Thread by @heyjudka

2021: year of the Modern Science Revolution? 👩‍🔬🧪

A cambrian explosion of new science funding models was driven by covid urgency, open science, frustration w/status quo. Most exciting: these models are built for translation & startup creation!

🧵of new science funding models:

1. Mega-LabCos

For-profits comprising several teams led by top scientists from academia. Groups are independent to enable blue sky creativity, but work toward a shared moonshot like taming non-model organisms (@ArcadiaScience) & cellular reprogramming for aging (Altos Labs).

2. Focused research organizations (FROs)

Non-profit institutes organized around a common goal like brain circuit mapping (E11 bio), non-model organisms (Cultivarium) and aging (Rejuvenome). Spearheaded by the great @AdamMarblestone!

Concept whitepaper:

https://twitter.com/Day1Project/status/1309239609029730306

3. PARPA ("private ARPA")

Pioneered by @Ben_Reinhardt, PARPA is hybrid non-profit/for-profit structure for focused, well-managed, goal-oriented moonshot projects.

Concept whitepaper:
benjaminreinhardt.com/parpa-2-pager.…

4. University-affiliated institutes with philanthropic funding

@arcinstitute (just launched!) is funding and hosting labs affiliated w/ Stanford, Berkeley, and UCSF. Outside funding enables PIs to break the grant writing cycle and focus on long-term breakthrough ideas.

5. Fast grants

Fast grants (fastgrants.org) enable scientists to get money *fast* for COVID-related projects.

But why stop at covid? FG has inspired:
Impetus grants for aging (impetusgrants.org),
Footprint coalition for climate (fastcompany.com/90706338/rober…).

6. DeSci

Science is joining the web3 revolution! Several DAOs assembled to work on both the *way* we do science (@lab_dao, @molecule_to) as well as discussing and funding science on underserved topics (@vita_dao, @PsyDAO_ ).

Full list by @JocelynnPearl: rb.gy/xqzdi7

Honorable mention: Open access publishing & preprints.

Intrepid fighters (🙏 @mbeisen) spent years making preprints & OOS "acceptable". But covid broke the floodgates and now it's standard practice. Open science lets the public engage so ppl are newly fired up to fund science!

It's hard to predict which of these new approaches will stick, but it's obvious that slow government grants for incremental advances in university ivory towers aren't going to be the dominant model for long.

This is one evolutionary story I'll be watching very closely 👀

Also, a non-exhaustive list of more people to follow who think about, tweet about, write about, & may one day announce more new models😉:
@patrickc
@JedMcCaleb
@pdhsu
@tylercowen
@D_R_Goodwin
@josh__moser
@kulesatony
@ArtirKel
@seemaychou
@PracheeAC
@friedberg
who else?

Suggesting a particular follow: @D_R_Goodwin

He's been my Sherpa in following much of the news in science funding this year and now he is "building something new", as they say ... 👀