Empowering scientists to reach for the edge of the possible

Programme Funding

Precision Mitochondria: Concept papers

ARIA is launching a programme backed by at least £55 million to make the mitochondrial genome programmable in vivo. The immediate goal is to achieve persistent, reproducible expression of a novel gene from engineered mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in a vertebrate system. The programme will fund the creation of a versatile toolkit to empower researchers with new capabilities. This toolkit will enable the delivery of nucleic acids into the mitochondrial matrix, the expression of functional proteins from the introduced genetic code, and the maintenance of engineered genomes through cellular replication.

Programme Funding

Sustained Viral Resilience: Concept papers

We’re accepting applications for funding within our £46m Sustained Viral Resilience programme. The programme’s goal is to engineer the body's innate immune system, creating a new class of medicines we're calling ‘sustained innate immunoprophylactics’ (SIIPs). If successful, they’ll provide durable, broad-spectrum protection against multiple respiratory viruses, creating a foundational resilience to viral disease that complements traditional vaccines. We’ll not only fund efforts to create new kinds of prophylactics, but also activities that support adoption and those that unlock smoother translation and commercialisation pathways.

Trust Everything, Everywhere: Pre-programme discovery

The Trust Everything, Everywhere opportunity space asks how we can develop new trust infrastructure for an increasingly cyber-physical world. We’re now looking to fund a number of short research projects to help guide the development of an ambitious research programme and build community within this space.

AI Scientist

We are inviting proposals for a series of short exploratory projects to be undertaken by existing AI systems capable of performing the full end-to-end workflow of scientific knowledge creation. We are specifically looking for AI systems that can handle ideation and hypothesis creation, the design of experiments to test these hypotheses, the ability to run experiments in ideally fully automated labs, and the interpretation of results to draw conclusions. The AI system should be able to place its work in the context of related literature and produce a comprehensive written report detailing the related work, the idea explored, experiments, results, and conclusions. Please note that this is NOT a call to fund the development of a new AI Scientist system; you are expected to have an already functioning platform which can be used to attempt to solve a research problem.