Ilan Gur served as the founding CEO of the UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), an independent science funding body modelled on DARPA and backed by over £1 billion in government funding. ARIA was set up to support high-risk, high-reward research with minimal bureaucracy and a mandate to make bold bets on transformational science and technology. Before ARIA, Ilan founded Activate, a nonprofit supporting scientists and engineers in turning breakthrough research into startups addressing climate change and other global challenges. Earlier in his career, he was a founding programme director at ARPA-E, the U.S. Department of Energy's advanced research agency, and founded two startups, including Seeo, a lithium battery company acquired by Bosch. He holds a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from UC Berkeley.