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.
Programs that require best-in-class, multi-disciplinary, global teams from universities, companies, and non-profit labs working together to solve problems that they cannot solve alone.
Leap is a DARPA for global health.
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 world responded with bold missions to space. Gagarin, Shepard. Mercury, Apollo. And with DARPA.
Today, in the throes of a pandemic, we face our own Sputnik moment. And we must respond in kind. We need Apollo-like programs for vaccines, therapeutics, testing. And, new health advances for the future. We need a DARPA for global health.
The right model.
The right model.
Leap is built on the DARPA model of innovation.
For more than 6 decades, DARPA has been an uninterrupted engine of breakthrough innovation. It is not a discovery science organization, but neither is it a pure application organization. It sits firmly at the intersection of the two.
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.
What types of projects might Leap create?
What types of projects might Leap create?
Want to know when a
Leap program launches?
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.
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.
What to expect from Leap.
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.
Tenacity.
Tenacity.
Programs stop when, together, we run out of ideas. Not when the first idea doesn’t work.
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.
Impact.
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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