History of the program
Impetus Grants started with the idea that science funding should empower researchers to spend their time on the ideas that could change the field the most. From the beginning we designed it to encourage ideas that could be transformative, while minimizing wasteful bureaucracy. The question that has driven its evolution since 2021 is “how do we find the ideas that couldn’t get funding, and after our impetus end up having whole conferences devoted to them?”
The Spark
At a conference on scientific bottlenecks in Colorado, Patrick Collison presented the outcomes of Fast Grants. This program was launched to give low-bureaucracy funding during COVID. Martin recently received an NIH grant whose application exceeded a hundred pages, and the Fast Grant research outcomes didn't seem worse than NIH-funded work.
Why not create such a program for longevity? Impetus Grants was hashed out that day, with Juan Benet coming onboard as the anchor patron. In addition to speed, the review process was designed to encourage more ambitious work by eliminating score-by-committee and focusing on potential upside.
Kickoff
Martin was already mentoring three Longevity Apprentices in Norn's first program, and this group took on Impetus Grants as a 'do tank' project.
Martin designed the program and raised funding, while Apprentices Lada Nuzhna and Kush Sharma built the infrastructure. More than 400 applications came in, and Round 1 deployed >$20M across ~100 projects, two dozen from labs new to longevity.
Impetus also partnered with GeroScience on a special issue publishing results from every funded project, including null results, so the field could learn from work that didn't pan out.
Continued Impact
Lada Nuzhna stepped up as program director to turn the initial round into a permanent program, running both operations and raising additional funds.
Round Two (~$4M) and Three (~$10M) experimented with new ways to surface the most important worked targeting key bottlenecks for longevity, including calls for specific research questions and biotechnological tools.
Now
Lada Nuzhna stepped back to found General Control and Tara Mei, another Longevity Apprentice, took over as program director running all operations.
Moving forward, Impetus will run both open-field funding rounds, and rounds focused on specific topics and opportunities with outsized impact.
The next round will focus on datasets that enable future AI reasoning models to work on longevity and accelerate progress.
Contributors
Major Patrons
We thank every single person who helped fund and make Impetus Grants a reality.
Reviewers
Most of our reviewers are anonymous to maintain double-blindness.
Reviewers’ affiliations include Stanford, The Buck Institute, UCLA, USC, Calico, NIA, University of Washington, Sloan Kettering, and similar institutions. They are selected for their knowledge of the field, history of pushing the field forward and minimal bias on their own topic of research.
A few core reviewers have agreed to be named below.
Interested in Supporting Impetus Grants?
For more detailed information about the program and current efforts visit the main Impetus page here, or visit our Impact page to learn more on how you can support Norn Group and Impetus Grants.