I am…a prospective founder looking to build or expand my team.

LinkedIn Profile or Personal Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverhdez

Location: London, UK

Relevant ARIA Opportunity Spaces: Programmable Plants

Key Expertise and Capabilities: On our team, we have people that have founded successful start ups in plant biotechnology as well as experts on accelerating tissue culture in crops.

FRO Idea or Area of Interest: It takes an average of 16.5 years and $115M to bring a new gene edited/modified crop trait to market. This is largely due to crop gene editing timelines, which take 1-2 years per edit. We're trying to shorten this timeline down to weeks.

Expertise You are Looking For: We are looking for technical teammates that have experience in crop gene editing and feel compelled to unlock plant biotechnology.

I am…a prospective founder looking to build or expand my team.

LinkedIn Profile or Personal Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemeyerowitz

Location: London, UK

Relevant ARIA Opportunity Spaces: Future Proofing Our Climate and Weather; Programmable Plants

Key Expertise and Capabilities: Exited startup founder & CEO.  Worked on multiple DARPA programs.  Familiar with the FRO model.  Physicist/electrical engineer turned experimental biologist.

FRO Idea or Area of Interest: Talking to colleagues about ideas for making scale-up for bio-manufacturing faster and more cost effective.

Expertise You are Looking For: Engineers with expertise or interests in preparative chromatography, membrane filtration, other separative techniques.  Scale-up, modeling, device design, capital infrastructure.  Plant biologists, application chemists, materials scientists.

I am…an individual looking to join a team.

LinkedIn Profile or Personal Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mihir-nath-33414917b

Location: Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

Relevant ARIA Opportunity Spaces: Scalable Neural Interfaces

Key Expertise and Capabilities: I would contribute my interdisciplinary background spanning physics, neuroscience, and signal processing.

FRO Idea or Area of Interest: My long-term goal is to develop focused ultrasound neuromodulation into a precise, reliable tool for treating neuropsychiatric disorders.

Expertise You are Looking For: I am looking to join teams in the field of ultrasound neuromodulation.

I am…a prospective founder looking to build or expand my team.

LinkedIn Profile or Personal Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paige-brocidiacono

Location: Chapel Hill, NC, US

Relevant ARIA Opportunity Spaces: Future Proofing Our Climate and Weather; Scoping Our Planet

Key Expertise and Capabilities: At the non-profit https://www.sparkclimate.org, I roadmap and support the atmospheric methane removal field, identifying opportunities where innovation can create multiplicative impact. I know almost everyone who matters and what the key roadblocks are.

Before Spark, I founded and was CEO of https://windbornesystems.com, a startup leveraging low cost balloons to access tropospheric data and improve weather forecasts. 

FRO Idea or Area of Interest: I am interested in accelerating research for climate interventions requiring atmospheric perturbation (e.g. methane removal, SRM) by developing new observing capabilities for critical components (e.g. CH4, NOx, O3, OH/Cl, particulate density) and their proxies, leveraging recent innovations in airborne platforms (e.g. balloons, drones), miniaturized sensors, remote sensing, and machine learning.

Expertise You are Looking For: Someone with deep scientific experience on atmospheric chemistry, remote sensing, or in-situ sensors, especially relevant to methane oxidation chemistry.

I am…an individual looking to join a team.

LinkedIn Profile or Personal Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aayush-chadha

Location: London, UK

Relevant ARIA Opportunity Spaces: Other (Emerging Concepts)

Key Expertise and Capabilities: Semiconductor process engineering, Machine learningLab automation (embedded systems programming, electrical engineering, CAD, prototyping)

FRO Idea or Area of Interest: Materials discovery and validation with quantum computer in the loop.

Remove bottlenecks in discovery and utilisation of exotic materials by developing software integrating with NISQ computing resources to overcome bottlenecks of DFT-only databases and developing CFD/ML models to optimise control of synthesis procedures (CVD, RIE, VdW stacking).

Expertise You are Looking For: Theoretical physics, Quantum computing, Operations

I am…an individual looking to join a team.

LinkedIn Profile or Personal Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iawallace

Location: Bristol, UK

Relevant ARIA Opportunity Spaces: Mathematics for Safe AI; Smarter Robot Bodies; Other (Emerging Concepts),

Key Expertise and Capabilities: I've a long experience (20+ years) in AI, mostly autonomy and perception systems but I've also been a startup CTO and Director of machine learning.

FRO Idea or Area of Interest: If I had an idea, it'd be around synthetic data produced from large models or simulation to entirely train new ML models in data-sparse fields.

Expertise You are Looking For: Someone with a good idea to make happen, and ideally skills to complement my experience building and running tech teams.

I am…a prospective founder looking to build or expand my team.

LinkedIn Profile or Personal Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amishche

Location: Manchester, UK

Relevant ARIA Opportunity Spaces: Other (Emerging Concepts)

Key Expertise and Capabilities: My expertise spans AI for materials discovery, condensed matter physics, computational modelling, and experiment automation. I specialize in high-throughput synthesis (ALD, CVD, solution-based), advanced characterization (XRD, Raman, AFM), and AI-integrated feedback loops to accelerate validation. I have experience leading interdisciplinary teams and managing large-scale research projects.

FRO Idea or Area of Interest: Our FRO aims to develop an AI-driven platform that automates the identification, synthesis, and validation of novel superconductors and quantum materials. By integrating predictive modelling, robotics-assisted experimentation, and real-time AI feedback, we will accelerate materials discovery by 10x, creating scalable, open-access tools for global research and innovation.

Expertise You are Looking For:I am seeking expertise in experiment automation, robotics, and AI-driven lab workflows to enhance high-throughput synthesis and characterization. Additionally, I am looking for specialists in computational materials science (beyond DFT), data engineering for large-scale materials databases, and software development to integrate AI models with experimental workflows and platform deployment.

I am…a prospective founder looking to build or expand my team.

LinkedIn Profile or Personal Website: https://www.mitelut.com

Location: London, UK

Relevant ARIA Opportunity Spaces: Scalable Neural Interfaces

Key Expertise and Capabilities: I have extensive experience in systems and behavioral neuroscience including: neural data science, especially extracellular electrophysiology hardware engineering for rodent behavior neuroscience - including building BCIs software engineering and data science (https://github.com/catubc), rodent neural surgeries and chronic implants.

FRO Idea or Area of Interest: I work broadly on neurotechnologies and AI development for whole-brain-emulation. My position paper is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.13394

I also have extensive experience with the science and neuroscience of agency, you can see various projects on my personal site: www.mitelut.com

My area of interest is automation of neuro-ethology labs and neurotech for achieving whole-brain-emulation.

Expertise You are Looking For: I'm looking to try and convert my startup (www.netholabs.com) into an FRO that focuses on functional WBE in the mouse.  

In terms of co-founders / junior co-founders or early stage employees, I particularly could use help with: deep learning/machine learning - especially AI and transformer based architectures, electrical engineers - especially ASIC developers electrode fabrication engineers - especially those with clean room and cutting edge probe design experience, robotics engineers - interested in creating neural probe insertion technologies similar to neural threads/sowing machines

I am…a prospective founder looking to build or expand my team.

LinkedIn Profile or Personal Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashravikumar/

Location: Geneva, Switzerland

Relevant ARIA Opportunity Spaces: Nature Computes Better; Scalable Neural Interfaces; Other (Emerging Concepts),

Key Expertise and Capabilities: Material science manufacturing, Semiconductor manufacturing process. Extensive contacts in the value chain- imec, Synopsys (had first discussions), ASML, PIC PDK developers. 

FRO Idea or Area of Interest: The FRO focuses on developing a PDK for manufacture of magic angle twisted 2D materials.

When two layers of graphene are stacked and one layer is twisted by 1.1 degrees, graphene toggles between superconductivity, correlated insulator states, and other exotic quantum phases. Beyond graphene, the field expanded to include all 2D materials in Transition Metal Dichalcogenides (TMDs) like hexagonal Boron Nitride. 

If bottlenecks of twisting and verification are solved, and incorporated to a PDK, this will enable scientists with novel sensors, transistors and computation capabilities, manufactured at scale using existing semiconductor infrastructure.

Expertise You are Looking For: 2D material physics, device physics, modelling, PDK development - software

I am…an individual looking to join a team.

LinkedIn Profile or Personal Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karim-andrew-bahou

Location: Liverpool, UK

Relevant ARIA Opportunity Spaces: Programmable Plants; Unsure at this time

Key Expertise and Capabilities: I have a PhD in Synthetic Organic Chemistry and an academic career spanning over a decade. I have since developed significant expertise in nurturing startups, delivering mentorship, investment and programmatic activities through roles in the private sector. 

FRO Idea or Area of Interest: I am interested in the application of engineering biology to solve challenges around the synthesis of therapeutics and commodity chemicals. 

Expertise You are Looking For: I am seeking similarly experienced individuals with novel ideas and concepts for a FRO. Ideally someone with experience running or starting a company. 

I am…an individual looking to join a team.

LinkedIn Profile or Personal Website: https://research.reading.ac.uk/meteorology/people/james-weber/

Location: Reading, UK

Relevant ARIA Opportunity Spaces: Future Proofing Our Climate and Weather; Scoping Our Planet

Key Expertise and Capabilities: I am an atmospheric chemist and Earth System modeller. I have expertise in simulating climate change mitigation strategies such as widescale reforestation and marine cloud brightening and assessing the response of atmospheric composition, radiation and climate. 

FRO Idea or Area of Interest:My areas of interest are climate change and climate change mitigation, specifically widescale forestation, methane removal and marine cloud brightening. Within these topics, I work to improve model representation of key processes and design model experiments which allow us to represent feasible levels of deployment.  

Expertise You are Looking For: Experimentalists, observational-based scientists with experience running field campaigns

I am…an individual looking to join a team.

LinkedIn Profile or Personal Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ykim13?trk=contact-info

Location: Guildford, UK

Relevant ARIA Opportunity Spaces: Nature Computes Better

Key Expertise and Capabilities: Expertise in photon statistics, molecular biology to modify protein structure, time-resolved spectroscopy, binging, ultrafast spectroscopy, and quantum biophotonics

FRO Idea or Area of Interest: I’m interested in exploring quantum biology and its implications. Evidence has been increasingly accumulated that certain biological processes can make use of quantum mechanical properties such as quantum superposition, tunnelling and entanglement. Transdisciplinary approaches are urgently needed to deepen its understanding and unlock its full potential for clean energy and healthcare.

Expertise You are Looking For: I would be interested in getting involved in a team that are aiming to tackling challenges that prevent advancement of scientific discovery and technology development in this exciting field.