Activation Partners
Empowering talent and supporting science translation across our opportunity spaces
Meet our Activation Partners
Made up of nine deeply technical and highly entrepreneurial organisations, our first cohort of Activation Partners are pioneers of new science innovation models, community builders, world-leading research labs, and deep-tech focused accelerators.
Some of them were already established players in the UK, while others have set up operations here for the first time as part of our partnership.
Together, they’ve been creating new scientific talent pipelines, fostering novel IP, and facilitating more investments within the UK R&D ecosystem to ensure the breakthrough R&D we fund has a seamless route to societal impact. One year in, they’re now taking these learnings to move faster and more ambitiously in their programmes – creating more opportunities for exceptional talent across the UK.
Amodo
Amodo Design is an engineering consultancy covering the entire engineering stack, working with ARIA's Programme Directors and Creators to develop new scientific research equipment and prototypes from inventions in our opportunity spaces. Our partnership aims to enable new discoveries and then to de-bottleneck the process of turning discoveries into real-world impact by speeding up the journey from discovery to product, enhancing early-stage traction. The goal is that no R&D Creator is ever blocked by a lack of access to hardware.
Cambridge University Health Partners (CUHP)
Cambridge University Health Partners (CUHP) brings together leaders from science, health and business organisations (Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, University of Cambridge (including the Maxwell Centre and the Milner Therapeutics Institute), Cambridge Network, Cambridge Neuroscience, Vellos, and Babraham Research Campus) to make the Cambridge NeuroWorks consortium, supporting ARIA's Scalable Neural Interfaces opportunity space. As part of our partnership, Cambridge NeuroWorks runs two 12-month fellowship programmes to provide opportunities for testing and realising great ideas in neurotechnology, and fosters a vibrant UK-wide neurotech community.
Venture Café
Venture Café have brought their global innovation community to the UK in partnership with ARIA. Through hubs in London, Edinburgh in Manchester, Venture Café are energising and connecting the nation’s technology ecosystem – bringing together innovators, entrepreneurs and small businesses through free, high-impact weekly gatherings and programming. Open to all innovators, the mission is to connect talent in ARIA’s current and emerging opportunity spaces to the wider innovation ecosystem to advance progress and ensure scalable impact.
Stay up to date
Venture Café London: Website | LinkedIn
Venture Café Edinburgh: Website | LinkedIn
Venture Café Manchester: Website | LinkedIn
Convergent Research
Convergent Research is identifying and developing Focused Research Organisation (FRO)-shaped opportunities in our opportunity spaces. FROs are a new scientific institutional model designed to make fast progress by using team science and systems engineering to tackle research bottlenecks. Working closely with ARIA Programme Directors and the broader UK research ecosystem, Convergent Research ran a FRO Founder Residency to train a cohort of promising founders in refining their FRO concepts. The programme aims to provide a new mechanism for executing research in our opportunity spaces, advance the UK’s scientific and technological capabilities and give scientists a new avenue to pursue cutting-edge, large-scale research projects in the UK. From the residency, two teams have been selected for anchor funding from ARIA, with official launches planned in 2026.
Fifty Years
Fifty Years works across our opportunity spaces, delivering its company creation programme 5050 in the UK. 5050 equips scientists and engineers with the necessary skills to start and build world-changing companies that can solve humanity’s greatest challenges. 5050 participants are identifying civilisation-scale problems to tackle, develop essential entrepreneurship skills, grow into great founders, and learn everything they need to commercialise their research. Two 5050 cohorts will run per year to help great scientists and engineers become great founders.
Google DeepMind
Google DeepMind is working with us to identify projects designed to accelerate the impact of ARIA-backed research. The ‘Science 2030’ initiative – a roleplaying strategy workshop simulating potential futures, decision-making tradeoffs, and cooperative and competitive dynamics – is bringing together participants from government, technology companies, and the scientific community to explore the future of AI-driven science and potential impacts on society.
Google DeepMind’s partnership with ARIA does not include a funded component.
Nucleate UK
As part of a student-led organisation representing the largest global community of bio-innovators, Nucleate UK are identifying and supporting top scientific talent – helping them engage with the biotech ecosystem and translate cutting-edge research into companies with real-world impact. Programmes such as Activator – Nucleate’s flagship accelerator – are guiding teams through the process of biotech creation, with our partnership particularly focusing on ARIA's Programmable Plants opportunity space through Nucleate’s Eco track which supports biotechnologies for sustainability and climate. Nucleate is also empowering the next generation of biotech entrepreneurs by building national and global networks to connect scientists with mentors and investors. This partnership will extend to future opportunity spaces, growing communities and supporting founders tackling the UK’s most pressing challenges through science and innovation.
Pillar VC
The Encode: AI for Science Fellowship is a year-long fellowship for top AI researchers tackling high-impact scientific challenges to advance frontier research and help launch deep tech ventures and research organisations. Backed by Pillar VC and powered by ARIA, fellows are embedded in leading UK labs to apply AI to areas like climate modelling, neuromorphic computing, and robotics. Fellows receive a competitive salary, compute, partnerships, and datasets, and join a vibrant community of scientists, founders, and engineers. In June 2025 the UK Government announced its intention to fund the expansion of the programme, backing the initiative with £5m in funding.
Renaissance Philanthropy
As an Activation Partner, Renaissance Philanthropy is running the UK Horizons programme to act as a force multiplier for ARIA's opportunity spaces. The programme seeks to supercharge the UK's R&D ecosystem by building networks of innovators and increasing their ambition, expanding the diversity of science translation mechanisms, strengthening the UK’s philanthropic ecosystem, and building research translation strategies to increase the scale and impact of ARIA's opportunity spaces. Included in this are the Frontier Research Contractors (FRC) Launchpad – is a first-of-its-kind programme to build and scale uncommon organisations that combine technical ambition, willingness to build real technology for actual users, and flexible management structures – and the UK cohort of the Big If True Science Accelerator (BiTS).
Live opportunities + events
Explore the latest events and opportunities to engage with our Activation Partners.