UK Horizons: HSSG
Looking for Transformative Scientific Opportunities
Pinpointing the most consequential research domains amid an ever-shifting scientific, market, and geopolitical landscape is a key task for scientific funders shaping the future of R&D. In partnership with the UK’s Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA), Renaissance Philanthropy is launching the Horizon Scanning Study Group (HSSG). ARIA empowers scientists and engineers to pursue breakthroughs at the edge of the possible with the aim of generating massive social and economic returns. The HSSG will work alongside ARIA to surface, quantify, and inform high impact opportunities and shifts in and around ARIA’s opportunity spaces.
Opportunities that are highly consequential for society, under-explored relative to their potential impact, and open to new talent often represent the most fertile ground for scientific progress. The spectrum of possible research avenues is extensive, and determining which merit priority demands careful study. Furthermore, scientific disciplines are inherently fluid––breakthroughs, market realignments, and geopolitical developments can affect the progress of a scientific field.
However, we hypothesise that if these are done correctly there is huge potential for impact on society.
The Challenge
The HSSG will assemble approximately 30 cross-disciplinary scientific experts to scan the scientific horizon for opportunities across ARIA’s current and emerging spaces.
The group is designed to detect emerging potential and predict future developments, providing expert assessment of the evolutions, shifts, and high-potential "grey spaces" around and between ARIA-relevant scientific fields. In collaboration with Metaculus forecasters, the HSSG will map out the bottlenecks in a given area, quantify impact paths and provide specific, actionable information on how to accelerate scientific progress.
HSSG is powered by Renaissance Philanthropy's partnership with the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA).