year. All of our programmes and opportunity spaces are built and developed in public – so we’ll be actively seeking this community’s input to help shape what and how our funding can help you change the world.
What is ARIA's long-term vision for the UK’s innovation landscape? Are there any areas in which working with industry will be particularly crucial?
I often say that the UK is one of the few places in the world with the depth of scientific talent and infrastructure to change the world. But collaboration between academia and the private sector is going to be critical, and we’ll need to break down the silos and barriers that limit bold exploration and ambitious entrepreneurship.
At ARIA, we’ll be piloting a number of initiatives with our Activation Partners in the coming months that aim to better equip the researchers we fund to translate their breakthroughs into practical applications at scale. That includes everything from building training programmes on how to take ideas out of the lab and into the market, to helping researchers build prototypes to translate their discoveries to applications, to introducing new focused institutions aimed at removing bottlenecks in early stage research.
Finally, what is ARIA's main priority over the next 12 months?
In our first year, we focused on building the foundations of an agency that we believe can change the UK and the world in the coming decades: we built our team and systems from scratch, honed our theory of change, and launched our first set of programmes.
In the next 12 months, we’ll move to operating at scale – initiating and managing dozens of research projects across each of our seven opportunity spaces, building the communities and support around them to drive their success, and meanwhile continuing to innovate by launching new spaces, programmes, and funding mechanisms. The impact of our work over the next 12 months won’t be felt overnight, but ARIA wasn't built to chase quick wins.
Our job is to build a portfolio of bold bets that are right at the edge of the possible. Many will fail, but those that do succeed will generate massive social and economic returns for generations to come.
You can find out more about ARIA by attending Ilan's presentation at techUK's 2024 Tech & Innovation Summit.
This is titled: "Funding the frontier: how ARIA and the tech sector are working together to drive the next generation of innovation"
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Rory joined techUK in June 2023 after three years in the Civil Service on its Fast Stream leadership development programme.
During this time, Rory worked on the Government's response to Covid-19 (NHS Test & Trace), school funding strategy (Department for Education) and international climate and nature policy (Cabinet Office). He also tackled the social care crisis whilst on secondment to techUK's Health and Social Care programme in 2022.
Before this, Rory worked in the House of Commons and House of Lords alongside completing degrees in Political Economy and Global Politics.
Today, Rory leads techUK's emerging technologies activity across everything from immersive, web3, AI and robotics to space, gaming & metaverse.
This involves co-running techUK's flagship Innovation campaign, managing four series (including the 'Meet the Innovators' interview series), and launching 4-6-month 'sprint campaigns' on transformative technologies and sectors.
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Rory joined techUK in June 2023 after three years in the Civil Service on its Fast Stream leadership development programme.
During this time, Rory worked on the Government's response to Covid-19 (NHS Test & Trace), school funding strategy (Department for Education) and international climate and nature policy (Cabinet Office). He also tackled the social care crisis whilst on secondment to techUK's Health and Social Care programme in 2022.
Before this, Rory worked in the House of Commons and House of Lords alongside completing degrees in Political Economy and Global Politics.
Today, Rory leads techUK's emerging technologies activity across everything from immersive, web3, AI and robotics to space, gaming & metaverse.
This involves co-running techUK's flagship Innovation campaign, managing four series (including the 'Meet the Innovators' interview series), and launching 4-6-month 'sprint campaigns' on transformative technologies and sectors.
- Email:
- [email protected]
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Rory joined techUK in June 2023 after three years in the Civil Service on its Fast Stream leadership development programme.