Have you set up some sort of endowment? How are you ensuring long-term financial viability?
Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?
51–60 of 173 posts
Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Well, I think that's a bit pessimistic. I think every Msc student at a "no-name" german university has the chance to publish a paper at a top-tier conference. Student research assistant jobs are plenty and the Msc Thesis can be real-science. Every Msc. CS program here I know has a research-option so that instead of lecture you can do research. It's just hard to publish in those top-tier conferences and most research…
>> .. a "no-name" german university
We come from different places. German universities are good in average. + MSc student have the chance to work as "working students" (20hr/week) at any company in Germany. https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-un...
>> .. It's just hard to publish in those top-tier conferences
Hard is relative. You should also check the costs of publishing a paper or attending a conference for students from global south https://twitter.com/hadyelsahar/status/1374699909451030542
>> But you can do a phd here without publishing a paper first
I agree with that.
Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?
#53You 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.
Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?
#54I've been exploring the landscape of new types of research institutes/organizations, with a catalog of my findings here: https://arbesman.net/overedge/ I'm happy to discuss the possibilities for research orgs, so please feel free to reach out.
Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?
#55Hi. 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 afte…
That's impressive. This reminds me of a story I read about being an independent researcher (https://andreas-madsen.medium.com/becoming-an-independent-re...).
For those who want to do the same. When did you start?. How did you start?. What kind of setup did you have?. How did you stay focus?, and for how long did you work on that?. Any failure stories you want to share?.
Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?
#56Hi. 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 afte…
that's really impressive, congrats. for how much of that year and 2 months were you working solo ?
Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?
#57I've been exploring the landscape of new types of research institutes/organizations, with a catalog of my findings here: https://arbesman.net/overedge/ I'm happy to discuss the possibilities for research orgs, so please feel free to reach out.
Would you consider HuggingFace as as industrial research group?.
Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?
#58You 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/
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.
Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?
#59I've been exploring the landscape of new types of research institutes/organizations, with a catalog of my findings here: https://arbesman.net/overedge/ I'm happy to discuss the possibilities for research orgs, so please feel free to reach out.
Would you consider HuggingFace as as industrial research group?.
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).
Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?
#60I 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).