Ben
I (Ben) am very excited to announce that Brent Ridley has taken up the weighty mantle of Director for the Brains program. I’m jumping in to:
Let you all know how excellent Brent is — he earned his PhD working on materials chemistry at the MIT Media Lab, worked at Otherlab which was basically doing FRO-y things before FROs were invented, and worked at both ARPA-E and MIT, so he really has done All the Things, but is too humble to let it on.
Share how we’re thinking about Brains now that we’re ~3.5 years in and operating in a significantly different scientific landscape than the one we started in.
Then I’ll shut up and let Brent introduce himself and give his perspective.
When we started Brains, American science still felt like it was largely in the steady-state “Vannevar Bush/Endless Frontier” regime it had been in since the 1950s. Very few people had heard of FROs or even ARPA programs outside of stories of ARPANET. Today, it’s increasingly clear that 21st century science will operate differently than 20th century science; the question is how can we shape that transition to maximize both concrete positive impact and ill-defined wonder in the world.
Since we started Brains, there have been two major shifts: an expansion of how government funds research – the Genesis Mission and X-Labs being two examples – and an explosion in the capabilities of commonly available AI systems. We have yet to see how it will all play out, but agentic leaders operating in new, flexible institutional models will certainly be part of it.
For Brains to execute on its mission, I believe we need to be not only a fellowship, but also a broader initiative that finds and supports the people and projects at the vanguard of 21st century science. That vision is grand and fuzzy in part because the frontier of science is dynamic, and in part because the details depend on how much excitement and support we generate and where others do good work, but ideally we will continue to support the best fellows, build tools for accelerating science, and act as a bridge between people and institutions across the whole ecosystem.
Brent:
I (Brent) am a big believer in the importance of finding great people to do great things. I even moved our temperature-transforming fabric startup to another city to pursue people that we couldn’t recruit where we were! Finding the best fellows requires discovering curious and ambitious people that have come across problems and barriers and have an idea and a drive to challenge them. Those problems and barriers exist all over the place: in academia at the frontiers of knowledge; in industry at the edge of manufacturing; in cognitive science, medicine, ecology, space, computation, chemistry, and everywhere else, but also often almost literally everywhere else, simultaneously: some of the most interesting problems and barriers require innovation in more than one domain, which is why coordinated research programs are so important. So, yes, we will continue to support the best fellows, but we will also try to find the best fellows from anywhere and everywhere so that we can find and support the best ideas.
I am also a believer in the importance of building tools. Otherlab, which was often seen as a type of elf-workshop for energy-obsessed nerds, didn’t just build soft robots and electrified vehicles – it also built software tools to enable the creation of those robots and vehicles. And it often built mechanical tools to enable us to make new things, whether that was a giant tool for welding plastics for inflatable structures or a twisting machine with integrated tension controls for experimental yarns. The classic examples of transformative coordinated research programs – ARPANET and the Human Genome Project – are remembered for the tools they created: the foundations of the internet and modern genome sequencing. Speculative Technologies will look to build tools for Brains fellows, but also tools for shaping 21st century science. We don’t restrict the ambitions of the Brains fellows, and I don’t expect we will limit ours, either.
I feel very fortunate to have worked with some great people: brave, dedicated, intelligent, organized, sweet, salty, creative, crafty, clever, all of it. None of them could realize their ambitions alone, and none of them came up in or worked in a place where everything or everyone they needed was right there. If we want to accelerate science and technology – if we want to further explore the endless frontier – we need both strategic and tireless community building, outreach to collaborators, customers, and sometimes competitors. Speculative Technologies cannot do all of that alone, but we will do some of it, we hope to be among the leaders, and we will have to do it in partnership with Brains fellows. I’m excited to work with a new group of great people, and to find, support, and build with the next great cohort of Brains fellows.
Congrats both!