If you’re seeing this, then I probably want to know what you think.
Fill out the form here, otherwise e-mail me at: mustafawarsi@gmail.com
Obviously, I would love for help or feedback so text me with either if you have those.
The proposal is basically something to allow us to fund scientific research without being billionnaires. Think of it as semi-philanthropic and semi-venture capitalistic.
It is best described with an excerpt from an email correspondence I’m currently having trying to set this up with some of my Professors at Cambridge:
“I’ve started to get increasingly interested in research funding, particularly as regards its potential to engineer solutions to global issues like climate change or resource scarcity.
It seems to me to be the case that very many of the people I work with and see around London are deeply interested in the research environment (as am I) but not many give to research directly other than the incredibly wealthy, who have large family foundations that hand out grants and run scholarships, for eg.
I suspect this comes down partly to some mix of perceived opportunity cost (eg could buy anti-malaria nets instead) and distance from impact (eg it doesn’t seem particularly inspiring to fork out a few thousand pounds to a Cambridge institution with an endownment in the 8/9 figures during a student telethon+there is little transparency on where your money is spent.)
Now, I assume that the annual cost of a post-doc fellowship/phd studentship is of the order of GBP 30k to 50k. Please correct me if this is inaccurate. (Edit: I’ve since been led to believe that some departments like MatSci or Oncology might be more expensive.)
I wonder if it’s possible to, maybe, gather consortia of, say, 6-10 (maybe technically trained) professionals who, contributing say GBP 5k-10k each every year, can fund a single research fellowship/studentship in a field of their interest.
There is some economic incentive, too: the consortium can maintain a stake in any IP developed by the research group, again incentivising research that is potentially self-sustaining and monetisable.
The mechanism I foresee is rudimentarily as follows:- Gather a consortium of 6-10 professionals interested in some kind of research, for eg the replacement of HFCs in Cooling Systems (let’s assume for now that they’re serious and that their money is in escrow in a specially set up company or trust)
– Set up the corresponding studentship with the MatSci department/some college
– Open this up for applications
– Allow some mix of the consortium members and department academics to filter, meet with and select a winner from the applications
– Pay the fee and allow the student to begin- Follow up with semi-annual meetings.
To further incentivise the meta-organisation (i.e. me and anybody working with me) we will also take a (small) stake in the trust company. (So, the consortium of shareholders together have a 95% stake in the shell company, and my organisation has a 5% stake in it for setting all of this up.)
The immediate pros I see of an approach like this is:
– it opens up the possibility for research funding to a lot more people and increases flexibility.
– it allows for a relationship to develop between the candidate/department and the network of funders, which could be beneficial to both parties. This is more personal than being handed a grant by a big nameless, faceless foundation like MacArthur.
– would incentivise practicable, sustainable research.
The glaring con I see is:
– the coordination problem between the members of the consortia; i.e. need to ensure they’re serious about funding and maintain protocol for resolving disputes between them vis-a-vis research direction, say.
I guess it could be said that they could work in conjunction with a specific advisor or faculty member who takes the lead re the technical details of the fellowship.For eg, that the trust with their money hands it over to a professor working on HFCs under the stipulation it is spent on a student that they will have some say in choosing.
I’m envisaging some kind of platform/community-building effort in London, where multiple such consortia can be organised over the next few years. I think quant researchers/ex-mathmos are a great demographic to start with. The hope is that ultimately, this can be self-organising and people find each other, pool resources together (guided by an administrator like me), find a professor/dept/college, set up a studentship. By self-organising, I simply mean that with sufficient open-mindedness on the College/Department’s behalf, a lot of that process can be automated.”
Any thoughts?
Tell me here.