ARIA Opportunity Seeds: Programmable Plants

Programme Director Angie Burnett's opportunity space, 'Programmable Plants', (www.aria.org.uk/opportunity-spaces/p… ↗) asks "how can we programme a plant to do anything we want it to do?". We're looking to fund high potential proposals with up to £500k each.

We're looking for bold ideas that could challenge assumptions, open up new research paths, or provide steps towards new capabilities. If you have an important idea you're obsessed with, but you don't currently have the resources or support to take it forward, we'd like to hear from you.

Ideas could come from anywhere, so we welcome applications from individuals and teams who are early in their career or who have atypical backgrounds. We care more about your idea and your intrinsic motivation than we do about your CV.

To help you decide if this is the right funding call for you, below is some guidance on the scope.

In scope:

Ideas that sit within the ''Programmable Plants' (www.aria.org.uk/opportunity-spaces/p… ↗) opportunity space. By this, we mean your proposal should show how your idea either aligns with or challenges the assumptions of the Summary, Beliefs, or Observations in the opportunity space document (www.aria.org.uk/media/uqrjp3wp/aria-… ↗).

Both land plants and aquatic plants (including green algae) are in scope.

Microorganisms influencing plants are in scope, provided that they are being used to alter an aspect of a plant's form or function

The opportunity space document outlines examples of ideas that we are interested in, but there are many more possibilities not mentioned in the document that we would be excited to fund.

Ideas that could change the conversation about what is possible or valuable.

Ideas that range from early stage curiosity-driven research through to pre-commercial science and technology.

Out of scope:

Ideas that target Angie Burnett's goal of Synthetic Plants (www.aria.org.uk/opportunity-spaces/p… ↗), as described in her programme thesis (www.aria.org.uk/media/teli101l/aria-… ↗) and programme funding call (www.aria.org.uk/media/fq1fybgx/aria-… ↗) (applications for the programme funding call have now closed).

Cyanobacteria.

Ideas that are undifferentiated or that are likely to happen without ARIA support.

Commercial or close-to-commercial stage products.

Beyond this scope and our evaluation criteria outlined in the opportunity seed call for proposals document on ARIA's website here, we don't have preconceptions about what ideas you might send our way. You don't need to contort your project to fit our goals: we want to hear what you really want to do.