15 ms·

Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

• tlb 5y ago
  I'm interested in doing something like this too, with a research focus on robotics, simulation, and programming languages. The big dichotomy in research orgs is whether you need resources beyond researcher stipends. Robotics usually does, and programming language research usually doesn't. OpenAI does -- both computing resources and infrastructure team salaries. Make sure you know which kind you're starting. Another dichotomy: permanent or term employment. It depends on how long-term the projects are. Bell Labs and PARC got a lot of mileage out of permanent tenures, but the term model is (a) cheaper, (b) good for collaboration because people can come for a semester and carry ideas in and out. Stipend + remote living will attract only young, single researchers for finite terms, so make sure that's what you want. Email me (in profile) if you want to talk more.
  • not-a-cat 5y ago
    I do not see your email in your profile. (Not OP, but really interested to talk about starting a research institute)
  • jeffchuber 5y ago
    a new and better willow garage?? =D
• rajlego 5y ago
  https://ceealar.org/ https://ceealar.org/ is the closest that comes to mind for what you have in mind. Basically, they give room and board to people doing valuable effective altruist work https://newscience.org/ https://newscience.org/ might also be interesting
  • david_allison 5y ago
    Thanks so much for the links! Joining something along these lines was something that I'd been considering, and it's a push in the right direction.
• JaggerJo 5y ago
  Where are you located in germany?
• ssivark 5y ago
  You might be interested in looking at the Recurse Center: https://www.recurse.com/ https://www.recurse.com/
• bigth 5y ago
  I started a research institute. Our goal was to find out how to center divs in css.
  • donohoe 5y ago
    Sir, I find this of great interest and a noble pursuit. I would very much like to invest large sums of my newly created cryptocurrency in this. Have your people contact my people.
    • gryn 5y ago
      DivCoin ?
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    • DonHopkins 5y ago
      Hi, I'm Richard Brain, a farce for good in this world, and I want to shovel piles of my new POS CraptoCurrency "HOAX", the first high interest blockchain certificate of despotic (CD) offered to “stalkers”, into your centralized div laundering company!
      • donohoe 5y ago
        Sir, please get in touch. Include the last 4-digits of your SSN so I can verify against my own records.
  • halgir 5y ago
    That's far beyond OP's already lofty ambitions, I'm afraid.
  • TYPE_FASTER 5y ago
    Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
  • 5y ago
• throwawaybutwhy 5y ago
  'watch the beauty of it' - this is not ballet or opera, there's only blood, sweat, and tears. If you don't have a bunch of like-minded people and don't roll up your sleeves to manage the organization, you'll end up with wasted/stolen money and broken ideals.
  • op00to 5y ago
    Plus research going in as many directions as you have members of your institute rather than leading towards someplace intentional.
    • barry-cotter 5y ago
      Sounds like a university.
  • ginko 5y ago
    >'watch the beauty of it' - this is not ballet or opera, there's only blood, sweat, and tears. If you think ballet isn't blood, sweat, and tears then you're gravely mistaken.
    • xwdv 5y ago
      He didn’t say it wasn’t, he only implied a ballet or opera will at least have some beauty at some point. A research institute will never approach anything resembling beauty, its 100% blood, sweat, and tears.
      • C-x_C-f 5y ago
        Why would you say that "a research institute will never approach anything resembling beauty"? Researchers in mathematics and physics often work with beauty and elegance in mind. I, for one, work in math largely because of its beauty, and I hope to one day come up with something beautiful myself.
  • not-a-cat 5y ago
    There are idealists out there who get all worked up with 'watch the beauty of it'. Yeah in practice it will devolve into blood, sweet and tears, but it matters that you have the right spirit and can appreciate the fleeting moments of beauty
• NationalPark 5y ago
  Having worked with academics before, the biggest problem you will face is not having enough prestige to attract "great minds". You're probably off on the money too - academics will expect to be able to buy a comfortable house and support a family on your stipend, not live on ramen like a startup. They're a fickle bunch, but very rewarding to work with!
  • barry-cotter 5y ago
    You’re describing academics who have already made it, people who got tenure. There are plenty of really minted PhDs who would be quite happy to move to the arse of nowhere for a postdoc with no teaching duties. The competition for academic posts is intense in every field I’m aware of and the outside options are not great except in fields where a Bachelor’s is an excellent choice already. You could afford at least five post docs used to living in genteel poverty for the cost of one established academic.
    • evanb 5y ago
      > There are plenty of really minted PhDs who would be quite happy [...] for a postdoc with no teaching duties. As one of those people, I'm happy to move to the middle of nowhere, IF it's for a place with a stellar reputation that's going to help me do good science and (unfortunately) has some name-brand recognition.
    • mbreese 5y ago
      Recruiting a postdoc at a new institute without a track record of advancing people is a very tough sell. That would be an extremely risky career move. The best bet for a new research institute is to have a large endowment and recruit two or three large names in a field. People who already have a good reputation. The large endowment is necessary to prove that you will ongoing resources to keep the research funded into the future.
      • barry-cotter 5y ago
        > Recruiting a postdoc at a new institute without a track record of advancing people is a very tough sell. That would be an extremely risky career move. Doing a postdoc is itself a large bet that usually fails to pay off, retrospectively making both the PhD and the postdoc look like extremely poor choices by any monetary calculus. The supply of people who want to stay in Science/Research/Academia is a lot greater than the demand outside perhaps ML/AI. Even fields with great outside options for PhDs, like Economics, Computer Science or Engineering have enormous competition for academic jobs, or para-academic ones, like adjuncting.
• fxtentacle 5y ago
  I might be able to point you to the right people for legal. I'm running companies in DE and US, doing a research cooperation with German universities and I've been to Brussels as part of the KnowARC EU project for building research cloud infrastructure. But first, could you explain a bit more about your plans? Is your intention to acquire public funding? Or will this be for-profit research? Who pays for patent applications? Who will own the patent rights? Roughly what will be the initial budget for salaries? I.e. how many people do you plan to sign up and for how long?
• lallysingh 5y ago
  FTL travel? Is anyone looking into this?
• op03 5y ago
  Contact administrator of closest Research Institute(s) and ask for a tour of the labs saying you want to sponsor research. That's the best way to meet the right people, hear the needs and figure out what will work. Put in 2-3 years doing the rounds and you will learn what it takes.
• gizeta 5y ago
  Very interesting idea. Keep us posted.
• iandanforth 5y ago
  Do you know Marek Rosa? https://www.goodai.com/about/ https://www.goodai.com/about/ His research grants and building in Prague have this same flavor.
• nathias 5y ago
  Its probably very specific to your country.
• enriquto 5y ago
  Research institutes without a stable stream of new phd students every year tend to stagnate. Then they become mere displays of alten venerable greybeards. "Great minds" do not assemble, as you seem to mean. Young people become great by their interaction with experts that they learn to surpass.
  • ta988 5y ago
    I'm watching this happen right now under my eyes here (U.S.). The director decides who gets in or not, favor friends and nothing is made for young people (there are none anyway). This is just a name, with names behind it and a website listing past achievements (that were made by others long gone) and false promises.
  • unilynx 5y ago
    Sounds a lot like "science progresses one funeral at a time"
• ryan_j_naughton 5y ago
  I have a recent experience in exactly this and can connect you to folks from the RAND corporation who just founded a spinoff research think tank. Reach out to me via my email on my profile
• johndoe42377 5y ago
  So called modern science is the biggest bubble ever. Higher social status in exchange for sophisticated bullshitting, exactly as it were with clergy. The transition is done.
• xwdv 5y ago
  Just build a startup incubator instead for startups with really interesting early stage ideas.
  • ta988 5y ago
    Thats not the same thing, startups barely create any new knowledge.
• specproc 5y ago
  I worked for a small think tank for a few years recently, there are tonnes of social science and policy outlets out there. It effectively operated as a social enterprise, it did a load of survey work for institutional clients (e.g. UN agencies) that paid the bills whilst the staff worked on their priorities on the side. The way I'd approach the problem would be to set up a non profit or social enterprise, seek to build a core business and grant portfolio to keep the lights on and work from there. From another perspective, I'm not entirely sure how OpenAI do things, but there may be insights for you in their approach. You do really need to be thinking long term, you can either burn your own cash for a couple of years and quit with little to show, or build something durable over a period of decades. Reputation isn't something that appears overnight. Germany seems a tough place to do it though. You'll need someone with a good head for paperwork.
• tsbischof 5y ago
  I am helping lead the first research group at a recently-founded institute in Germany. What is the mission of your institute? Is this a collection of individuals doing their own research, or a group of collaborators working towards a shared goal? How do your ideal members measure their own performance? Is it through papers, blog posts, tech demos, products, or something else? With academics you need to be especially vigilant about the difference between vanity metrics and real output. For funding, are you allocating cash on an annual basis, up-front, on-demand, or through some other scheme? What sort of timeline do you want for people to stay at the institute? And do you intend the budgets to be competitive, either locally or internationally? What lab infrastructure will you build and maintain, versus having the researchers handle? As a lab-based researcher, setting things up can easily consume the first 6-12 months (plumbing, electrical, HVAC, optics, wetlab equipment, regulations...). Once someone goes through the effort to build this they can easily become quite protective, potentially locking out newcomers or creating an internal system of patronage. Having answers for these questions and others will be essential for recruitment. Your first few hires will dictate the direction of the institute, since further recruitment will be driven largely by their networks. Feel free to email me (username at gmail) if you would like to discuss further.
  • _Nat_ 5y ago
    > With academics you need to be especially vigilant about the difference between vanity metrics and real output. What would you consider "real output", especially in contrast to "vanity metrics"? Asking mostly because I'm curious how someone in your position would see it. For a lot of folks, academia's a fun ecosystem to participate in: they enjoy it and it pays the bills. To participate, they need to maintain popularity, much as a living organism needs to maintain energy. So their focus is on optimizing their popularity. They'd be primarily interested in metrics that represent their popularity, especially if those metrics help them plan how to gain more of it to further advance their career. But other folks participate in academia to do research for other reasons, e.g. advancing technology. They're more likely to focus on maintaining sustenance-level popularity rather than maximizing popularity. They'd tend to dismiss many popularity-centric metrics as frivolous. So if you're helping lead a research-institution, then are you primarily concerned with "real output" in the sense of "stuff that makes us popular enough to garner continued support"? Or are you more interested in another goal, like advancing science/technology? And how do you assess the value of a researcher's work given these goals?
• yarcob 5y ago
  I was a PhD student at a newly started research institute (started about two years before I joined). I really liked the place. The number one question is how to motivate people to join. For us PhD students, the motivation was 1) a salary and 2) top notch professors. For the professors the motivation was access to infrastructure and a pretty substantial research budget. There was no prestige since it was an all new institution. Every professor that joined got a budget big enough to cover their own salary for five years, the salary of two or three PhD students, all the lab equipment they needed, etc. And of course they also got access to shared resources, like meeting rooms, microscopy lab, etc. So if you can't offer a big budget to attract a professor/principal investigator, I'm not sure who would join?
• dosman33 5y ago
  In the US, universities use the term "Institute" mostly as marketing. They can take existing related units and organizations within the uni and package them under the term Institute for the purposes of creating a single cohesive brand for said discrete parts. The point of this is to be able to more easily solicit funding now that you have a more cohesive description of these areas under one identifier. It sounds strange, but after seeing it work first hand I get it now, it can also help fund areas that may be underfunded. So, taking that knowledge, you can potentially collaborate with other existing organizations to help build your institute "brand" which can help further your mission. You might consider a discrete research lab as a separate entity under your broader institute brand. Collaborating with other existing groups is a powerful way to amplify your impact as well as easy publicity for your larger mission. Just some food for thought.
  • breck 5y ago
    This. I was also surprised to learn a lot (most?) "Institutes" at universities were just a website and a bank account. The host institution handles most of the overhead like buildings and HR for a ~30% take. I don't mean this in a negative way, it actually makes sense.
    • Fomite 5y ago
      Note that this isn't necessarily true. There are often two large differences between "Institutes" (or Centers, etc. - nomenclature differs from university to university): - Soft funding. Meaning very little to no support from the university. If you can't keep the money coming in, the Institute goes away (As do its employees). - Institute faculty may or may not have other appointments - but Institutes often can't do things like grant tenure.
  • vallas 5y ago
    what is a discrete research lab, a seperate entity?
• ta988 5y ago
  You will need administrators, the people you are going to bring in are unlilely to have the experience to manage the institutional financial aspects of grants. Also most funding agencies will not give easily to places that are not recognized somehow (nor will reviewers).
  • PeterisP 5y ago
    A grant proposal would need to reassure the agency that the organization has the capacity to fulfil the promised research, so for a new organization without a track record of successful projects it will mostly hinge on the track record of the individual researchers they can attract; if OP can get some experienced PIs with big names and big CVs,then it would be plausible to get agency funding, but they will likely require nontrivial financial guarantees; but if they attract some fresh PhDs with "space to work rent-free" and a stipend, then yes, most funding agencies will not find their grant proposals competitive enough.
  • Fomite 5y ago
    This. To use the NIH example, a new research institute is probably staring at some grim Environment scores for a bit.
• not-a-cat 5y ago
  Hi. I went through this journey myself. I have a CS master degree, and always wanted to transition into AI research (focus on probabilistic programming, deep learning and self-play, but also simulation, learning-to-learn, bayesian inference, genetic algorithms). The initial plan was to self-learn machine learning, deep learning and statistics. I did that for 1 year, with the hope of joining on of the big AI labs afterwards. As it's very competitive, I couldn't join one of those labs, and wasn't willing to compromise on that. So I turned to plan B: salvage my ML skills by applying them to crypto trading, and if it works, then I'll have funding to start my own lab. Plan B worked: in 1 year and 2 months, we turned 40k of our own funds into 100M. Today we are a team of 5 and we do $5B of daily volume, around 3% of the global crypto markets. Now the challenge is to start the research division, operate the trading and research in tandem, and create the right incentives: the research converts money into ideas, the trading ideas into money. The research would have two sub-divisions: fundamental and applied to trading. My motivation for the research is mostly curiosity: I want to de-mystify intelligence (natural or artificial) and reverse-engineer it. When you talk about your lab, I resonate a lot with "watch[ing] the beauty of it". The way I would describe my research agenda is the following: put a bunch of phds in a room, see what happens. If that sounds interesting, email me at [redacted]
  • rexreed 5y ago
    Wow, very impressive. What sort of trading yields such mega returns? Is the value in cryptocurrency or has it been realized in actual cash returns?
  • montenegrohugo 5y ago
    You turned 40.000 into 100.000.000? That's incredibly impressive (even with the recent crypto bull run). Was this all achieved with time-series prediction through ML models? I had the impression those were hard to get right, but props to you for clearly doing so.
    • robertlagrant 5y ago
      Everyone's a genius in a bull market :D
• biztos 5y ago
  I have no direct experience but I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to realize my own dream of having an artist's residency -- which is actually a similar kind of thing, but temporary. I too am about to acquire the real estate, but don't have the rest set up yet. One unsolved problem I keep returning to is that the limits of the offer will affect who will come join you. Unless you can give people their dream lab and a ton of money and publication then some of the people you want, will not be able to come even if they really do share your vision. I think this is an inevitable compromise, but one that should be made very deliberately. Consider your dream researcher. Does she have a family? Can you get them to Germany on the appropriate visas with the mandatory health insurance? Will she have to quit her previous job? Can she afford to go without income for the duration of her research? If not, how much money does she need? What can her husband/wife do there? What if they have a child with special needs? Can they bring their three dogs? Can they be there three days a week? How will they get to Berlin? For my project, I plan to start very small, since I don't really know what I'm doing and don't have too much money nor time to dedicate to it yet. You might consider doing that too: make the place really nice and get some people there for a shorter period of time, and figure out your growth strategy after you've gone through the mini version with some researchers, and have properly digested their feedback. And put massive effort (and money assuming you have it) into promoting them and their work: the more it looks like Forschungszentrum Akhann is good for one's career, the more you'll have your choice of researchers. That, and take care of your liability situation. It's not so bad in Germany as in the US, but consider the possiblity someone gets sucked into the flux capacitor while helping you with your research and it's kind of your fault. You don't want to lose the whole institute over it, nor the personal fortune that has let you set it up. Definitely find a good lawyer with relevant experience. Good luck with it! I think the world needs more stuff like this.
• rexreed 5y ago
  Have you set up some sort of endowment? How are you ensuring long-term financial viability?
• a_bonobo 5y ago
  You might want to take a look at the Shuttleworth Foundation, the Forrest Research Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations as templates. They're all billionaire-funded foundations enabling research. Shuttleworth works outside traditional academia, the other two fund research in traditional pathways.
• arbesman 5y ago
  I've been exploring the landscape of new types of research institutes/organizations, with a catalog of my findings here: https://arbesman.net/overedge/ https://arbesman.net/overedge/ I'm happy to discuss the possibilities for research orgs, so please feel free to reach out.
  • ___luigi 5y ago
    Would you consider HuggingFace as as industrial research group?.
    • arbesman 5y ago
      I imagine some of these things are in the eye of the beholder, but I would consider it closer to a traditional startup, though it certainly has research components (as do many other startups).
• jagiammona 5y ago
  You should look into the Ronin Institute. Since it is very hard or impossible to get grants without being affiliated with an institute, the Ronin Institute is a remote institute that any researcher can apply to join. http://ronininstitute.org/ http://ronininstitute.org/ I think they've been pretty successful at attracting a network of interesting non-traditional researchers. I bet there are some good lessons there about how to grow an institute and bootstrap its prestige.
• mbaytas 5y ago
  I have very extensive experience on this topic and I’m happy to talk to you about it – you can find me on Twitter as doctorBaytas. Background: I started my graduate studies in human-computer interaction design on the inaugural research team of a brand new lab, which turned into a research center that employed 4 faculty and their research groups. When this happened I became the coordinator (the only administrative employee) of the center, and effectively took care of all of the founding documentation, moving into a new space, hiring technical staff, communications, etc. I did this job officially for 2 years (unofficially for 3, since I started before the institution existed).
• lokl 5y ago
  Have you considered using the facilities and proximity to academic infrastructure to host academic conferences instead of full-time research? That might be a more realistic way to attract top talent when you are first starting. You would obviously want to do this in discussion with relevant nearby academic institutions, but being able to offer free accommodations for attendees + maybe some travel expenses could help to lure people for a week event, and a conference with the right attendees coming together can definitely benefit academic research. A similar option would be to host classes or seminars on cutting edge research, taught by one or a few top researchers and attended by post-docs. Not full-time, but a way to start. If researchers find it beneficial, if it's a conducive environment and the financials are right, if you master the role of "host," then you might be able to increase the number of conferences/seminars per year and, eventually, with a high-enough frequency, add full-time support staff and longer-term functionality (e.g., researcher-in-residence) that can lead to year-round activity. Maybe this is a slow approach, but even one well-run conference can be beneficial and you'll be able to learn how to do this and make connections along the way.
• kordlessagain 5y ago
  > End goal as of now: assemble a few great minds, give them the space to work rent-free in a region with good academic infrastructure, ideally let them collaborate, watch the beauty of it. My advice is not to expect others to do the work for rent and a “stipend”. This isn’t a game. AI done wrong will be the end of us.
  • villasv 5y ago
    It's not like we will carelessly stumble upon world-ending technology. This is not a sci-fi movie.
    • kordlessagain 5y ago
      I think we will build it with intent and should be careful with our intentions/attentions. You are right. Sci-fi movies are short.
    • etangent 5y ago
      Yeah, we won't accidentally stumble upon it---we will painstakingly create one, with our best intentions in mind and while receiving accolades for it.
    • c1ccccc1 5y ago
      How do you know that exactly? On previous occasions, we humans have both carelessly stumbled across technology and have discovered world-ending technology.
  • vallas 5y ago
    > AI done wrong will be the end of us. Everything of this is a game, this case is bad game
• JBorrow 5y ago
  You should read up on the Max Planck institutes in Germany, and on the Flatiron Institute in New York. As others have said your problem will be attracting talent. You're best off organising free conferences, in collaboration with a MP, to start with.
  • cpach 5y ago
    Pardon my ignorance, but what does MP mean in this context?
    • JBorrow 5y ago
      Max Planck - sorry I didn't define that (https://www.mpg.de/institutes https://www.mpg.de/institutes).
      • cpach 5y ago
        Thanks :)
  • selimthegrim 5y ago
    Flatiron itself has had struggles moving people out into academia (not counting joint positions it already has) so citing it might be the exception proving the rule
• tomkat0789 5y ago
  Scrolling around the comments, I'm not seeing much discussion about funding. Are billionaire friends a requirement to set up an independent research organization? Asking as an engineering PhD doing what feels like gopher work for big companies. I have armchair dreams and ideas for doing research again, but I've never been clear on how one would get that first grant. Also, as an alternative to a purely academic route, is it practical to create an institute focused on more worldly things like patents or consulting? I imagine a professional network would be key no matter what path you take!
• xorsim 5y ago
  I also look for such initiatives. We need something like the Invisible College [1]. And artificial life deserves more than a marginal interest, because is the gate towards understanding biological life as a computation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_College https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_College
  • toomim 5y ago
    I'm building an invisible college in Berkeley and Hawaii, and happen to own the domain name: https://invisible.college https://invisible.college. If anyone's interested in putting this domain to better use, please reach out!
    • xorsim 5y ago
      Great! Nice to meet you.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• screye 5y ago
  3 anecdotes that might be useful. 1. TTI Chicago The holy grail? It is relatively new (15 yrs old) and does top notch research. Super prestigious in certain areas. It is kind of related to UChicago, but also not really. A key learning is that you can start your institute by borrowing some prestige. Split some of your funds with a prestigious university while allowing some of your researchers to hold adjunct positions at UChicago. The researchers get their academic prestige, and you get the researcher to work at your institute. Eventually your institute will gather enough prestige that your researchers will call themselves members of TTIC first, and UChicago second. 2. Allen AI (The tempting example you want to avoid) You are not Paul Allen. You do not have $2b to spend on your deathbed. You don't have every important person in the world on a quick dial. Your name isn't gilded in prestige as Paul's was. It's like trying to start a space exploring company by following in Bezos's footsteps. 3. Wadhwani AI (https://www.wadhwaniai.org/founders/ https://www.wadhwaniai.org/founders/) I haven't personally worked with them, but attended a seminar about them once. At surface level it seems like something doable for a rich HN type. Decent but not impossible funding ($30m), clear vision, small but lean and seemed to be doing good work. ___________________ At some point I want to start a fully independent educational institute. But so far, my goal is to focus on education (K12) rather than research. (that's when I get to it. I'll languish as a tech worker making castles in the sky for now)
  • dnautics 5y ago
    Along with Allen AI there is the Craig Venter institute. You did not just swindle wall street (I mean this in a good way) to fund scientific research and cash out at the top by having your board fire you (crocodile tears) to the tune of ~15B. Even if you did, your eponymous self-funded research institute will burn through its funds in a decade and your researchers will start having to do federal grant seeking at the point in time when federal grants are the hardest to obtain and other competitive research institutes are seeking a higher balance of private money. A better example to shoot for would be peter Mitchell's Glynn research institute. You raise money to study one thing and one thing only. You do your research in a garage (to be fair, of a giant regency manor) and finish it. And then win the Nobel prize. I'm still trying to find out what happened to Percy Julian's Julian research institute, which enjoyed some success but no longer exists as far as I can tell.
• breck 5y ago
  I don't know anything about it, but being just one island over I've heard of the Pacific Science Institute, which may be something like you are trying to do ( https://www.pacificscienceinstitute.org/ https://www.pacificscienceinstitute.org/) There's also some great online research communities, like the https://futureofcoding.org/ https://futureofcoding.org/ slack.
• pontifier 5y ago
  I'm trying to build something like this myself. I acquired a huge building and am trying to set it up as a science museum, makerspace and business incubator. There will be on-site housing as well. I'm calling it Serendipic.org. I haven't had too much luck so far, but I've been working on it for a year and have had nothing but problems with zoning. I can't even get power turned on. They just don't understand what I'm trying to do, and can't comprehend that I don't have every detail of the entire project mapped out in minute detail yet.
• elasticventures 5y ago
  I've tried to do this, with partners and failed. Finding all the people with all the skills you need to get a prototype finished, LET ALONE a field-deployable-serviceable prototype at any level of "interesting scale" is absurdly complex and multi-facted. In the US most research is targeted as selling things to the military. You might be better in Australia or any other country which offers more social funding for these types of things. This thread has a lot of good ideas, I wish I'd seen it 5 years ago. My current project might be useful for you: http://github.com/elasticdotventures/_b00t_ http://github.com/elasticdotventures/_b00t_
  • Fomite 5y ago
    "In the US most research is targeted as selling things to the military." This strikes me as a very narrow perspective. Defense and Non-Defense R&D spending are about the same (https://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/2020-10/DefNon.png https://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/2020-10/DefNon.png) and the second largest funder of R&D is the NIH.
• breck 5y ago
  I pursued something similar. I created the Tree Notation Lab in Oahu (https://lab.treenotation.org/ https://lab.treenotation.org/), secured a physical home for it at a university, got funding commitments, started recruiting, and came close to pulling the trigger, but slowed down at the last moment circa January 2020. The reason I hit the brakes were some specific incidents that made me realize how much I was underestimating how difficult recruiting, retaining, and enabling the level of talent I hoped for. I was probably underestimating those challenges by 2 orders of magnitude. The majority of folks you'd want to recruit probably have great careers already and probably families, and are likely world class, so in today's market you'd need probably on the order of a $100M - $1B+ war-chest to be able to efficiently compete for them and not have recruitment and retainment as an urgent problem that would keep you up every night. I instead pivoted and decided to make it a remote first, part time thing. I have a number of advisors and collaborators. New people pitch me ideas and I fund them or not. I sometimes put a few weeks in, sometimes just a day a month. I can scale it organically and pause it when I want. I can be an active part of other remote research groups as well. I made this decision pre-COVID, when it was more of a tossup, but now I'd say it's a no brainer. If you're just looking to house a group of like minded people perhaps something like https://www.together.casa/ https://www.together.casa/ or https://www.pandopooling.com/ https://www.pandopooling.com/ might be interesting to check out. Happy to chat more too if that would be helpful. I definitely encourage you to go for it, as I think we need more of these, but at least for me the better bet was to start remote.
• activatedgeek 5y ago
  Perhaps, you may enjoy this collection - "The Overedge Catalog: New Types of Research Organizations" [1]. I think it has quite the variety, and may help you distill a broader sense of where things are headed (and find people to reach out to). [1]: https://arbesman.net/overedge/ https://arbesman.net/overedge/
• mdnahas 5y ago
  I've pursued personally-funded research for more than a year. Some thoughts: Think about your competitive advantages. What makes working at your place different from a university and why would a researcher choose yours? It could be they don't like to teach. It could be that they want their life taken care off and you can hire a cook/cleaner/etc. for them. It could be that they don't like writing grants. Or they have trouble winning grants. (E.g., their topic is out of favor for various reasons.) It could be the freedom to work on anything. It could be the location. It could be that they could be the most senior person at your institute. Perhaps they want to start something new. It could be that they love that you think their research is valuable. Your own institute has weaknesses, but they can be ameliorated. Make it easy to travel to. Putting it near a major university may help earn academic traffic and provide for collaboration. One way to structure the institute is to have one good mind and many followers on. That is easy to bootstrap, once you get the good mind. The other sustainable structure is to pick a topic and have the largest most-focused group working on that topic. People will come for that, but getting it off the ground will be difficult. Perhaps you can a few good minds right after they get their PhDs and build around that team. If the key is the people, I suggest you talk to the people. Find out what top researchers don't like about university life. If you need a topic to focus on, I did research on formal proofs --- writing a mathematical proof on a computer. Every other industry has moved to digital, computer-aided design, except the field most suited to it! The way that mathematicians advance their careers in academia is working against the adoption of the technology. A place outside academia might make more progress in the area.
• tnorthcutt 5y ago
  You might find https://newscience.org/ https://newscience.org/ interesting and relevant. The founder, Alexey Guzey, is a very interesting person https://twitter.com/alexeyguzey https://twitter.com/alexeyguzey
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• dariosalvi78 5y ago
  You can consider setting up a joint centre with a university, it would help you inherit their prestige and access students/researchers and them getting funding. I work in a centre that has this strong companies/university collaboration and it's a model that can work well.
• miyazono 5y ago
  I somehow created/found myself in a role that's similar to this? At present, we mostly build networking infrastructure for decentralization (Protocol Labs, started IPFS, libp2p, & Filecoin), but the long-term goal is to embed rights and values into the protocols by which people coordinate and communicate, and my team has interpreted this to include improving science as humanity's process for knowledge generation. As a result, I'm trying to lay the groundwork for a metascience institute. (We haven't been at it long enough that I'd say we've made a ton of progress, but we've got fun ambitions and our goals have been pretty well-received so far.) There are lots of great points in this thread already, but one thing I'll emphasize is the importance of doing something that's important but would otherwise be neglected. Studying orgs like Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, DeepMind, & HHMI is great, but it's unlikely your budget is comparable to Google or the EU. However, rising experts (e.g. senior grad students, postdocs, and young profs) have fantastic ideas that they don't have the ability to pursue. Sometimes a topic isn't well funded or there's not a critical mass of interest in the field. However, unless you're a specialist, you're likely not well-equipped to identify a lot of those. I'd suggest reaching out to some experts, asking them to name great, young minds or rising stars in the field, and then ask those researchers about others that they respect or would love to work with - and whenever you meet someone ask "what research do you want to do but can't get funding for?" because every researcher has an answer to that question. Additionally, here's some interesting people I know who will tweet about science organization: @adammarblestone, @michael_nielsen, @Ben_Reinhardt, @davidtlang, and @alexeyguzey. Feel free to reach out - email is [username]@protocol.ai
• UncleOxidant 5y ago
  I've never started a research institute, but I've wanted to for a while. I figure if I were to ever win the lottery I'd start a research institute with the proceeds. Good luck!
• brg 5y ago
  I have managed multiple research organizations, in businesses and academia. Without a goal and process the institute will be a failure. It will fail to produce interesting results. It will fail to attract and grow talent. And it will fail to do well by the researchers who you are hoping to benefit. In my own opinion, the best goal is something that you can derive a market signal for. For DeepMind, this was video game playing. For Paul Allen Institute, it is the ability to spin-off bets. If you try and sell something, you get a clear opinion of its value. The process is also important. For a research institute, my suggestion is a periodic public interaction. There are many ways of garnering this; self-publishing reports, publishing in journals and conferences, attending (or better yet holding) conferences, increasing funding from public events, or seeking out collaborations with other institutions.
• didntknowya 5y ago
  i did my postgrad at a research institute founded by a well known professor in his field. in the first instance you have to decide what research field/theme you want to target or are passionate about, then get lure leading academics in the field (scout them by published works or industry talks). feel free to get in touch if you want me to connect you.
• lorepieri 5y ago
  I'm also interested in setting up research institutes. I'm obsessed with knowledge, I've built 2 companies (AI, robotics, Blockchain) and have a PhD in theoretical physics. -The first one would focus on Automation, UBI and AGI. The goal is to actively accelerate the transition to a post-scarcity economy. The plan is to create, fund and invest in automation companies supported by the R&D of the institute. The goal is for this institute to be profit making. -A second institute would fund fundamental research in math and physics, without any short term requirements to the researchers involved, not even publications. Researchers will be free to work on 100, 1000 or more long term projects. This a longer term project, since this institute would be funded externally, so a larger capital to sustain this would be needed. I'm looking to fund researchers motivated by obsession for knowledge and genuine curiosity, uninterested in social status. Satoshi Nakamoto is a good example of the spirit which I look for: anonymously publishing ground breaking research without looking for recognition. Please reach out to lorenzo.pieri.research[at]gmail.com if you want to chat.
  • gremlinsinc 5y ago
    I'm just a dev, even burned out a little. Mostly because as a freelancer I lack passion-driving projects, and want something I can call my own, or maybe that helps others, or feels like I'm serving a purpose. If you need help with any of these, I'd love to work on them. I'm mostly just web dev, but I've played with machine learning, python, tons of technologies from HN, and I'm not afraid to ditch web dev and go into robotics, etc. I've often thought of how to maybe use crypto for UBI, imagine if you will every person can have 1 account, (there will be business accounts too, and I still need to work that out), but this 1 account has built in taxes for different levels of income. It also has a max where taxes are basically 100% -- which would be tied to the average wallet/savings of each unique person. difficulties lie in: ensuring 1 unique wallet, etc.. figuring out decent minting amounts, getting it accepted for bread and other commodities that matter the most to the poor, etc. The idea though is nobody should be so poor they can't afford a roof, and nobody should be so rich they keep someone else from affording a roof... Basically it'd outlaw billionaires (or whoever hits the pre-programmed but variable cap), it would divy out funds based on who has the least funds, and also who uses funds the most for regular purchases (more transactions == more ubi). I'd also like to eventually research or work with researchers working on ai / consciousness theory, neuroscience, cog-sci. I'm interested in the concepts that Donald Hoffman is putting forth about proofs that we're in a simulation. If this is true, if there's a way to alter reality then because life is "the matrix", I think that'd be something pretty interesting to discover the "how"... and make it more accessible to people, without requiring 60+ years of living in a buddhist monastery. Anyway, if you want to connect email me: patrickwcurl@gmail.com
• yunesj 5y ago
  Thanks for starting this discussion! I’m starting a small research foundation for studying the biology of aging. I’d be happy to keep in touch!