GoKawiilAmong the programmes funded by Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) include research on telecommunication technologies.Credit: Puneet Vikram Singh, Nature and Concept photographer/Getty
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.
The agency is designed to support high-risk, high-reward civilian research and is loosely modelled on the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which has helped to pioneer technologies such as the Internet and personal computers.
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.
Kathleen Fisher became chief executive of the UK Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) in February.Credit: Birch Photography
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.
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