ARIA: Nature Inspired Computation - Olfactory Perception and Open Olfactory Resource

ARIA welcome applications from across the R&D ecosystem, including individuals, universities, research institutions, small, medium and large companies, charities and public sector research organisations.

Our primary focus is on funding those who are based in the UK. However, funding will be awarded to organisations outside the UK if we believe it can boost the net impact of a programme in the UK. In these instances, you must outline your proposed plans or commitments that will contribute to the programme in the UK within the project’s duration (note the maximum project duration awarded as a result of this solicitation will be 3 months). The OOR build phase is expected to create a UK-centred capability. If your organisation is not currently UK-based, you should explain how you would contribute to UK capability, whether through UK partners, UK infrastructure, UK data stewardship, UK hiring, UK standards leadership, or establishing activity in the UK.

We’re agnostic to the kind of team you are: you could be an existing organisation, a newly formed consortium, or a team coordinating a portfolio of subcontractors. Strong applications are likely to combine analytical chemistry, automation, data engineering, standards and metadata expertise, governance, operational leadership, and a credible route to long-term sustainability.

ARIA is open to different legal and organisational forms for the eventual OOR Organisation. The right structure may be an existing organisation, a new organisation, a consortium, a joint venture, a Focused Research Organisation, a CIC, a lead organisation with subcontractors, a national-lab spin-out, or another model.

We have a live teaming tool that allows applicants to find complementary expertise. After a quick registration, you can browse other researchers and request an introduction from the ARIA team to explore potential collaborations. You can also sign up to join our in-person event (7 September, 10:00 – 16:00 BST).

Hypersensory Intelligence: Olfactory Perception is a £65m R&D programme to build the foundations for general-purpose olfactory perception. Artificial intelligence (AI) models can describe a photograph, compose a symphony and predict the structure of proteins, but they still cannot smell. Olfaction is older than vision, and the volatile chemicals around us carry rich information about the living world that organisms have exploited for billions of years. The impact of integrating a sense of smell into our models could be enormous: systems that smell a disease flare days before symptoms appear, or prevent the $1 trillion in annual food loss caused by spoilage. The addressable challenges could extend to plant health, agriculture, environmental monitoring, pest control, industrial applications and more.

The programme aims to build the next generation of general-purpose olfactory perception systems (sensors + AI), that can be informed by representations learnt from large cross-domain, multi-instrument datasets. We make the assumption that there is inherent structure within volatile chemical space that we can exploit with machine learning. To test this we need to build the ImageNet for olfaction. This first call focuses on TA1: the Open Olfactory Resource (OOR), which will create that data foundation for the programme. Through TA1 Stage 1, the Sprint, we will fund up to six teams to develop a detailed plan and pilot dataset for the OOR.

The Open Olfactory Resource (OOR) is intended to be a trusted common foundation of shared data, standards, governance, access, and infrastructure for researchers, model builders, sensor developers, and domain experts to build on. This programme asks whether richer, cross-domain volatile chemical data can reveal transferable representations of olfactory space, rather than markers discovered separately for each task. If it does, new applications require adapting a shared foundation rather than starting from scratch.

The first Technical Area programme (TA1) will create the shared data foundation on which the rest of the programme depends.

The OOR Organisation should deliver against these objectives;

• Build a machine-learning-ready volatile chemical dataset, directly and/or through partners, to collect the data most likely to support future representation learning, modelling, and sensor-development teams.
• Ensure the dataset is high quality, reproducible, and richly described, with signals that can be reproduced across labs, standards that are adhered to and developed where needed, and detailed metadata collected alongside each signal.
• Lead and convene the ecosystem needed to make the resource trusted, adopted, and useful, working closely with the programme’s standards partner, international standards organisations, independent challenge partners, and TA2/TA3 teams so future modelling, sensing, and challenge activities are built on a standardised resource. This role extends beyond the programme: the OOR should be a lasting asset to the community, which makes trust and adoption central to its design.
• Develop a model for the resource to scale and live beyond ARIA funding, using partnerships, subcontracting, UK ecosystem strengths, additional funders, tiered access models, platform or standards mechanisms, and community engagement to keep the dataset growing and accessible over time.

We expect these objectives to be met but the approaches might vary.

We plan to fund TA1 through two connected stages: TA1 Stage 1: the Sprint (3 month) and TA1 Stage 2: the OOR Build. Through this solicitation, ARIA will fund up to six teams for TA1 Stage 1: the Sprint. Each team may receive up to £500k for a 3-month sprint to run a data acquisition pilot and develop a full blueprint and execution plan for the OOR.

TA1 Stage 2: The OOR Build will be funded by a £25m award to a single, new or existing organisation to deliver TA1 Open Olfactory Resources objectives. This two stage approach is designed to allow prospective teams to develop thoughtful in depth Stage 2 data acquisition strategies and blueprints to help derisk the larger Stage 2 direct award.

Given the magnitude of the full TA1- Open Olfactory Resources award, we will have a high bar for its award and we may choose not to award any teams if we are not able to reach sufficient levels of confidence in any one team.

On Tuesday, August 25th 2026, a webinar will be hosted by the ‘Olfactory Perception’ programme team to discuss the solicitation for TA1. The session will run from 14:00 to approximately 15:00 BST. Sign up for a place here.

ARIA will also host an in-person event on 7th September 2026 for applicants who are interested in teaming to be able to meet each other in-person. To register your interest for this event, please follow the link to the sign up form. Please note, this event is limited to 50 in person attendees with virtual participation available, in person spaces will be allocated on a first come first serve basis and alignment to TA1.

If you have any additional questions, please contact ARIA via their website at the address below.