Eight Scientists, a Billion Dollars, and the Moonshot Agency Trying to Make Britain Great Again

In a cramped conference room in Bristol, Ilan Gur is trying to convince a group of plant biologists that they can change the world. The 44-year-old has the patter you’d expect from a Californian startup founder, but he’s also one of the UK’s most senior civil servants, so what comes next is unexpected.

Close your eyes, he asks the scientists, and imagine pushing past the very edges of your research. The attendees take a beat, shifting slightly on their uncomfortable chairs. Positive visualization is not quite what they had expected from a workshop introducing them to the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), the UK government’s new high-risk, high-reward science funding agency.

Gur is ARIA’s CEO, and if he senses their hesitation, he is unfazed by it. The whole point of ARIA is to push researchers beyond their comfort zones and towards ideas the typically ...