Improbable Launches New Research Initiative

Experts in modelling and simulation technologies from the universities of Oxford, Bristol, Leeds, Manchester and Durham are teaming up with London-based technology company, Improbable for a new initiative.

The Myridian programme aims to help the UK and its allies analyse and overcome fluid, fast-moving and intricately interrelated challenges ranging from climate change and humanitarian crises to political interference, disinformation and threats posed by potential adversaries across air, land, sea, space and cyber.

It will make the latest research and innovations from the nation’s leading academic and research institutions available, useful and usable to government – and to do so more quickly and economically than is currently possible.

Improbable will expand the Myridian programme to include more academic and research organisations, and to engage experts from across disciplines including modelling and simulation, data analytics, AI and machine learning, distributed systems, social dynamics and human behaviour, and other related fields.

"The world is increasingly unstable and threats to our security and national resilience are evolving at a frightening pace,” says Joe Robinson, CEO of Improbable’s defence division. “If the UK is to compete successfully as the world order shifts – and if it is to secure its status as a science and technology superpower before the end of the decade – we need to ensure that the world-class research and innovation from across industry and academia is made available to the defence and national security organisations working to ensure our safety and prosperity.”

Improbable’s technology platform is already supporting synthetic environments and digital twins for UK government organisations such as the British Army and UK Strategic Command. These virtual worlds bring together a range of technologies - including data, models and analytical tools - in order to simulate real-world scenarios for enhanced training, planning and infrastructure management.

The platform has been engineered to enable collaborations between technology providers and academic institutions, and supports a growing network of partners including Microsoft, Bohemia Interactive Simulations and [CAE / Adarga].

By bringing together the latest research and the most powerful innovations, and then integrating them into a single, secure technology platform that’s accessible at the point of need, the Myridian programme will give users at every level the tools they need to identify issues more quickly, analyse them more effectively, and then develop more coherent, efficient responses.

Improbable’s Chief Scientist, Professor Jordan Giddings, said: “There’s colossal potential for academic institutions and research organisations – not to mention industry players – to contribute to solving some of society’s greatest challenges. The trouble is, government organisations currently lack the commercial and technical infrastructure to fully exploit the latest advances in fields like computational modelling and simulation, data analytics, AI and machine learning. The Myridian programme will facilitate this, focussing research efforts on specific areas that complement the broader initiatives of organisations like Dstl and Defence Digital’s Digital Foundry.”

The Myridian programme is open to prospective industrial and academic partners with specialist expertise in social dynamics and human behaviour, computational modelling and model composition, distributed simulation performance, agent-based modelling and related fields. Please contact Improbable’s Director of Research Partnerships, RobSolly@improbable.io, for more information.