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Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

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Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#31

Post by LeanderK »

NationalPark wrote: post #11

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!

why not cooperate with local research-institutions and try to get some part-time agreements with the tenured academics? It's Germany, so the the chances are good since the professors are always chasing grants. A permanent source of funding for some phd-students is attractive.

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#33

Post by barry-cotter »

___luigi wrote: post #28
barry-cotter wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fiv…

Sorry to bring the bad news, but the author the first comment is 100% right. Moreover, structure in academia is different than in Startups. In startups, people don't care about "names" and "prestige". In academia, it is different. In order to get your next job in academia, you need (1) recommendation letters (2) citations. Advisors usually have a larger network and experience to be able to publish papers and help you…

If academia is 100% about status hierarchies this definitely wouldn’t work. It probably won’t work anyway but if there’s anything real in the function used to judge academic worth of work then there’s potential for it to work. There are multiple ways to improve that likelihood, more money most obviously of all. But new successful research institutes are founded so it’s clearly possible. Very unlikely unless there’s a very big budget, excellent taste in selection of applicants or both, but hardly impossible.

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#34

Post by specproc »

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.

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#35

Post by tlb »

nerdponx wrote: post #21
NationalPark wrote: post #11

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!

I don't think it's fickle to want to make a decent living from your hard-earned and valuable skills.

No, but there's often a trade-off between making a decent living as a cog in a machine, or living on ramen and working on what you want to work on. I've chosen both at various phases of life.

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#36

Post by tsbischof »

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.

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#37

Post by C-x_C-f »

xwdv wrote: post #30
ginko wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>'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.

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.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#38

Post by yarcob »

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?

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#39

Post by barry-cotter »

mbreese wrote: post #25
barry-cotter wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fiv…

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…

> 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.

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#40

Post by dosman33 »

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.

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