Accelerated Adaptation
Backed by £54m, this programme sits within the Engineering Ecosystem Resilience opportunity space and seeks to explore pathways to accelerate the adaptation of wild species in order to prevent biodiversity loss and secure the natural infrastructure that underpins our global economy and well-being.
Funding – now closed
Within this programme, we’re looking to fund a cohort of interdisciplinary teams that can develop approaches to accelerating adaptation in wild species, model what the impacts of diverse approaches would be, explore the ethical and governance implications of potential interventions, and lead by defining and verifying data and analysis practices.
Success in this programme would unlock new capabilities that enable wild systems to rapidly overcome threats, ensuring the survival of the vital natural infrastructure that underpins our global economy and human health.
Technical Areas
In Phase 1 of this programme, we are seeking to fund teams across the following programme areas:
TA1 | Systems: Demonstrate accelerated adaptation, against a benchmark, in specific systems. Applications could focus on strategically chosen vulnerable species, such as trees, which can support hundreds of other species, and/or critical functional groups such as pollinators or soil nutrient cycles that underpin ecosystem services.
TA3 | Modelling: Increase our current predictive capacity with respect to modelling ecosystem resilience, integration of genetic, population and ecosystem‑level data, and understanding the impacts of potential interventions.
TA4 | Data + analytics: Make results comparable across teams, trusted and legible including through delivering training, and developing shared protocols, and data visualisation mechanisms. Ensure that claims made by system-focused teams are independently verified.
TA5 | Ethics + social responsibility: Recognising there is a diverse set of ethical considerations in the funded areas, we will not be prescriptive in what can be funded in this TA. Activity could include: co-developing ESR tools, frameworks and guidance; delivering training to project teams; producing evidence that could inform future governance models/regulatory pathways.
Each application should focus on a single TA. Applicants may submit multiple applications, provided each addresses a different TA. Details of what is in and out of scope for each area can be found in the call for proposals.
Who should apply?
We invite applications from interdisciplinary teams bridging fields including ecology, evolution, biological engineering, conservation, ethics, robotics, and AI. We welcome applications from those at universities, research institutes, non-profits, startups, established companies, and from individuals. We encourage collaborative teams, but solo applicants are also invited to apply. Applicants can be based in the UK or abroad.
Join a team
We have a live teaming tool that allows applicants to find complementary expertise. After a quick registration, you can browse other researchers and request an introduction from the ARIA team to explore potential collaborations.