Lords Science Committee to quiz heads of Government’s new research funding agency ARIA
Monday 11 November 2024
The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee will take evidence on Tuesday November 12 from the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), the Government’s new research funding agency.
This is the first time that the Chair and CEO of ARIA will have given evidence to a Parliamentary Select Committee since ARIA’s formal founding in 2023.
Recent Committee evidence sessions have included Peter Kyle, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology; Lord Vallance, Minister of State for Science, Research, and Innovation; and Professor Dame Angela McLean, the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser.
One-off evidence sessions have been taking place alongside the cross-party Committee’s longer-term inquiry into engineering biology, which will report early next year.
Among the questions the Committee is likely to raise with Ilan Gur, CEO of ARIA, and Matt Clifford, Chair of ARIA, are:
- Where does ARIA sit in the overall research and innovation landscape in the UK?
- ARIA has announced seven programme directors with major areas of focus over the last year, so could you outline some of the work you have achieved so far?
- How does ARIA’s research model differ from other principal investigators funded through UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)?
- Is your focus on very blue-skies research, or is there a clear pathway to subsequent application and innovation?
- How do you measure success when the goals are so ambitious?
The committee will meet in Room 3 at the Palace of Westminster at 10.15-11.45. The session, which is open to the public, will be streamed live and on demand on Parliament TV. There are more details on X.
More about the Science and Technology Committee:
The Science and Technology Committee has a broad remit “to consider science and technology”. It scrutinises Government policy by undertaking cross-departmental inquiries into a range of different activities. These include: public policy areas which ought to be informed by scientific research (for example, health effects of air travel), technological challenges and opportunities (for example, genomic medicine) and public policy towards science itself (for example, setting priorities for publicly funded research).
The committee is chaired by Baroness Brown. Its full membership is here.
The committee’s work can be followed on its website and on X @LordsSTCom here.
