Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#111

Post by dnautics » Thu, May 27, 2021, 4:29 PM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #105

screye wrote: post #98

3 anecdotes that might be useful. 1. TTI Chicago The holy grail? It is relatively new (15 yrs old) and does top notch research. Super prestigious in certain areas. It is kind of related to UChicago, but also not really. A key learning is that you can start your institute by borrowing some prestige. Split some of your funds with a prestigious university while allowing some of your researchers to hold adjunct positions…

Along with Allen AI there is the Craig Venter institute. You did not just swindle wall street (I mean this in a good way) to fund scientific research and cash out at the top by having your board fire you (crocodile tears) to the tune of ~15B. Even if you did, your eponymous self-funded research institute will burn through its funds in a decade and your researchers will start having to do federal grant seeking at the…

By the way "by swindle wall street" I mean sell them on the idea that "you could patent human genes". I'm not convinced that Craig actually believed this was possible or that even it was a reasonable business model, but wall street in their boundless avarice certainly did; note that this all went down more than a decade before the myriad genomics supreme court case, which settles the issue in the negative.

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#112

Post by elasticventures » Thu, May 27, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

I've tried to do this, with partners and failed. Finding all the people with all the skills you need to get a prototype finished, LET ALONE a field-deployable-serviceable prototype at any level of "interesting scale" is absurdly complex and multi-facted.

In the US most research is targeted as selling things to the military. You might be better in Australia or any other country which offers more social funding for these types of things.

This thread has a lot of good ideas, I wish I'd seen it 5 years ago.

My current project might be useful for you: http://github.com/elasticdotventures/_b00t_

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#113

Post by breck » Thu, May 27, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

I pursued something similar. I created the Tree Notation Lab in Oahu (https://lab.treenotation.org/), secured a physical home for it at a university, got funding commitments, started recruiting, and came close to pulling the trigger, but slowed down at the last moment circa January 2020.

The reason I hit the brakes were some specific incidents that made me realize how much I was underestimating how difficult recruiting, retaining, and enabling the level of talent I hoped for. I was probably underestimating those challenges by 2 orders of magnitude.

The majority of folks you'd want to recruit probably have great careers already and probably families, and are likely world class, so in today's market you'd need probably on the order of a $100M - $1B+ war-chest to be able to efficiently compete for them and not have recruitment and retainment as an urgent problem that would keep you up every night.

I instead pivoted and decided to make it a remote first, part time thing. I have a number of advisors and collaborators. New people pitch me ideas and I fund them or not. I sometimes put a few weeks in, sometimes just a day a month. I can scale it organically and pause it when I want. I can be an active part of other remote research groups as well. I made this decision pre-COVID, when it was more of a tossup, but now I'd say it's a no brainer.

If you're just looking to house a group of like minded people perhaps something like https://www.together.casa/ or https://www.pandopooling.com/ might be interesting to check out.

Happy to chat more too if that would be helpful. I definitely encourage you to go for it, as I think we need more of these, but at least for me the better bet was to start remote.

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#114

Post by ambicapter » Thu, May 27, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

moritonal wrote: post #78

_gsgc wrote: post #44

Hi. 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…

Very impressive and congratulations for playing the game right, but the idea that 3% of all crypto use is from 5 people in SF ratifies a lot of my negative beliefs about the crypto world.

As a counterpoint I'd love to see the numbers for fiat stock markets. I assume the big players do ALOT of trading volume relative to the majority.

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#115

Post by breck » Thu, May 27, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

dosman33 wrote: post #40

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 stra…

This. I was also surprised to learn a lot (most?) "Institutes" at universities were just a website and a bank account. The host institution handles most of the overhead like buildings and HR for a ~30% take. I don't mean this in a negative way, it actually makes sense.

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#116

Post by Fomite » Thu, May 27, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

goodcanadian wrote: post #85

barry-cotter wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tha…

Off topic, but I always do a bit of a double-take at how Americans use "Adjunct Professor." In Canada, that would be called "Contract Academic" or similar. I'll bet it is different again in Europe, so for clarity, that is basically a low paid teaching position. In Canada, an Adjunct Professor is unpaid, but actually somewhat prestigious. It is a recognition of your abilities in a field and might be given to someone i…

"In Canada, an Adjunct Professor is unpaid, but actually somewhat prestigious. It is a recognition of your abilities in a field and might be given to someone in industry who collaborates with a researcher at the university (for example)."

That was originally how it was used in the U.S. too. "Someone who needs a non-permanent affiliation with the University to teach some classes" - usually someone from industry or the community, etc. whose expertise was valuable to the educational mission.

The modern version is...sort of depressing.

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#117

Post by Fomite » Thu, May 27, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

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 will note I ended up at an institution (admittedly an academic one) that for my field is usually met with "Where?" because the funding allowed for some very nice quality of life considerations and more academic freedom/less pressure to support yourself with grants.

It's not impossible, but you do have to figure out ways to offset the risk and prestige hit.

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#118

Post by Fomite » Thu, May 27, 2021, 5:17 PM UTC

NationalPark wrote: post #71

nerdponx wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Of course! I only meant that (in my experience) academics tend to be headstrong and idiosyncratic, they don't always respond to incentives the way you might expect.

I feel seen.

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#119

Post by activatedgeek » Thu, May 27, 2021, 5:20 PM UTC

Perhaps, you may enjoy this collection - "The Overedge Catalog: New Types of Research Organizations" [1].

I think it has quite the variety, and may help you distill a broader sense of where things are headed (and find people to reach out to).

[1]: https://arbesman.net/overedge/

Re: Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?

#120

Post by Fomite » Thu, May 27, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC

elasticventures wrote: post #112

I've tried to do this, with partners and failed. Finding all the people with all the skills you need to get a prototype finished, LET ALONE a field-deployable-serviceable prototype at any level of "interesting scale" is absurdly complex and multi-facted. In the US most research is targeted as selling things to the military. You might be better in Australia or any other country which offers more social funding for the…

"In the US most research is targeted as selling things to the military."

This strikes me as a very narrow perspective. Defense and Non-Defense R&D spending are about the same (https://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/2020-10/DefNon.png) and the second largest funder of R&D is the NIH.