A tycoon-style simulation of Focused Research Organizations
Five years of real history: ten FROs launched in the US on philanthropic grants, then two in the UK when ARIA became the first government funder. Real tools are already out in the world — Lean powered DeepMind's IMO silver medal, E11 Bio previewed PRISM, [C]Worthy shipped its alkalinity map, PTI hit ~30× proteomics throughput.
But none of the twelve has completed its 3–7-year run yet. Everything past this point — transitions to .org / .gov / .com, wind-downs, new Gap Map candidates — is a simulation, not the record.
Focused Research Organizations are nonprofits that run like startups: ~10–30 full-time scientists and engineers, $20–50M in philanthropic grants, 3–7 years to break one well-defined research bottleneck by building public goods — tools, datasets, and infrastructure no university lab or company would build.
The park replays the real timeline. Scientists carry ideas in from the Academia gate (many turn back — papers to write). Mission Control (Convergent Research) matches ideas with coins from Philanthropy Row, and a FRO rises. Milestone pips fill as teams work — and sometimes get remapped, because science doesn't run on a clock. Finished tools fly out into the world as glowing gems. When a FRO's clock runs out it transitions to a lasting home — .org, .gov, or .com — and from 2026 the UK annex opens with ARIA-funded FROs. After the real roster, the park keeps drawing candidates from the Gap Map (an estimated 100–200 FRO-shaped bottlenecks); only those fictional candidates can hit a go/no-go shutdown.
Facts from the FRO knowledge base: the 2020 Day One white paper, Convergent Research, Issues in Science & Technology (Fall 2025), MIT News, Lean FRO reports, and the April 2026 ARIA announcement. Post-2026 events are simulated.