The chief executive of the UK’s moonshot research agency has defended the funder’s partnerships with US firms, under pressure from peers.

Kathleen Fisher, leader of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria), told the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee that the benefits outweighed the risks of collaborating with US-based organisations.

During the 8 September hearing, former science minister Paul Drayson pressed Fisher on why most of Aria’s collaborators, “activation partners”, were based in the US, given that the publicly funded agency has a mandate to deliver economic benefit to the UK.

Fisher said that Aria had made agreements with “world-class deep tech investors, who know how to convert science into world-class companies”, with the condition that they “establish UK operations and to invest all the money in the UK”. Fisher said that it is more important that the company “doesn’t die”, irrespective of where investment comes from.

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But Drayson argued that the UK’s problem is not attracting investment for discoveries, but rather commercialising research. He asked if Aria should prefer UK investment partners, citing a Lords report published last year that 

“My concern here is that activation partners become, effectively, acquisition partners facilitating the cream of Aria’s intellectual property to ultimately benefit investors outside the UK rather than creating wealth, economic growth, in the UK,” he said.

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However, Fisher said, “I don’t see that as a huge risk,” saying that there is a “huge upside” of US partnerships helping UK companies cross the “valley of death”, where research fails to commercialise.

She added: “I do think it’s not only Aria’s responsibility to make…these kinds of organisations want to stay in the UK.” Fisher added that the responsibility lay with the nation’s “entire ecosystem”.

Before joining Aria, Kathleen Fisher was a programme director for seven years at the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the agency Aria is modelled on.

In the hearing, Fisher compared the two agencies, with the key difference being that “Aria still has to prove its existence”, something that Darpa, where the creation of the internet can be traced back to, has done over its 70-year history.

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But, despite having a fraction of Darpa’s budget, Fisher said: “Aria is on track to deliver that same kind of success for the UK and the world.”

Important to Aria’s success is a healthy wider funding ecosystem in the UK that, according to her, the public funder UK Research and Innovation provides. “You can’t have an agency like Aria, if there isn’t an agency like UKRI doing the blue sky research. And the…long-term scientific infrastructure that Aria pulls from, that comes from UKRI,” she said.

Fisher went on to praise the scientific talent in the UK but admitted that “we are not where we want to be” in funding across UK regions. Aria’s funding is of Oxford, London and Cambridge. She added that the agency was adding new hiring processes to change that.

Before her hearing, the agency’s chair Matt Clifford, resigned after he was accused of creating a conflict of interest by taking a senior role at US firm Anthropic.

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Fisher told the Lords that “I understand the concern” but “Aria did not have a role in that decision.” Fisher added: “I think it’s essential that the chair of Aria does not have [a] conflict of interest that impede[s] the agency.”

frances.jones@timeshighereducation.com