Encode: Empowering the Next Wave of AI-Powered Science
Discover how the Encode Fellowship – run by our Activation Partner, Pillar VC – is bringing top AI talent into scientific labs to accelerate breakthroughs from medicine to climate change.
What’s new at ARIA
We’ve launched a global search for our next CEO. Read more about what we're looking for and this next chapter here.
Ant Rowstron has joined ARIA as our inaugural CTO. Ant has joined us from Microsoft – learn more about his background here.
Apply for £18m of funding in Safeguarded AI. We’re seeking a founding team or entity to build a new organisation – advancing ML to integrate frontier AI into a secure, general-purpose workflow, with rigorous safety and governance. Find the full call here.
Dive into our latest opportunity space, Sculpting Innate Immunity. Brian Wang, ARIA Programme Director, is exploring whether modulating innate immunity with precision and control could unlock a new frontier in human health. Read it and share your thoughts here.
Discover the expanded Scoping Our Planet opportunity space. Programme Director Rico Chandra has joined PDs Gemma Bale and Sarah Bohndiek to scale the ambition of the space. Read the updates and give feedback here.
Check out upcoming events and opportunities from our Activation Partners.
Join Renaissance Philanthropy for a discussion exploring new funding models and institutional mechanisms to unlock translational opportunities in the UK. Register for the event on 8 July here.
Venture Café are hosting their Thursday Gatherings in London with an AI in biotech focus. Register for the event on 17 July here.
In partnership with ARIA, Renaissance Philanthropy have launched two new programmes in the UK to scale the impact of ARIA’s opportunity spaces:
Ember will support exceptional scientists and innovators in the UK advancing Big If True ideas into actionable R&D projects. The programme will provide funding and mentorship to help unlock transformative ideas into real-world impact. Join a Q&A here to learn more and apply by 20 July here.
The Big if True Science (BiTS) Accelerator will help scientists develop nascent ideas into programme designs that could transform society with £50-100m. BiTs will train scientists in how to design coordinated research programmes, like ARIA’s opportunity spaces, through mentorship from former programme leaders. Find out more and apply by 25 July here.
From ML to Microscopes: AI-powered scientific impact
For years, a bold idea captivated a mathematician-turned-ML engineer: that AI held the key to cracking ageing and cancer. He spent four years at a tech conglomerate working on a successful biomedical-AI project that clinicians initially called "impossible," yet his research only deepened his conviction, and left him hungry to push the science further. Now, through the Encode Fellowship – made possible through our activation partnership with Pillar VC – he’s able to pursue his ambition full-time at the Francis Crick Institute, advancing his own goals while potentially deepening our understanding of these diseases.
His decision represents something profound happening in UK science – and helps explain why the government announced additional funding this month to double down on the Encode Fellowship's potential.
The next AI revolution is science
"The biggest lever we have on the speed of science is AI," says Tony Kulesa, Partner at Pillar VC. Already, AI systems are modelling protein structures and simulating planetary atmospheres in a fraction of the time it once took. But behind these systems are brilliant scientists and engineers with a passion for solving complex problems.
As part of our Activation Partners initiative, we're working with early-stage VC firm Pillar VC to pair world-class AI experts with top researchers — injecting entrepreneurial energy into science to unlock new breakthroughs.
By doing so, the ambition is to bridge a growing divide that could hinder progress. As our Chief Product Officer, Pippy James explains, “Much of the world's top AI talent isn't currently focused on fundamental, hard science problems." ”They feel cut off from the domains where they could have the greatest impact,” adds Leah Morris, Executive Director of Encode at Pillar VC.
On one hand, scientific research institutions lack access to AI talent (nearly 70% of new AI PhDs are drawn to industry where the talent pipeline flows overwhelmingly away from fundamental research). On the other hand, the most talented AI minds often feel they could unleash more potential if they applied their skills elsewhere. This means the power to revolutionise science exists – but we need to build the bridge between these two worlds.
A shared vision for impact
The Encode Fellowship represents a counterintuitive solution: placing world-class AI researchers directly into academic labs working on challenges aligned with ARIA's opportunity spaces.
Engaging with potential fellows before designing the programme revealed a clear, shared ambition. They were drawn by the intellectual satisfaction of building models to tackle the most important questions in science. This desire for transformative impact was matched by a need for proximity to the real-world instruments of discovery – from fMRI scanners to wind tunnels – expensive and specialised equipment that largely exists only in academic research settings, and is essential for generating fresh data.
Build the opportunity and the talent will come
When applications opened in March, the Encode team received more than 600 applications from researchers at leading companies like Anthropic, Meta, Ginkgo, Isomorphic Labs, and Google DeepMind, and top global universities including Harvard, IIT, Berkeley, ETHZ, and MIT. Of these, 40% came from the UK, 25% from the United States, and the rest from 54 other countries – all incredibly accomplished and published researchers wanting to build in the UK, and looking for alternative choices to traditional academic career paths.
The demand validated the hypothesis behind the Fellowship: top researchers want to work on hard science problems, there just haven't been enough opportunities for them to do so.
Consider the mathematician who chose the Crick – already convinced that AI could tackle ageing and cancer, he needed the freedom and resources to pursue this full-time. Or take another final-year PhD student using AI for coral-reef conservation. Over five years, they've conducted 300+ scientific dives and now want to unlock petabyte-scale 3D twins of reefs with Google-like natural-language search capabilities.
As Leah explains, the Fellowship provides what these researchers need the most: "one year of backing, compute, world-class lab access, and crucially, deep-tech mentorship and a venture-focused network to build a viable product that has real-world impact.”
Gathering momentum
The UK has long had the essential ingredients to attract global AI talent: world-class institutions, vibrant science clusters, and entrepreneurial researchers. But programmes like Encode are being helped by both new thinking and new investment in the UK.
ARIA's mandate to back unconventional ideas and establish new partnerships, combined with the UK government’s £14bn AI Opportunities Plan to develop new talent-friendly pathways for global researchers to embed themselves in UK labs, is helping ambitious programmes like these make the most of the UK's world-class research network.
Policymakers have spotted the opportunity. At London Tech Week, DSIT doubled down on Encode, announcing an additional £5m in funding — a signal of growing confidence in the UK’s potential to lead in AI for science, and in the Fellowship’s ability to help catalyse that progress.
"The Encode Fellowship is helping us go a step further, putting world-class research talent into labs to foster deeper collaboration and bring truly game-changing breakthroughs to life faster than ever before," said Minister for AI, Feryal Clark. "Encode will help to strengthen our position as a leading destination for AI talent, and build up our sovereign AI capabilities as we put the technology to work to deliver on our Plan for Change.”
The collaboration between world-class AI talent and leading academic institutions represents exactly the kind of ecosystem building that ARIA was designed to catalyse. "It takes two sides to make the Fellowship work," notes Pippy, "and it would never be possible without the willingness of outstanding UK research labs to host these individuals."
Discover the Encode: AI for Science Fellowship.
Seed spotlight: Understanding ocean currents in Antarctica with ARIA Creator Laura Cimoli
Outside of our Forecasting Tipping Points programme, we’re funding an array of seed projects within the Scoping Our Planet opportunity space to help sharpen climate predictions.
Laura Cimoli and her team are collecting vital data on ice-ocean interactions. From the logistics of shipping equipment across the globe, to identifying the early signals emerging from the research so far, we spoke to Laura during her recent trip to Antarctica the team deployed underwater gliders to better understand how the ocean circulation contributes to – and responds to – melting of West Antarctica.
