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Wellcome Leap: Unconventional Projects. Funded at Scale.

A New $55M PROGRAM
Delta Tissue
INTEGRATED PLATFORMS FOR PREDICTING
CHANGES IN TISSUE STATE
A New $55M PROGRAM
Delta Tissue
INTEGRATED PLATFORMS FOR PREDICTING
CHANGES IN TISSUE STATE
A New $55M PROGRAM
Delta Tissue
INTEGRATED PLATFORMS FOR PREDICTING
CHANGES IN TISSUE STATE
$45M PROGRAM
The First 1000 Days
PROMOTING HEALTHY BRAIN NETWORKS
$50M PROGRAM
Human Organs, Physiology, and Engineering
$45M PROGRAM
The First
1000 Days
PROMOTING HEALTHY
BRAIN NETWORKS
$50M PROGRAM
Human Organs,
Physiology, and
Engineering
$45M PROGRAM
The First 1000 Days
PROMOTING HEALTHY BRAIN NETWORKS
$50M PROGRAM
Human Organs, Physiology, and Engineering

Leap builds bold, unconventional programs and funds them at scale.

Programs that aim to deliver breakthroughs in human health over 5 – 10 years and demonstrate seemingly impossible results on seemingly impossible timelines.

Our programs require best-in-class, multi-disciplinary, global teams from universities, companies, and non-profit labs working together to solve problems they cannot solve alone.

Leap is a global ARPA for health.

Just as Sputnik ignited the Space Age, so too could the coronavirus inspire

The Health Age.

The right time.

The right time.

On October 4, 1957, a beach-ball-sized satellite we know as Sputnik was launched into orbit. It inspired a new curiosity about a new frontier.

Sputnik was an inflection point. It led to one of the greatest periods of advancement in science and engineering in history.

The global pandemic has laid bare how much there is to do in health, from policy to equity to financing. But it has also revealed the difference a scientific breakthrough makes. We need more breakthroughs and we need them faster.

Just as Sputnik ignited the Space Age, so, too, might the coronavirus inspire a Health Age. Not just to defeat future pandemics, but to make urgent progress on cancer, mental health, and more.

The right time.

The right time.

On October 4, 1957, a beach-ball-sized satellite we know as Sputnik was launched into orbit. It inspired a new curiosity about a new frontier.

Sputnik was an inflection point. It led to one of the greatest periods of advancement in science and engineering in history.

The global pandemic has laid bare how much there is to do in health, from policy to equity to financing. But it has also revealed the difference a scientific breakthrough makes. We need more breakthroughs and we need them faster.

Just as Sputnik ignited the Space Age, so, too, might the coronavirus inspire a Health Age. Not just to defeat future pandemics, but to make urgent progress on cancer, mental health, and more.

The right model.

The right model.

Leap is built on a unique model of innovation practiced at DARPA.

For more than six decades, this model has been an uninterrupted engine of breakthrough innovation. It is not a discovery science model, but neither is it a pure application model. It sits firmly at the intersection of the two.

Work in what we call Pasteur’s Quadrant demands that we set ambitious goals that are measurable and testable. So that we’ll know if we succeeded or failed. It requires that we intersect life sciences and engineering, so that we can demonstrate advances at convincing scale — because that’s how an idea once thought impossible, is seen as possible.

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The right leadership.

The right leadership.

Led by Leap CEO, Regina E. Dugan, who served as the 19th Director of DARPA, where she oversaw an annual $3B portfolio of projects ranging from hypersonics to RNA-based vaccines. An experienced Silicon Valley executive, she also built and led advanced project organizations at Google and Facebook.

Chaired by one of the most effective business leaders in the life sciences industry, Jay Flatley. As CEO of Illumina, Jay helped to transform gene sequencing from a scientific pursuit to a commercially accessible service and moved the cost of sequencing an entire human genome from $1 million to $1,000.

Founded by visionaries Jeremy Farrar, Mike Ferguson, and the Wellcome Trust Leadership with a $300M seed investment, Leap intends to assemble international partners such that together we create the critical mass of funding required.

Jeremy Farrar

Director, Leap

Mike Ferguson

Director, Leap

Ho Ching

Director, Leap

What types of projects might Leap create?

What types of projects might Leap create?

Want to know when a
Leap program launches?

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Who joins Leap?

You should join Leap if you want an opportunity to pursue what others may think too crazy an idea, to challenge an entire industry, or to catalyze the formation of a new one.

But don’t plan to come for a career. Program Directors come to run a project that can change the world. And many do.

Global from day one, Leap is already harnessing best-in-class in all dimensions of operations. 

Who joins Leap?

You should join Leap if you want an opportunity to pursue what others may think too crazy an idea, to challenge an entire industry, or to catalyze the formation of a new one.

But don’t plan to come for a career. Program Directors come to run a project that can change the world. And many do.

Global from day one, Leap is already harnessing best-in-class talent in all dimensions of operations.

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What to expect from Leap.

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Speed.

Speed.

From abstract submission through execution, feedback in days and weeks, not months or years.

Expert, objective selection.

Expert, objective selection.

Not a consensus-driven review process for programs or proposals.

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Tenacity.

Tenacity.

Programs stop when, together, we run out of ideas. Not when the first idea doesn’t work.

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Agility.

Agility.

Collaborative project adjustments based on the newest results.

Diverse, interdisciplinary efforts.

Diverse, interdisciplinary efforts.

Active dialogue. Plus annual or biannual meetings for the entire project team.

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Impact.

Impact.

Transition support, because it’s not enough to find a solution, that solution has to find a way into the world.

What to expect from Leap.

Speed.

From abstract submission through execution, feedback in days and weeks, not months or years.

Expert, objective selection.

Not a consensus-driven review process for programs or proposals.

Tenacity.

Programs stop when, together, we run out of ideas. Not when the first idea doesn’t work.

Agility.

Collaborative project adjustments based on the newest results.

Diverse, interdisciplinary efforts.

Active dialogue. Plus annual or biannual meetings for the entire project team.

Impact.

Transition support, because it’s not enough to find a solution, that solution has to find a way into the world.

This kind of work is hard.
The hard is what makes it great.

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This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. We use a third party provider, Mailchimp, to deliver our newsletters. For information about how we handle your data, please read our Privacy Notice. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in the emails you receive.