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> We think research institutions can be better than they are today. I hope you'll expand on this. Is there something that YCR can do that academic research can

> We think research institutions can be better than they are today. I hope you'll expand on this. Is there something that YCR can do that academic research can't do? You might have more impact if you use that money to influence US and EU gov't to invest more in basic research. A 1% increase in annual gov't funding will be vastly larger than YCR's total budget. The Gates Foundation is tackling difficult health issues that aren't profitable for companies and neglected by poor governments. They've found an underserved gap. What's the gap that YCR is uniquely suited to tackle?

omnisci 11y ago
To answer your first question, 1. they can move much faster than academic research. More money in basic research isn't going to fix the antiquated process in which academics live. It's also not going to help researchers learn how to budget properly, or learn to manage people. So that alone is a value add. A 1% increase in gov spending simply adds money without fixing a problem that currently exists....not really going to make a difference in my opinion(PhD research scientist)
- cossatot 11y ago
  I agree with this. The most interesting thing I got out of Paula Stephan's How Economic Shapes Science is that a few years' back, the NIH basically doubled its research funding and all that happened was a post-doc bubble and university admin hoovering up the money to build buildings.
- silverlake 11y ago
  I agree that academic science has problems, but YCR isn't going to have any impact on academic research, funding nor publications. My guess is that YCR will attempt to be a mini-Xerox PARC: 20 people working on interdisciplinary stuff in CS. It'll be fun, but it'll be small.
  - omnisci 11y ago
    How exactly are you so sure about this? And if it's small, that doesn't mean it can't have an impact. Also, perhaps I'm missing something, but it doesn't see like we have any real info about this, if you have more, I'd love to read it. It takes someone/something with some ability to make something happen. Are they going to change how all academic science is done? Probably not, but could they have an impact and begin a process in which academic science begins to respond/change? Yes, that is probable. Between YC and Google life science, things are happening...and it's going to take us (I'm assuming you are a scientist) to support this change.
cossatot 11y ago
One comparative advantage that comes to mind is the institutional knowledge of computational and analytics systems. A lot of computational science is still done with a FORTRAN mindset (if not actual code), whereas faster, lighter, dare I say more agile approaches to simulation and data mining could be much better. Similarly, although I wouldn't guess is what YCR is thinking because it doesn't have the same cachet (though I really don't know what YCR thinks) is building tools for science. In my field (geoscience) there are boundless slopes of fresh, trackless powder in the mountains of computational geoscience just waiting to get skied. Building tools to do, say, probabilistic graphical modeling of stratigraphic systems requires approaching a traditionally intuitive and descriptive science with a much more formal and precise mindset and re-casting a lot of ideas and methods, while at the same time keeping everything accessible for those without the requisite background in probability or graphs... To me this gets closer to the real roots of science than a lot of what gets funded or makes headlines, but won't by itself get funded or make headlines (until you build it and sell it).
- jofer 11y ago
  > In my field (geoscience) there are boundless slopes of fresh, trackless powder in the mountains of computational geoscience just waiting to get skied. I need to steal that quote from you...
santaclaus 11y ago
I imagine researchers in YCR will have way fewer administrative obligations than a researcher at a University. No classes to teach, no committees to sit on, no students to act as an amateur psychologist to, no grants to apply for (although this could be a disadvantage - the process of writing a grant often forces ideas to crystalize).
jrmo 11y ago
For one, it can be leaner; tenure-line faculty to student ratios are unchanged while adminstrator-to-student ratios more than doubled in the last 25 years. "There are now two nonacademic employees at public and two and a half at private universities and colleges for every one full-time, tenure-track member of the faculty." Yet we have to take out our own garbage. [1] http://necir.org/2014/02/06/new-analysis-shows-problematic-boom-in-higher-ed-administrators/ http://necir.org/2014/02/06/new-analysis-shows-problematic-b...

omnisci 11y ago

To answer your first question, 1. they can move much faster than academic research. More money in basic research isn't going to fix the antiquated process in which academics live. It's also not going to help researchers learn how to budget properly, or learn to manage people. So that alone is a value add. A 1% increase in gov spending simply adds money without fixing a problem that currently exists....not really going to make a difference in my opinion(PhD research scientist)

cossatot 11y ago
I agree with this. The most interesting thing I got out of Paula Stephan's How Economic Shapes Science is that a few years' back, the NIH basically doubled its research funding and all that happened was a post-doc bubble and university admin hoovering up the money to build buildings.
silverlake 11y ago
I agree that academic science has problems, but YCR isn't going to have any impact on academic research, funding nor publications. My guess is that YCR will attempt to be a mini-Xerox PARC: 20 people working on interdisciplinary stuff in CS. It'll be fun, but it'll be small.
- omnisci 11y ago
  How exactly are you so sure about this? And if it's small, that doesn't mean it can't have an impact. Also, perhaps I'm missing something, but it doesn't see like we have any real info about this, if you have more, I'd love to read it. It takes someone/something with some ability to make something happen. Are they going to change how all academic science is done? Probably not, but could they have an impact and begin a process in which academic science begins to respond/change? Yes, that is probable. Between YC and Google life science, things are happening...and it's going to take us (I'm assuming you are a scientist) to support this change.

cossatot 11y ago

One comparative advantage that comes to mind is the institutional knowledge of computational and analytics systems. A lot of computational science is still done with a FORTRAN mindset (if not actual code), whereas faster, lighter, dare I say more agile approaches to simulation and data mining could be much better. Similarly, although I wouldn't guess is what YCR is thinking because it doesn't have the same cachet (though I really don't know what YCR thinks) is building tools for science. In my field (geoscience) there are boundless slopes of fresh, trackless powder in the mountains of computational geoscience just waiting to get skied. Building tools to do, say, probabilistic graphical modeling of stratigraphic systems requires approaching a traditionally intuitive and descriptive science with a much more formal and precise mindset and re-casting a lot of ideas and methods, while at the same time keeping everything accessible for those without the requisite background in probability or graphs... To me this gets closer to the real roots of science than a lot of what gets funded or makes headlines, but won't by itself get funded or make headlines (until you build it and sell it).

jofer 11y ago
> In my field (geoscience) there are boundless slopes of fresh, trackless powder in the mountains of computational geoscience just waiting to get skied. I need to steal that quote from you...

santaclaus 11y ago

I imagine researchers in YCR will have way fewer administrative obligations than a researcher at a University. No classes to teach, no committees to sit on, no students to act as an amateur psychologist to, no grants to apply for (although this could be a disadvantage - the process of writing a grant often forces ideas to crystalize).

jrmo 11y ago

For one, it can be leaner; tenure-line faculty to student ratios are unchanged while adminstrator-to-student ratios more than doubled in the last 25 years. "There are now two nonacademic employees at public and two and a half at private universities and colleges for every one full-time, tenure-track member of the faculty." Yet we have to take out our own garbage. [1] http://necir.org/2014/02/06/new-analysis-shows-problematic-boom-in-higher-ed-administrators/ http://necir.org/2014/02/06/new-analysis-shows-problematic-b...