How to advance revolutionary science: high turnover, high risk and a licence to fail

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript. The UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) is three years into the ten year tenure it has guaranteed by law and it already has a new chief executive. ARIA’s goal to fund revolutionary scientific breakthroughs started in 2023 with a four-year budget of £800 million (US$1.1 billion), around 20% of which funds organizations based outside the United Kingdom. Last year, the UK government committed to boosting the agency’s spending to £400 million a year by 2030 to scale up ARIA. Funded programmes so far include developing minimally invasive neurotechnologies, ways to allow artificial-intelligence agents to interact securely with each other and high-altitude floating ‘cell towers’ for communications. It is about to begin recruiting its third wave of programme directors, each working on a specific goal for up to five years and dishing out a budget of around £50 million. Kathleen Fisher, a computer scientist and previous director of the cybersecurity-focused Information Innovation Office at DARPA in Arlington, Virginia, took up the role of chief executive at ARIA in February. Nature spoke to Fisher at the agency’s London office in the heart of the King’s Cross technology quarter to find out what makes ARIA different, how long it will take to prove itself and whether AI will change science. Why did ARIA change its chief executive so early on? One of the elements of the ‘secret sauce’ that comes from DARPA is term-limits for decision makers. [Fast] turnover helps because if you take high-risk decisions and you see that they don't all pan out, you can start to become much more risk averse. But if the outcome of those high-risk decisions lands with a new team, you don’t have the feeling of “that was my baby and it didn’t work”. It also means you don’t fixate on certain ideas. DARPA has invested in AI for 60 years, but that wasn’t because one person said “AI is the thing”. It was probably hundreds of people saying, “nope, AI hasn’t really landed yet, but it’s still a good investment”. You need to make deep commitments for short periods of time, and then look at them with fresh eyes, over and over again. What is it like to work with funding from ARIA? Each programme is trying to accomplish a specific thing; creating treatments via minimally invasive deep-brain stimulation, for example. That often involves researchers from many different disciplines to come together. We have evaluation teams working to measure how the ‘creators’ (ARIA’s term for researchers) are doing, entrepreneurs in residence that will help creators with their translation plan and other partners that might help creators to navigate regulatory pathways. There are a lot of intervention points at which we assess how the teams are doing. Teams that are doing well can get additional funding, those that are not doing well can get cut. Researchers who think the way we work is exciting and enabling are ideal ARIA creators. People who say, “Would you just leave me alone so I can do my research?” are not. Curiosity-driven research is vitally important and we need those kind of researchers. But they’re not the kind of researchers who are going to do well at our agency. A Guardian article highlighted concerns of ARIA cash going to US tech and venture capital firms. Does ARIA’s spending need stronger scrutiny? ARIA’s mission is daunting, we’re supposed to change the world. We do need to be given the freedom to do that. There are accountability mechanisms in place, we answer to the UK National Audit Office and to parliamentary select committees. We do a tonne to be transparent and engaged with the relevant people, so I don’t think we need increased scrutiny. It’s also unrealistic to expect that the United Kingdom has 100% of the talent necessary to accomplish our moonshot goals, and every time we fund an organization that is not in the United Kingdom, we do a specific analysis to explain why that organization is suitable and necessary. Enjoying our latest content? Log in or create an account to continue Access the most recent journalism from Nature's award-winning team Explore the latest features & opinion covering groundbreaking research