Introducing Our Programme Directors
These eight scientists + engineers will develop creative, ambitious visions for how technology can enable a better future, and drive those visions forward with the R&D community.
TAKEAWAYS
We’re excited to introduce our founding cohort of Programme Directors (PDs): the scientists + engineers tasked with designing and overseeing ARIA’s initial programmes.
In March, we launched a global, open call for candidates. After receiving nearly 400 applications, we narrowed the search down to 8 individuals.
From nature inspired computing to programmable plants, our PDs are shaping programme areas at the edge of the possible.
Their mandate: develop a concrete programme around their visions, and build the multidisciplinary communities to make them a reality. We’ll be seeking input and inspiration from the community as we drive towards launching formal programmes in the coming months.
Find out more about what we’re working on and how you can get involved here.
ARIA’s mission is to unlock scientific and technological breakthroughs for everyone's benefit. This starts with Programme Directors: the scientists + engineers who will design and lead our programmes.
These individuals and the research teams they support might end up responsible for huge advances that could transform life in the UK and beyond. So we need the right people to drive this work forward.
The application form for ARIA PD started with one question: “If you could direct up to £50m to drive a bold and focused scientific/technical step-change in human progress, what would you do?”
Today, we’re delighted to say the search for our founding cohort is over. Following nearly 400 applications, over 80 hours of application review, 66 hours of interviews, and a finalist day (read more about our selection process here) we narrowed the search down to 8 individuals, with deep expertise and a focused, creative vision for how technology can enable a better future. Their visions span a range of scientific and technological fields, but are united by their creativity, boldness, and intrinsic motivation for impact.
Meet our founding cohort
We deliberately led one of the most open calls of its kind because we wanted to find people from across the scientific ecosystem, to break down silos and discover new pathways. Our founding cohort brings a range of institutional and sectoral experiences from industry and academia. They join us from different corners of the UK - from Newcastle, to Cambridge, to Glasgow - and even bring fresh perspectives from the US.
Gemma Bale - Gemma is an Assistant Professor of Medical Therapeutics and Head of the Neuro Optics Lab at the University of Cambridge. Her work focuses on developing non-invasive brain monitoring in real-world environments where traditional brain monitoring isn’t usually possible. She joins ARIA as a co-PD in October.
Sarah Bohndiek - Sarah is a Professor of Biomedical Physics at the University of Cambridge, jointly appointed in the Department of Physics and the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute. Sarah leads an interdisciplinary team that uses optical imaging technology to monitor in situ tumour evolution and support earlier cancer detection. She joins ARIA as a co-PD in October.
Suraj Bramhavar - Suraj was co-founder and CTO of Sync Computing, a VC-backed startup optimising the use of modern cloud computing resources. The company was spun-out from his research at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Prior to that, Suraj worked at Intel Corp, helping transition silicon photonics technology from an R&D effort into a now >$1BN business. He joins ARIA in September.
Angie Burnett - Angie is a plant biologist, focused on investigating the responses of crop plants to environmental stresses, such as drought and extreme temperature. Angie worked as a postdoctoral research associate at Brookhaven National Laboratory and a Consultant at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, before becoming a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge. She joins ARIA in October.
Jacques Carolan - Jacques is an applied physicist and neuroscientist and is a BBSRC Discovery Fellow at the UCL. 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. He joins ARIA in October.
David ‘davidad’ Dalrymple - Davidad was most recently a Research Fellow in technical AI safety at Oxford. Davidad co-invented the top-40 cryptocurrency Filecoin, led an international neuroscience collaboration, and was a senior software engineer at Twitter and multiple startups.
Jenny Read - Jenny trained in theoretical astrophysics before moving into visual neuroscience. After ten years at Oxford University and four at the US National Eye Institute, Jenny joined Newcastle University as Professor of Vision Science. At Newcastle, Jenny focused on insect stereoscopic depth perception, developing a new stereoscopic vision test for children, and using optical coherence tomography retinal scans to detect early signs of neurological disease. She joined ARIA in September.
Mark Symes - Mark is the Professor of Electrochemistry and Electrochemical Technology at the School of Chemistry, University of Glasgow. His academic research interests focus on energy conversion and the production of green fuels. He is also a co-founder of a spin-out in the green hydrogen space. He joins ARIA in October.
Next steps: taking a programme from vision to reality
An ARIA programme starts with a PD’s emerging vision. But it will only be made real by activating the creativity and ambition of the scientific ecosystem. With PDs in post, their mandate is clear: develop a concrete programme, and bring together the different disciplines and institutions needed to make it a reality.
This starts with programme development. Each of our new PDs has joined with an area or set of areas they feel compelled to explore, united by their potential to reimagine different aspects of our society. These are early areas of exploration, not yet formal programmes, but they include:
Harnessing the thermodynamics of natural systems to radically increase efficiency and scalability of AI compute.
Imagining new ways to interface with the human nervous system to non-invasively provide neuropsychiatric treatment
Designing programmable plants to enhance resilience against our increasingly uncertain climate.
Catalysing breakthroughs in advanced optics to track diseases in our bodies as well as biodiversity threats to our oceans.
Our founding PDs sit at different stages of the programme lifecycle. While some have joined having already identified a core insight underpinning a potential programme, for others that will emerge by immersing themselves in a new domain and seeking input and inspiration from different parts of the ecosystem.
There’s no simple instruction set for breakthroughs, so this will be an interactive and iterative process. We’ll openly publish our progress at each stage of development, and solicit feedback, before a programme is ready to be considered for ARIA budget approval. We expect to formally launch the first of our ambitious R&D programmes by the end of the year.
Keep following us here for updates on the journey, and get in touch if you can help advance our mission. Ultimately, ARIA programmes will only succeed if we reach across disciplines, sectors and institutions, to activate researchers to achieve an outcome greater than the sum of their parts.