The U.K. government has released its plans for emulating the storied high-risk, high-reward U.S. funding agency, the Advanced Research Projects Agency. During the 2019 election campaign, the Conservative government promised to set up such an agency, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s former adviser Dominic Cummings pushed for it. Now, it has a name: the Advanced Research & Invention Agency. The agency will sit within the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, but remain independent from the main research funding agency, UK Research and Innovation. Business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng announced last week it would be funded by an initial £800 million over 4 years and would begin to disburse grants by 2022.
Full text: New U.K. funding agency aims to tackle innovative research | Science
