Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YC Research

blog.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 389 posts

Re: YC Research

#251

Post by aroch »

Amorymeltzer wrote: post #221
aroch wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to minimize the awesomeness of the YCR proposal, but $10m isn't really very much in the scheme of research. NIH alone funds to order of $25bil a year in science research. Public-private funding schemes probably fund an order of magnitude more every year. $10m is pretty much just enough to fund one reasonably sized group, doing advanced research, for about a year to a year and half. Seems to me that Sam i…

>$10m isn't really very much in the scheme of research. NIH alone funds to order of $25bil a year in science research Sure, but the NIH is funding near to 50,000 competitive grants a year. Some googling online gives median/average grant size at $300k/$350k. Even $25bil over 50,000 projects is $500k a project a year. An academic institution will take 50% or more straight off the top, so you're looking closer to $150k…

$10m is a lot of money for some fields, but in the scheme of high tech and high reward biological/chemical/physical research it really isn't. Personnel overhead alone for a reasonably sized group (10-20) can range from $2m on the low end, up to 5 or 6 million on the high end.

For example, at many institutions it takes ~$250k to support a single researcher (Salary, health/personal insurance, institutional insurance) .

Re: YC Research

#252

Post by shas3 »

selimthegrim wrote: post #247
aresant wrote: post #36

I love this idea. Not sure if this is driving your thinking but this would open a desperately needed alternative to Academia if you can scale this idea as successfully as you've scaled startups. I've watched my genius brother-in-law (PhD Materials Science & Chemistry / Biomimicry) be consumed by a very broken UC system over the past decade. Started with an exceptionally bright, curious, and inventive man who created…

The amount of financial and administrative skullduggery within the UC system 2009 (after the financial crisis)-present (I was at UCSB as a grad student 2009-2011) is almost uncommunicable to people who weren't there. People simply refuse to believe some of the stories I tell them. e: Here's some hard facts - http://universityprobe.org

The best story I heard about this was from a math grad student / instructor about how you had to jump through multiple hoops to even re-up on chalk for the blackboard.

Re: YC Research

#253

Post by shas3 »

aresant wrote: post #36

I love this idea. Not sure if this is driving your thinking but this would open a desperately needed alternative to Academia if you can scale this idea as successfully as you've scaled startups. I've watched my genius brother-in-law (PhD Materials Science & Chemistry / Biomimicry) be consumed by a very broken UC system over the past decade. Started with an exceptionally bright, curious, and inventive man who created…

I think there is a bit of exaggeration on the non-availability of grant money for research in applied science/technology. @sama acknowledges the adequacy of funds for applied research explicitly, "[1] Funding for technological development is actually relatively high, but funding for fundamental research keeps getting cut. Investors want to fund incremental progress—and the world has gotten very good at delivering that. This is more valuable than it sounds; incremental progress compounds quickly." This is true of industrial research and to an extent, academia.

It conforms with my experience.

That said, the skills required to write great grants and schmooze with grant-givers are quite different from that needed to do quality research in science or engineering. So the academic researcher community in science and technology is whittled down to the small set of {those good at research}∩ {those good at writing grants} + ⊂{those good at writing grants} + geniuses

Re: YC Research

#254

Post by Amorymeltzer »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #242
Amorymeltzer wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, maybe not. I debated bringing it up, and honestly YCR is likely to have a large, up-front facilities cost (regulations, certifications, etc.). It would make sense to start easy - don't start off with infectious diseases of humans - and build from there. But still, I'd wager that YCR will run far more efficiently than your average university. Someone above brought up the UC system: management-level positions ha…

More efficiently, I'm sure. For starters, I'm prejudiced to think any smaller org will run more efficiently than a larger one (even though I realize this is literally the opposite of conventional/mainstream assumptions!). But TWICE as efficient? Also, I think all those administrator salaries are probably being funded by tuition (that is, by government subsidized student loans that the students will be paying back for…

It was a point of comparison. The NIH pool is large but spread very thin and, we can both agree, less efficiently than YCR is likely to be. Twice? Infinite? No of course note, but it's a point of interest in the "$10 million isn't so much" discussion.

And no, researcher's salaries (postdocs, tech, grad students, etc.) are not included. The indirect costs go to the university to pay for department/college-level utilities, facilities, infrastructure, and administrator salaries (which, admittedly, the lab does benefit from).

Re: YC Research

#255

Post by amelius »

hugh4 wrote: post #234
matheweis wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I knew things were bad, but the education system must be well and truly broken when the students at one of the world's top research universities are leaving to build startups, and calling it a broken system on their way out. (No sarcasm intended; I couldn't find a way to say this better).

In fairness, all systems are broken, academia isn't much more broken than anything else involving large numbers of mortals. The basic problem is that we need to rank one researcher's merit against everyone else's, and there's no perfect way to do this because nobody can familiarise themselves with every individual's research. Rely on peers' opinions to measure merit and you just reward back-scratching. Rely on object…

> Rely on peers' opinions to measure merit and you just reward back-scratching. Rely on objective measures like citation counts and h-index and you incentivise people to focus on these instead of research quality.

In the meantime, Google seems to have developed a pretty good ranking system that is difficult to game.

Re: YC Research

#256

Post by no_flags »

cossatot wrote: post #219
matheweis wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I knew things were bad, but the education system must be well and truly broken when the students at one of the world's top research universities are leaving to build startups, and calling it a broken system on their way out. (No sarcasm intended; I couldn't find a way to say this better).

It's not necessarily the 'brokenness' of the system that forces people out but the consequence of producing PhDs faster than new positions are being created. "You don't have to go home but you can't stay here". No one expects that all high school students will become high school teachers. Why should it be the same for PhDs? A lot of what is wrong with the academic system is this expectation, which is bewilderingly pr…

When I was in grad school I think most people were aware of how tough it is to get a tenure track faculty position. Many students had no aspiration of going into academia and planned to go directly to industry. This was in mechanical engineering, an inherently practical subject, so maybe the field makes a difference.

Kudos on trying to make it as an independent researcher though. That's a really cool idea. How has it been applying for grants without a university affiliation? What's the breakdown of your time spent on funded research, unfunded research, and consulting?

Re: YC Research

#257

Post by DrNuke »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #110
waterlesscloud wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's also chairman of the board for two nuclear power companies. And YC itself has been branching into biotech and hardware and other science-y companies. Anything seems possible to me.

My money's on nuclear. Advanced nuclear designs regularly claim 25 year timeframes for design, qualification testing, licensing activities, supply chain development, and construction. Transatomic is proposing concepts that require long qualification and licensing developments, many of which could make meaningful progress in a small lab with a $10M initial budget. You have to produce your salt fuel and do materials te…

Exciting times ahead!

Re: YC Research

#258

Post by jrochkind1 »

Amorymeltzer wrote: post #254
jrochkind1 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More efficiently, I'm sure. For starters, I'm prejudiced to think any smaller org will run more efficiently than a larger one (even though I realize this is literally the opposite of conventional/mainstream assumptions!). But TWICE as efficient? Also, I think all those administrator salaries are probably being funded by tuition (that is, by government subsidized student loans that the students will be paying back for…

It was a point of comparison. The NIH pool is large but spread very thin and, we can both agree, less efficiently than YCR is likely to be. Twice? Infinite? No of course note, but it's a point of interest in the "$10 million isn't so much" discussion. And no, researcher's salaries (postdocs, tech, grad students, etc.) are not included. The indirect costs go to the university to pay for department/college-level utilit…

Well, salaries obviously WOULD have to be included in the YC case, there's no other pool of money for them to come from! So that would actually be a significant cost that the NIH grants _don't_ have to include (if it's not included in the overhead), but the YC Research seed money WOULD have to.

But I understand that research faculty in science and biomed are increasingly expected to bring in grant funding as a condition of employment/tenure. It sounds to me like the institution expects to help pay their salaries with it.

And with institutions hiring faculty _to_ do research, not caring about teaching really, evaluated solely on research, they are basically there to do research... it actually doesn't sound that unreasonable to consider a portion of their salary overhead. The research couldn't get done if they weren't getting the salary, after all.

But anyway, yeah, like I said, I do agree with your original point that this is real money that is enough to fund real research.

Re: YC Research

#259

Post by eli_gottlieb »

matheweis wrote: post #162
biswaroop wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded. This is brilliant. As a physics PhD student at MIT who's leaving to build a startup, I'm finding it a relief to leave a broken system. The academic community is fraught with politics, mismanagement, and inefficiency. Researchers are driven by a need to get published and get grant funding, not to expand the frontiers of human knowledge. Impact is currently measured by citation pagerank, and broader impact is…

Wow, I knew things were bad, but the education system must be well and truly broken when the students at one of the world's top research universities are leaving to build startups, and calling it a broken system on their way out. (No sarcasm intended; I couldn't find a way to say this better).

Many fields of work don't pay much, but tell you you've got a Mission. Many fields of work make you work very long hours. Many fields of work require extensive training and skills.

Academia doesn't pay very much, makes you work very long hours, and requires extensive training and skills, justifies it all by reference to Mission, and then inevitably fires you and tells you getting fired was your fault for not being in the top 8% of the entire profession.

Re: YC Research

#260

Post by biswaroop »

matheweis wrote: post #162
biswaroop wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded. This is brilliant. As a physics PhD student at MIT who's leaving to build a startup, I'm finding it a relief to leave a broken system. The academic community is fraught with politics, mismanagement, and inefficiency. Researchers are driven by a need to get published and get grant funding, not to expand the frontiers of human knowledge. Impact is currently measured by citation pagerank, and broader impact is…

Wow, I knew things were bad, but the education system must be well and truly broken when the students at one of the world's top research universities are leaving to build startups, and calling it a broken system on their way out. (No sarcasm intended; I couldn't find a way to say this better).

Top research universities have more money, and smarter/harder working students. Neither of those are necessarily solutions to the problem of university research.

Don't get me wrong: our lab makes awe-inspiring machines that can see individual atoms held in vacuum by lattices of laser light. Our research leads to incredible discoveries, but we're held back by inefficiencies. It's a rusty system, but to any mechanic, rusty = broken.

Also, leaving to build a startup is rather uncommon at MIT physics, and most students (including me) absolutely love research. The academic career is just not attractive enough to spend another 4-12 years in a lab becoming increasingly good at doing exactly one thing.

Peter Thiel's lecture in sama's Startup Class is relevant: http://bit.ly/1ZdOwHQ

Post reply on HN