6 ms·

Should Applied Research Funding Go To Startups or Academia?

29 points by bmahmood 14y ago

tjic 14y ago
Un-ask the question. Please first explain why there should be such a thing as "applied research funding".
- cantankerous 14y ago
  Well there's always applications in defense. That's probably the biggest single source of applied research funding in the United States from the federal government.
  - tensor 14y ago
    Probably followed by applied medical research.
- mbreese 14y ago
  Because it's easier to sell to taxpayers that grants are being awarded to do X Y or Z things that they might be able to see or use. That is opposed to basic science research that doesn't necessarily have any applications. The buzzword these days for it is "translational" research.
bluestix 14y ago
The majority of research funding goes to defense contractors for black and gray ops.
jayzee 14y ago
This is a great post on a topic that is quite close to our hearts since we are a science-startup as well. I think that this situation is a symptom of the mentality, 'You can't be fired for buying IBM.' It is so much easier to give money to a research group at Harvard etc than 2 guys starting out from an apartment. Especially in a bureaucratic setting where your job is to make decisions that do not look bad, and not to actually make good decisions! Adam and I were once on a call with an academic consortium that had received ~$15M in funding from ARAA. The objective of this group was quite similar to what we are doing with our startup. This group reached out to us too see if there was a way we could work together. During the conference call it was Adam and me on our side and at least 10 researchers from institutions all over the US on the other side! Those were the early days of our startup and we thought that we would be obliterated by them with their vast resources. It turns out that with 1/10th their funding we have done more than 10x of what they did. And they are floundering while we are just warming up.
- cantankerous 14y ago
  I'm curious, does your science startup do applied research or does it sell a product related to the support of scientific research?
  - jayzee 14y ago
    the later... support scientific research
    - alberich 14y ago
      supporting scientific research is considered applied scientific research?
      - jayzee 14y ago
        the post discusses funding for science-related startups broadly... including examples referring to academia.edu etc. i am responding to the contents of the post not just the title.
- mbreese 14y ago
  On the other hand, during grad school, I developed a LIMS system and order tracking system (about 2004-2005). It was very similar to Quartzy, actually. It was done on the side to support my own research. My university decided in its infinite wisdom to license the tech out to a startup that had very little experience. The idea was that they would take over the system to add the next features that was needed and I could get me back into lab. They were trying to get SBIR funding. The last time I checked, the company folded and my lab never got the new features back. Worst of all, the code is now locked away, never to be seen from again. Even the code that I wrote can't be used outside of that original install. So, I agree that academic centers are usually not very skilled at developing software that can survive, at least the projects that do succeed are generally available to the research community. Unfortunately, it's next to impossible to get tenure working on such projects, so anyone that is skilled at projects of this scale leave academia pretty quickly.
Irishsteve 14y ago
Applied research is nothing new, sure isn't that what PARC was? Commercial labs still exist, and in many different fields. (I know PARC was Xerox, but now they take on proof of concept work from externals) The real problem is how do you identify particular groups or commercial labs to approach, so that they can complete your work. Research money is quite risky because you are asking for someone to achieve something that does not yet exist. You have a good probability of running out of money before something comes back to you.
- cantankerous 14y ago
  This. A huge reason why some guy in his basement isn't able to pull down grants is because he doesn't have the resources or the record to justify the grant award. Research funding is a risky "business" (it's not really a business) with a high failure rate. I can't help but feel that this article reads like a combination of sour grapes and a pitch to avoid academic institutions because of a bunch of tired, overgeneralized ideals. If a team has a track record of delivering, then they usually continue to get the grants. That's how it works, for better or worse. Part of the way you break into research is by joining the good teams before charging off on your own...or publishing something of note. While it has its problems, I think most people would be hard pressed to come up with a completely better approach without its own set of equivalent drawbacks.
PaulHoule 14y ago
arxiv.org is perhaps the only successfully community to come out of academia and it was successful precisely because it wasn't funded... all of the early work was done on stolen time so there was no BS having to do with grants, etc. Back when I was involved with arxiv.org we had 1/8 the budget of some people next door who'd build a huge portal that had essentially no end users. Perhaps we could have done so much more if we'd had more money, but practice shows that academics will eat the money up and deliver very little for it.
- marxiv 14y ago
  I've been working on a new front-end for the arXiv (www.marxiv.org) that is built for for the modern web, focusing on speed, simplicity, mobile accessibility, social sharing, and (coming soon) the ability to log in and keep a synchronized list of saved articles, favorite searches, etc., across computers/mobile devices. This is all made possible by the arXiv's awesome committment to OAI. In case anyone tries it out (still in beta), we'd love to hear your feedback. No grants involved! ;)
- fjorder 14y ago
  Hi Paul, I'm a researcher who uses arxiv daily and I love it. I love it to the point that I sometimes wonder if it could become more than it is. Did anyone involved with arxiv ever toy with the idea of attaching message boards to papers in which the papers could be discussed? i.e. One of the links from the abstract page could be to a message board specifically for discussing that paper. One of the worst things about the peer review process at journals is the lag and one-way nature of communication between authors and referees. It is tremendously frustrating to have one referee torpedo the whole process because he/she has interpreted the paper incorrectly. I'd love to see somebody try to replace the traditional referee process with something like an invitation-only forum so that authors and referees can interact in a timely basis with anonymity preserved. Arxiv could do a variation of this by creating a forum open to users who have published papers on the arxiv (just to weed out spammers). This could provide rapid feedback to strengthen papers as well as a place to collect answers to questions from readers. Cheers!
  - 14y ago
vshade 14y ago
The important thing is that public funded research should have public available results. I fail to see how to keep the results public available and remaining a competitive startup.
- alexshye 14y ago
  It's not that simple though. It is fairly well known that results from academic publications should often be taken with a grain of salt. For example, a 15% performance improvement in a simulator may mean 1% in a real system. So in many cases, the idea is what is interesting, and the results are suspect. In a startup, the idea is publicly viewable in many cases, and the result is also publicly viewable (success/failure). Obviously, these things are different, but I'm just trying to say there is a gray area here.
thejteam 14y ago
In the US at least there is always SBIR(Small Business Innovation Research)funding. Most of it is through the DOD, but other federal agencies includimg the NSF participate as well. The NSF grants are pretty open-ended. Come up with an idea in their broad categories and submit a proposal. it helps greatly to have a PhD on your team as the initial Principal Investgator, but at least for the DOD awards is certainly not strictly required.
- thejteam 14y ago
  And now i read the article and they mentioned SBIR. i have never heard of a 21 million SBIR award though. i always though phase 2awards topped out at about 2million.
- neutronicus 14y ago
  My advisor owns a company that was funded almost entirely by SBIR's for the first several years of its existence. Sales (of a very expensive physics simulation package) have picked up recently, though.
eli_gottlieb 14y ago
Oh, someone else wants to hate on academia?
qq66 14y ago
The returns to academic funding are extremely high and if anything, MORE government money should be funding academic research. The strong funding for academic research is one of the principal reasons for the US' level of scientific and technological success. For-profit business already have well-established funding channels, namely angel investors and venture capitalists. Government doesn't do a good job of investing in startups (Solyndra?) and should stay out of it.

29 points by bmahmood 14y ago

tjic 14y ago

Un-ask the question. Please first explain why there should be such a thing as "applied research funding".

cantankerous 14y ago
Well there's always applications in defense. That's probably the biggest single source of applied research funding in the United States from the federal government.
- tensor 14y ago
  Probably followed by applied medical research.
mbreese 14y ago
Because it's easier to sell to taxpayers that grants are being awarded to do X Y or Z things that they might be able to see or use. That is opposed to basic science research that doesn't necessarily have any applications. The buzzword these days for it is "translational" research.

bluestix 14y ago

The majority of research funding goes to defense contractors for black and gray ops.

jayzee 14y ago

This is a great post on a topic that is quite close to our hearts since we are a science-startup as well. I think that this situation is a symptom of the mentality, 'You can't be fired for buying IBM.' It is so much easier to give money to a research group at Harvard etc than 2 guys starting out from an apartment. Especially in a bureaucratic setting where your job is to make decisions that do not look bad, and not to actually make good decisions! Adam and I were once on a call with an academic consortium that had received ~$15M in funding from ARAA. The objective of this group was quite similar to what we are doing with our startup. This group reached out to us too see if there was a way we could work together. During the conference call it was Adam and me on our side and at least 10 researchers from institutions all over the US on the other side! Those were the early days of our startup and we thought that we would be obliterated by them with their vast resources. It turns out that with 1/10th their funding we have done more than 10x of what they did. And they are floundering while we are just warming up.

cantankerous 14y ago
I'm curious, does your science startup do applied research or does it sell a product related to the support of scientific research?
- jayzee 14y ago
  the later... support scientific research
  - alberich 14y ago
    supporting scientific research is considered applied scientific research?
    - jayzee 14y ago
      the post discusses funding for science-related startups broadly... including examples referring to academia.edu etc. i am responding to the contents of the post not just the title.
mbreese 14y ago
On the other hand, during grad school, I developed a LIMS system and order tracking system (about 2004-2005). It was very similar to Quartzy, actually. It was done on the side to support my own research. My university decided in its infinite wisdom to license the tech out to a startup that had very little experience. The idea was that they would take over the system to add the next features that was needed and I could get me back into lab. They were trying to get SBIR funding. The last time I checked, the company folded and my lab never got the new features back. Worst of all, the code is now locked away, never to be seen from again. Even the code that I wrote can't be used outside of that original install. So, I agree that academic centers are usually not very skilled at developing software that can survive, at least the projects that do succeed are generally available to the research community. Unfortunately, it's next to impossible to get tenure working on such projects, so anyone that is skilled at projects of this scale leave academia pretty quickly.

Irishsteve 14y ago

Applied research is nothing new, sure isn't that what PARC was? Commercial labs still exist, and in many different fields. (I know PARC was Xerox, but now they take on proof of concept work from externals) The real problem is how do you identify particular groups or commercial labs to approach, so that they can complete your work. Research money is quite risky because you are asking for someone to achieve something that does not yet exist. You have a good probability of running out of money before something comes back to you.

cantankerous 14y ago
This. A huge reason why some guy in his basement isn't able to pull down grants is because he doesn't have the resources or the record to justify the grant award. Research funding is a risky "business" (it's not really a business) with a high failure rate. I can't help but feel that this article reads like a combination of sour grapes and a pitch to avoid academic institutions because of a bunch of tired, overgeneralized ideals. If a team has a track record of delivering, then they usually continue to get the grants. That's how it works, for better or worse. Part of the way you break into research is by joining the good teams before charging off on your own...or publishing something of note. While it has its problems, I think most people would be hard pressed to come up with a completely better approach without its own set of equivalent drawbacks.

PaulHoule 14y ago

arxiv.org is perhaps the only successfully community to come out of academia and it was successful precisely because it wasn't funded... all of the early work was done on stolen time so there was no BS having to do with grants, etc. Back when I was involved with arxiv.org we had 1/8 the budget of some people next door who'd build a huge portal that had essentially no end users. Perhaps we could have done so much more if we'd had more money, but practice shows that academics will eat the money up and deliver very little for it.

marxiv 14y ago
I've been working on a new front-end for the arXiv (www.marxiv.org) that is built for for the modern web, focusing on speed, simplicity, mobile accessibility, social sharing, and (coming soon) the ability to log in and keep a synchronized list of saved articles, favorite searches, etc., across computers/mobile devices. This is all made possible by the arXiv's awesome committment to OAI. In case anyone tries it out (still in beta), we'd love to hear your feedback. No grants involved! ;)
fjorder 14y ago
Hi Paul, I'm a researcher who uses arxiv daily and I love it. I love it to the point that I sometimes wonder if it could become more than it is. Did anyone involved with arxiv ever toy with the idea of attaching message boards to papers in which the papers could be discussed? i.e. One of the links from the abstract page could be to a message board specifically for discussing that paper. One of the worst things about the peer review process at journals is the lag and one-way nature of communication between authors and referees. It is tremendously frustrating to have one referee torpedo the whole process because he/she has interpreted the paper incorrectly. I'd love to see somebody try to replace the traditional referee process with something like an invitation-only forum so that authors and referees can interact in a timely basis with anonymity preserved. Arxiv could do a variation of this by creating a forum open to users who have published papers on the arxiv (just to weed out spammers). This could provide rapid feedback to strengthen papers as well as a place to collect answers to questions from readers. Cheers!
- 14y ago

vshade 14y ago

The important thing is that public funded research should have public available results. I fail to see how to keep the results public available and remaining a competitive startup.

alexshye 14y ago
It's not that simple though. It is fairly well known that results from academic publications should often be taken with a grain of salt. For example, a 15% performance improvement in a simulator may mean 1% in a real system. So in many cases, the idea is what is interesting, and the results are suspect. In a startup, the idea is publicly viewable in many cases, and the result is also publicly viewable (success/failure). Obviously, these things are different, but I'm just trying to say there is a gray area here.

thejteam 14y ago

In the US at least there is always SBIR(Small Business Innovation Research)funding. Most of it is through the DOD, but other federal agencies includimg the NSF participate as well. The NSF grants are pretty open-ended. Come up with an idea in their broad categories and submit a proposal. it helps greatly to have a PhD on your team as the initial Principal Investgator, but at least for the DOD awards is certainly not strictly required.

thejteam 14y ago
And now i read the article and they mentioned SBIR. i have never heard of a 21 million SBIR award though. i always though phase 2awards topped out at about 2million.
neutronicus 14y ago
My advisor owns a company that was funded almost entirely by SBIR's for the first several years of its existence. Sales (of a very expensive physics simulation package) have picked up recently, though.

eli_gottlieb 14y ago

Oh, someone else wants to hate on academia?

qq66 14y ago

The returns to academic funding are extremely high and if anything, MORE government money should be funding academic research. The strong funding for academic research is one of the principal reasons for the US' level of scientific and technological success. For-profit business already have well-established funding channels, namely angel investors and venture capitalists. Government doesn't do a good job of investing in startups (Solyndra?) and should stay out of it.