[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?
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Ask HN: Anybody Started a Research Institute?
Hello community, I am looking to connect with HNers who have
successfully started a research institute / campus or were among
the first joiners. I am seeking to offer housing and a stipend to
researchers, as I am currently acquiring some real estate that I
want to put to good use in Germany. I will myself take time off
from regular work and focus on research in a vein similar to Steve
Grand's investigations into artificial life (not expecting to reach
his level, but one needs a quest with lofty goals). Not seeking a
particular piece of advice, more looking for somebody to have a
conversation with regarding experiences, what worked really well,
how to get the ball rolling, essential infrastructure required...
End goal as of now: assemble a few great minds, give them the space
to work rent-free in a region with good academic infrastructure,
ideally let them collaborate, watch the beauty of it. If relevant,
an LLC-like structure is available for making this happen, but not
100% sold on how to approach this from a legal perspective.
Author : akhann
Score : 258 points
Date : 2021-05-27 08:25 UTC (14 hours ago)
| bigth wrote:
| I started a research institute. Our goal was to find out how to
| center divs in css.
| TYPE_FASTER wrote:
| Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to
| your newsletter.
| donohoe wrote:
| Sir, I find this of great interest and a noble pursuit. I would
| very much like to invest large sums of my newly created
| cryptocurrency in this. Have your people contact my people.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Hi, I'm Richard Brain, a farce for good in this world, and I
| want to shovel piles of my new POS CraptoCurrency "HOAX", the
| first high interest blockchain certificate of despotic (CD)
| offered to "stalkers", into your centralized div laundering
| company!
| gryn wrote:
| DivCoin ?
| [deleted]
| halgir wrote:
| That's far beyond OP's already lofty ambitions, I'm afraid.
| gryn wrote:
| too hard, you might have a better chance in your endeavor by
| forking the web into 2 things.
|
| - A web of apps: A (sand-boxed) VM environment that has the
| advantage of not having to install the programs locally and
| with a capability based model. this is already similar to
| what's already here but once you commit to it you can ditch the
| DOM and other things.
|
| - A web of documents.
| miyazono wrote:
| I somehow created/found myself in a role that's similar to this?
| At present, we mostly build networking infrastructure for
| decentralization (Protocol Labs, started IPFS, libp2p, &
| Filecoin), but the long-term goal is to embed rights and values
| into the protocols by which people coordinate and communicate,
| and my team has interpreted this to include improving science as
| humanity's process for knowledge generation. As a result, I'm
| trying to lay the groundwork for a metascience institute. (We
| haven't been at it long enough that I'd say we've made a ton of
| progress, but we've got fun ambitions and our goals have been
| pretty well-received so far.)
|
| There are lots of great points in this thread already, but one
| thing I'll emphasize is the importance of doing something that's
| important but would otherwise be neglected. Studying orgs like
| Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, DeepMind, & HHMI is great, but it's
| unlikely your budget is comparable to Google or the EU. However,
| rising experts (e.g. senior grad students, postdocs, and young
| profs) have fantastic ideas that they don't have the ability to
| pursue. Sometimes a topic isn't well funded or there's not a
| critical mass of interest in the field. However, unless you're a
| specialist, you're likely not well-equipped to identify a lot of
| those. I'd suggest reaching out to some experts, asking them to
| name great, young minds or rising stars in the field, and then
| ask those researchers about others that they respect or would
| love to work with - and whenever you meet someone ask "what
| research do you want to do but can't get funding for?" because
| every researcher has an answer to that question.
|
| Additionally, here's some interesting people I know who will
| tweet about science organization: @adammarblestone,
| @michael_nielsen, @Ben_Reinhardt, @davidtlang, and @alexeyguzey.
|
| Feel free to reach out - email is [username]@protocol.ai
| not-a-cat wrote:
| 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 afterwards. As it's very
| competitive, I couldn't join one of those labs, and wasn't
| willing to compromise on that. So I turned to plan B: salvage my
| ML skills by applying them to crypto trading, and if it works,
| then I'll have funding to start my own lab.
|
| Plan B worked: in 1 year and 2 months, we turned 40k of our own
| funds into 100M. Today we are a team of 5 and we do $5B of daily
| volume, around 3% of the global crypto markets. Now the challenge
| is to start the research division, operate the trading and
| research in tandem, and create the right incentives: the research
| converts money into ideas, the trading ideas into money. The
| research would have two sub-divisions: fundamental and applied to
| trading.
|
| My motivation for the research is mostly curiosity: I want to de-
| mystify intelligence (natural or artificial) and reverse-engineer
| it. When you talk about your lab, I resonate a lot with
| "watch[ing] the beauty of it". The way I would describe my
| research agenda is the following: put a bunch of phds in a room,
| see what happens.
|
| If that sounds interesting, email me at not_a_cat@fastmail.com
| moritonal wrote:
| 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.
| texasbigdata wrote:
| Why? A priori there were 5 fewer, they saw an opportunity and
| entered, and likely more will too, and eventually it will
| saturate and balance out. Startups providing liquidity can be
| a good thing.
| ambicapter wrote:
| 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.
| boringg wrote:
| Where did you get SF from? I mean seems like a likely place
| but I don't think OP said that did they?
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I think 3 and 5 are the problematic variables there, not
| SF.
| codekilla wrote:
| I also have tried starting a research institute (eonias.org),
| and am a member of ronininstitute.org. I'd be happy to have
| conversations with anyone interested in setting up an
| institute: grant@eonias.org (my name).
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| ML has proven to have incredibly poor results in crypto trading
| or market trading in general. There is paper after paper
| published on the dismal performance of this approach.
|
| It seems just very unlikely.
| omgwtfbbq wrote:
| It's obviously BS. The guy admits he couldn't even get a job
| at an AI lab with his skills but they were somehow good
| enough to make a 250000% return in about a year via
| "algotrading" ? It's ludicrous.
| rexreed wrote:
| Wow, very impressive. What sort of trading yields such mega
| returns? Is the value in cryptocurrency or has it been realized
| in actual cash returns?
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| The insane claims, the failure to provide any proof despite the
| ease of doing so and the email address at the end tells me this
| is a scam artist fishing for gullible marks.
| montenegrohugo wrote:
| You turned 40.000 into 100.000.000? That's incredibly
| impressive (even with the recent crypto bull run).
|
| Was this all achieved with time-series prediction through ML
| models? I had the impression those were hard to get right, but
| props to you for clearly doing so.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Everyone's a genius in a bull market :D
| not-a-cat wrote:
| I think it's both easy and hard, depending how you look at
| it. Hard because it's a tough ML problem where you have to
| combat overfitting and the messiness of the real world; easy
| because crypto is clearly one of the easiest markets to trade
| and there are opportunities all over the place (compared to
| equities for example). On top of my head: stat arb, yield
| arb, exchange arb, funding arb, market making / liquidity
| providing (CEX/DEX), doing/preventing sandwich attacks, good
| old yield farming...
| omgwtfbbq wrote:
| How are people not more skeptical of this. This would without
| doubt be the most successful trading run in history and we
| are expected to believe that a self taught HN rando who
| couldn't even get into an AI lab did this with 5 people in
| SF?? Renaissance Tech is probably the best hedge fund in the
| world and they can only manage something like 30% a year but
| this guy did 250000% in a year and change? Give me a break.
| If anything they executed a massive pump and dump/rug pull
| and nothing more.
|
| I mean why bother with this so called "research" endeavor
| when you could be a deci-billionaire in a year or two using
| the same strategy you've been using and then simply buy
| OpenAI or whatever. The whole story makes no sense.
| boringg wrote:
| 2500x returns in 14 months - that averages to an astounding
| 178x returns monthly.
|
| * If this is true * - it sounds like maybe the best return the
| markets have ever seen which I would imagine would be the luck
| of investing at the base of the pandemic and enjoying the
| inflation since then.
|
| [edit]: manners were missing: * if this is true * - congrats on
| your run and hopefully those research dollars develop some
| interesting finds.
| tlb wrote:
| It's actually 1.75x monthly. 1.75^14 == 2500.
| boringg wrote:
| Was doing a flat average not compounding.
| [deleted]
| texasbigdata wrote:
| Plus if they used any leverage it's even higher.
| choppaface wrote:
| That's quite a flex! How do you anticipate disseminating the
| results of your research group without compromising the highly
| competitive position of your financial interests? Will you
| publish papers on toy datasets?
| not-a-cat wrote:
| Agreed. Good question. Regarding our current approach, my
| hope is that someday our alpha goes away entirely and we can
| publish our strategy in detail. But going forward, the plan
| is to have a trading division that keeps research secret, and
| a fundamental AI research division (unrelated to trading)
| that publishes publicly.
| ___luigi wrote:
| 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?.
| not-a-cat wrote:
| Most of it comes down do conviction and sticking to my not-
| so-promissing setup for 1 year, while every single of my
| peers were either thinking WTF are you doing, or telling me
| why my thing would fail. The rest is luck where we could
| scale way past what we though was possible.
|
| I stayed focused by creating a penalty system where if I
| worked for less than 7 hours that day, I'd burn 1$ for every
| missing hour. I still maintain that spreadsheet with the
| self-debt over time (that I have yet to pay, but I will by
| burning crypto). Also my screen saver message is "get back to
| work"
| gryn wrote:
| that's really impressive, congrats. for how much of that year
| and 2 months were you working solo ?
| not-a-cat wrote:
| I spent 1 year learning about AI/ML with books and moocs.
| Then 1 year building a prototype. Then 1 year + 2 months as a
| team.
| blaurence5 wrote:
| What about finance, crypto and algo trading? How much time
| did you spend on those subjects, and what are some good
| resources?
| jayrobin wrote:
| On the subject of moocs and books, which were some of your
| favorites? I'm an SWE with an out-of-date background in AI
| and I'd love to deep-dive into ML, but there are _so many_
| mooc options nowadays without a great way to determine
| quality.
| kordlessagain wrote:
| And now we know how inflated the markets are.
| antonzabirko wrote:
| That's awesome! What year did you start if you don't mind me
| asking? Was it around the time btc jumped to 40k?
| stickyricky wrote:
| > we turned 40k of our own funds into 100M
|
| Yeah... you're full of shit. You didn't turn 40k of your own
| money into 100m of your own money. You're leaving out a funding
| round, inheritance, money laundering, or the whole story is
| just BS from the start.
| anotherqqq wrote:
| I too call BS. Probably an attempt to draw up interest in the
| fund, which people will fall for, some will even send crypto
| to some address in hopes of these 'unbelievable' numbers.
| Retric wrote:
| Very likely BS, but it is at least consistent with a prior
| _Who is hiring?_ post.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26724326
| not-a-cat wrote:
| We have a hard time believing it ourselves too. I did leave
| out that around 25M of it is profits reinvested over time and
| it did do well because we are in a bull market. Binance
| forces you to hold 11k BNB to be vip9 to get the best fees,
| we started buying it at around $15, it's worth now around
| $300 per BNB, and we also hold other cryptos as a side
| investment. The rest is algotrading profits.
|
| The initial investment was 40k, no other funding rounds or
| money laundering.
| stickyricky wrote:
| > it did do well because we are in a bull market
|
| You're not in a bull market. You're in fucking Wonderland.
|
| Please take this reply as an opportunity to provide
| evidence for your tremendous wealth. Nobody makes $100m
| without a footprint.
| djenendik wrote:
| Agree. Should be straightforward with blockchain and
| cryptographic signing.
| noname123 wrote:
| Just out of curiosity, how does one even custody 100M dollars
| in crypto markets?
|
| In equities/traditional trading anything above 8 figures
| allow you to have prime brokerage access (e.g., Archeogos).
|
| For the type of arb trading and yield harvesting OP is
| referring to (and not throwing shade; just curious), how do
| you even find any broker or exchange in the crypto space that
| are willing to custody 100M worth of cash and crypto for long
| term stat arb, yield harvesting and fund harvesting. Do even
| the most established crypto exchanges allow you the covered
| margin to short sell futures and participate in funding
| harvest and custody the coins for you?
|
| I get OP might be just market making across decentralized
| exchanges. That scares me honestly more. As you are dealing
| with more exchanges some of which have more security and exit
| scam risks.
|
| Don't get me wrong I def. believe there are opportunities in
| crypto. Just curious if the infrastructure in place makes the
| type of trading OP talks about safe and accessible to retail.
| KirillPanov wrote:
| > how do you even find any broker or exchange in the crypto
| space that are willing to custody 100M worth
|
| You _definitely_ do not put all your eggs in one basket.
|
| The mature legal and insurance infrastructure in the fiat
| markets encourages this kind of all-eggs-in-one-basket in
| order to get better treatment from your brokers. In crypto
| the incentive is precisely the opposite.
|
| > more exchanges some of which have more security and exit
| scam risks.
|
| That is a very, very important risk that must be mitigated.
| Doing so is part of what separates success from failure.
| The residual unmitigatable risk is treated as a cost of
| doing business.
|
| It's still the wild west in many ways. Some people like
| that. Most people who've spent a lot of time on Wall Street
| won't.
| teachingassist wrote:
| > in 1 year and 2 months, we turned 40k of our own funds into
| 100M.
|
| This would be a challenge even if you had perfect foresight.
|
| If you had gone all-in on Dogecoin, you would still only have
| ~5M.
| elasticventures wrote:
| 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_
| Fomite wrote:
| "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.
| jagiammona wrote:
| You 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.
| gizeta wrote:
| Very interesting idea. Keep us posted.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| I might be able to point you to the right people for legal. I'm
| running companies in DE and US, doing a research cooperation with
| German universities and I've been to Brussels as part of the
| KnowARC EU project for building research cloud infrastructure.
|
| But first, could you explain a bit more about your plans? Is your
| intention to acquire public funding? Or will this be for-profit
| research?
|
| Who pays for patent applications? Who will own the patent rights?
|
| Roughly what will be the initial budget for salaries? I.e. how
| many people do you plan to sign up and for how long?
| JaggerJo wrote:
| Where are you located in germany?
| brg wrote:
| I have managed multiple research organizations, in businesses and
| academia.
|
| Without a goal and process the institute will be a failure. It
| will fail to produce interesting results. It will fail to attract
| and grow talent. And it will fail to do well by the researchers
| who you are hoping to benefit.
|
| In my own opinion, the best goal is something that you can derive
| a market signal for. For DeepMind, this was video game playing.
| For Paul Allen Institute, it is the ability to spin-off bets. If
| you try and sell something, you get a clear opinion of its value.
|
| The process is also important. For a research institute, my
| suggestion is a periodic public interaction. There are many ways
| of garnering this; self-publishing reports, publishing in
| journals and conferences, attending (or better yet holding)
| conferences, increasing funding from public events, or seeking
| out collaborations with other institutions.
| [deleted]
| xwdv wrote:
| Just build a startup incubator instead for startups with really
| interesting early stage ideas.
| ta988 wrote:
| Thats not the same thing, startups barely create any new
| knowledge.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I've never started a research institute, but I've wanted to for a
| while. I figure if I were to ever win the lottery I'd start a
| research institute with the proceeds. Good luck!
| mbaytas wrote:
| I 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).
| specproc wrote:
| 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.
| activatedgeek wrote:
| 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/
| biztos wrote:
| I have no direct experience but I have spent a lot of time
| thinking about how to realize my own dream of having an artist's
| residency -- which is actually a similar kind of thing, but
| temporary. I too am about to acquire the real estate, but don't
| have the rest set up yet.
|
| One unsolved problem I keep returning to is that the limits of
| the offer _will_ affect who will come join you. Unless you can
| give people their dream lab and a ton of money and publication
| then some of the people you want, will not be able to come even
| if they really do share your vision.
|
| I think this is an inevitable compromise, but one that should be
| made very deliberately. Consider your dream researcher. Does she
| have a family? Can you get them to Germany on the appropriate
| visas with the mandatory health insurance? Will she have to quit
| her previous job? Can she afford to go without income for the
| duration of her research? If not, how much money does she need?
| What can her husband/wife do there? What if they have a child
| with special needs? Can they bring their three dogs? Can they be
| there three days a week? How will they get to Berlin?
|
| For my project, I plan to start very small, since I don't really
| know what I'm doing and don't have too much money nor time to
| dedicate to it yet. You might consider doing that too: make the
| place really _nice_ and get some people there for a shorter
| period of time, and figure out your growth strategy after you 've
| gone through the mini version with some researchers, and have
| properly digested their feedback.
|
| And put massive effort (and money assuming you have it) into
| promoting them and their work: the more it looks like
| Forschungszentrum Akhann is good for one's career, the more
| you'll have your choice of researchers.
|
| That, and take care of your liability situation. It's not so bad
| in Germany as in the US, but consider the possiblity someone gets
| sucked into the flux capacitor while helping you with your
| research and it's kind of your fault. You don't want to lose the
| whole institute over it, nor the personal fortune that has let
| you set it up. Definitely find a good lawyer with relevant
| experience.
|
| Good luck with it! I think the world needs more stuff like this.
| lallysingh wrote:
| FTL travel? Is anyone looking into this?
| rexreed wrote:
| Have you set up some sort of endowment? How are you ensuring
| long-term financial viability?
| tlb wrote:
| I'm interested in doing something like this too, with a research
| focus on robotics, simulation, and programming languages.
|
| The big dichotomy in research orgs is whether you need resources
| beyond researcher stipends. Robotics usually does, and
| programming language research usually doesn't. OpenAI does --
| both computing resources and infrastructure team salaries. Make
| sure you know which kind you're starting.
|
| Another dichotomy: permanent or term employment. It depends on
| how long-term the projects are. Bell Labs and PARC got a lot of
| mileage out of permanent tenures, but the term model is (a)
| cheaper, (b) good for collaboration because people can come for a
| semester and carry ideas in and out.
|
| Stipend + remote living will attract only young, single
| researchers for finite terms, so make sure that's what you want.
|
| Email me (in profile) if you want to talk more.
| not-a-cat wrote:
| I do not see your email in your profile. (Not OP, but really
| interested to talk about starting a research institute)
| jeffchuber wrote:
| a new and better willow garage?? =D
| tsbischof wrote:
| 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.
| _Nat_ wrote:
| > With academics you need to be especially vigilant about the
| difference between vanity metrics and real output.
|
| What would you consider " _real output_ ", especially in
| contrast to " _vanity metrics_ "?
|
| Asking mostly because I'm curious how someone in your position
| would see it.
|
| For a lot of folks, academia's a fun ecosystem to participate
| in: they enjoy it and it pays the bills. To participate, they
| need to maintain popularity, much as a living organism needs to
| maintain energy. So their focus is on optimizing their
| popularity. They'd be primarily interested in metrics that
| represent their popularity, especially if those metrics help
| them plan how to gain more of it to further advance their
| career.
|
| But other folks participate in academia to do research for
| other reasons, e.g. advancing technology. They're more likely
| to focus on maintaining sustenance-level popularity rather than
| maximizing popularity. They'd tend to dismiss many popularity-
| centric metrics as frivolous.
|
| So if you're helping lead a research-institution, then are you
| primarily concerned with " _real output_ " in the sense of "
| _stuff that makes us popular enough to garner continued
| support_ "? Or are you more interested in another goal, like
| advancing science/technology? And how do you assess the value
| of a researcher's work given these goals?
| tsbischof wrote:
| This is an important question, and something we have
| considered when building our group.
|
| My background is largely in experimental physical sciences,
| and one of the vanity metrics in my fields is publication in
| a Nature- or Science-family journal, or equivalent high-
| impact journal. In some cases publishing there has led to
| high-quality peer review and publication, but the pursuit of
| these papers drives many to over-sell or over-complicate the
| work. I tend to focus more on smaller studies which can be
| reasonably completely described, versus anthology
| publication.
|
| But more directly, we measure output in three categories, in
| order of importance: people, validated concepts, and
| publication/dissemination.
|
| For people, we want to develop a sense of integrity and
| curiosity, which means some mixture of freedom to roam and an
| ability to focus on defining and answering a concrete
| question. We want people to leave our group as good citizens
| and scientists.
|
| Validated concepts take several forms. In the physical
| sciences it is often expensive to recreate an experiment, so
| performing and reporting the correct set of controls and
| validations is critical. A successful experiment is one which
| does not need to be repeated, because there is sufficient
| clarity and design to assure the next person that what was
| found is correct. Often this means obtaining a proper
| negative result which shuts down entire lines of inquiry.
| Especially since many projects require months or years of
| build-up, we must ensure that the foundation is solid.
|
| As for publication and dissemination, our goal is that
| someone else would look at the work and consider building on
| top of it. In order for someone else to accept the work there
| needs to be a real trust or means for validation. We are open
| with our data, code, and methods, but much of the challenge
| lies in ensuring the dataset is valid and complete in the
| first place.
|
| You are right to note that popularity drives academia, in the
| same way that charisma and a good pitch can get a startup off
| the ground. High citation counts, big-name grants, fancy
| titles, and time spent at big-name institutions are the
| standard metrics for success. I come from a somewhat outside
| perspective since I spent some time in start-up prior to this
| position, where our focus was more on actionable outcomes
| than positive results. But for the students and postdocs,
| these pressures for advancement are real and not easy to
| reckon with. I have no good answer, apart from attempting to
| impart personal ethics and aligning interests where possible.
|
| The longevity and source of funding is a key factor in
| fighting the popularity contest. For our institute this is
| largely solved by solid political capital, which gives us
| some cover to pursue things without significant concern about
| short-term popularity. Long-term we want to be known for
| producing useful research, which others incorporate into
| their own work and become more productive.
|
| In short, a given researcher is successful if they have
| identified a self-contained question and answered it
| sufficiently to be a building block for further work, either
| as a positive or negative result.
| iandanforth wrote:
| Do you know Marek Rosa? https://www.goodai.com/about/
|
| His research grants and building in Prague have this same flavor.
| tnorthcutt wrote:
| You might find https://newscience.org/ interesting and relevant.
|
| The founder, Alexey Guzey, is a very interesting person
| https://twitter.com/alexeyguzey
| throwawaybutwhy wrote:
| 'watch the beauty of it' - this is not ballet or opera, there's
| only blood, sweat, and tears. If you don't have a bunch of like-
| minded people and don't roll up your sleeves to manage the
| organization, you'll end up with wasted/stolen money and broken
| ideals.
| not-a-cat wrote:
| There are idealists out there who get all worked up with 'watch
| the beauty of it'. Yeah in practice it will devolve into blood,
| sweet and tears, but it matters that you have the right spirit
| and can appreciate the fleeting moments of beauty
| ginko wrote:
| >'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.
| xwdv wrote:
| 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.
| C-x_C-f wrote:
| 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.
| op00to wrote:
| Plus research going in as many directions as you have members
| of your institute rather than leading towards someplace
| intentional.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Sounds like a university.
| rajlego wrote:
| https://ceealar.org/ is the closest that comes to mind for what
| you have in mind. Basically, they give room and board to people
| doing valuable effective altruist work
|
| https://newscience.org/ might also be interesting
| david_allison wrote:
| Thanks so much for the links! Joining something along these
| lines was something that I'd been considering, and it's a push
| in the right direction.
| nathias wrote:
| Its probably very specific to your country.
| a_bonobo wrote:
| You 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.
| yarcob wrote:
| 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?
| lokl wrote:
| Have you considered using the facilities and proximity to
| academic infrastructure to host academic conferences instead of
| full-time research? That might be a more realistic way to attract
| top talent when you are first starting. You would obviously want
| to do this in discussion with relevant nearby academic
| institutions, but being able to offer free accommodations for
| attendees + maybe some travel expenses could help to lure people
| for a week event, and a conference with the right attendees
| coming together can definitely benefit academic research.
|
| A similar option would be to host classes or seminars on cutting
| edge research, taught by one or a few top researchers and
| attended by post-docs. Not full-time, but a way to start.
|
| If researchers find it beneficial, if it's a conducive
| environment and the financials are right, if you master the role
| of "host," then you might be able to increase the number of
| conferences/seminars per year and, eventually, with a high-enough
| frequency, add full-time support staff and longer-term
| functionality (e.g., researcher-in-residence) that can lead to
| year-round activity.
|
| Maybe this is a slow approach, but even one well-run conference
| can be beneficial and you'll be able to learn how to do this and
| make connections along the way.
| mdnahas wrote:
| I've pursued personally-funded research for more than a year.
| Some thoughts:
|
| Think about your competitive advantages. What makes working at
| your place different from a university and why would a researcher
| choose yours? It could be they don't like to teach. It could be
| that they want their life taken care off and you can hire a
| cook/cleaner/etc. for them. It could be that they don't like
| writing grants. Or they have trouble winning grants. (E.g., their
| topic is out of favor for various reasons.) It could be the
| freedom to work on anything. It could be the location. It could
| be that they could be the most senior person at your institute.
| Perhaps they want to start something new. It could be that they
| love that you think their research is valuable.
|
| Your own institute has weaknesses, but they can be ameliorated.
| Make it easy to travel to. Putting it near a major university may
| help earn academic traffic and provide for collaboration.
|
| One way to structure the institute is to have one good mind and
| many followers on. That is easy to bootstrap, once you get the
| good mind. The other sustainable structure is to pick a topic and
| have the largest most-focused group working on that topic. People
| will come for that, but getting it off the ground will be
| difficult. Perhaps you can a few good minds right after they get
| their PhDs and build around that team.
|
| If the key is the people, I suggest you talk to the people. Find
| out what top researchers don't like about university life.
|
| If you need a topic to focus on, I did research on formal proofs
| --- writing a mathematical proof on a computer. Every other
| industry has moved to digital, computer-aided design, except the
| field most suited to it! The way that mathematicians advance
| their careers in academia is working against the adoption of the
| technology. A place outside academia might make more progress in
| the area.
| screye wrote:
| 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 at UChicago. The researchers get their academic
| prestige, and you get the researcher to work at your institute.
|
| Eventually your institute will gather enough prestige that your
| researchers will call themselves members of TTIC first, and
| UChicago second.
|
| 2. Allen AI (The tempting example you want to avoid)
|
| You are not Paul Allen. You do not have $2b to spend on your
| deathbed. You don't have every important person in the world on a
| quick dial. Your name isn't gilded in prestige as Paul's was.
| It's like trying to start a space exploring company by following
| in Bezos's footsteps.
|
| 3. Wadhwani AI (https://www.wadhwaniai.org/founders/)
|
| I haven't personally worked with them, but attended a seminar
| about them once. At surface level it seems like something doable
| for a rich HN type. Decent but not impossible funding ($30m),
| clear vision, small but lean and seemed to be doing good work.
|
| ___________________
|
| At some point I want to start a fully independent educational
| institute. But so far, my goal is to focus on education (K12)
| rather than research. (that's when I get to it. I'll languish as
| a tech worker making castles in the sky for now)
| eindiran wrote:
| IMO an important ingredient of the TTIC formula is physical
| proximity to the university. Your researchers can give talks on
| campus/meet up with Uchicago researchers/visit academic
| libraries by just crossing the Midway, a short and walkable
| distance.
|
| So if you do decide to go this route, make sure whatever
| university you choose as the host has enough space within
| walking distance that your researchers can easily interact with
| the campus, go to conferences, etc.
| dnautics wrote:
| 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 point in time
| when federal grants are the hardest to obtain and other
| competitive research institutes are seeking a higher balance of
| private money.
|
| A better example to shoot for would be peter Mitchell's Glynn
| research institute. You raise money to study one thing and one
| thing only. You do your research in a garage (to be fair, of a
| giant regency manor) and finish it. And then win the Nobel
| prize.
|
| I'm still trying to find out what happened to Percy Julian's
| Julian research institute, which enjoyed some success but no
| longer exists as far as I can tell.
| dnautics wrote:
| 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.
| JBorrow wrote:
| You should read up on the Max Planck institutes in Germany, and
| on the Flatiron Institute in New York.
|
| As others have said your problem will be attracting talent.
| You're best off organising free conferences, in collaboration
| with a MP, to start with.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Flatiron itself has had struggles moving people out into
| academia (not counting joint positions it already has) so
| citing it might be the exception proving the rule
| cpach wrote:
| Pardon my ignorance, but what does MP mean in this context?
| JBorrow wrote:
| Max Planck - sorry I didn't define that
| (https://www.mpg.de/institutes).
| cpach wrote:
| Thanks :)
| dosman33 wrote:
| 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.
| breck wrote:
| 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.
| Fomite wrote:
| Note that this isn't necessarily true. There are often two
| large differences between "Institutes" (or Centers, etc. -
| nomenclature differs from university to university):
|
| - Soft funding. Meaning very little to no support from the
| university. If you can't keep the money coming in, the
| Institute goes away (As do its employees).
|
| - Institute faculty may or may not have other appointments -
| but Institutes often can't do things like grant tenure.
| vallas wrote:
| what is a discrete research lab, a seperate entity?
| breck wrote:
| I don't know anything about it, but being just one island over
| I've heard of the Pacific Science Institute, which may be
| something like you are trying to do (
| https://www.pacificscienceinstitute.org/)
|
| There's also some great online research communities, like the
| https://futureofcoding.org/ slack.
| ta988 wrote:
| You will need administrators, the people you are going to bring
| in are unlilely to have the experience to manage the
| institutional financial aspects of grants. Also most funding
| agencies will not give easily to places that are not recognized
| somehow (nor will reviewers).
| PeterisP wrote:
| A grant proposal would need to reassure the agency that the
| organization has the capacity to fulfil the promised research,
| so for a new organization without a track record of successful
| projects it will mostly hinge on the track record of the
| individual researchers they can attract; if OP can get some
| experienced PIs with big names and big CVs,then it would be
| plausible to get agency funding, but they will likely require
| nontrivial financial guarantees; but if they attract some fresh
| PhDs with "space to work rent-free" and a stipend, then yes,
| most funding agencies will not find their grant proposals
| competitive enough.
| Fomite wrote:
| This. To use the NIH example, a new research institute is
| probably staring at some grim Environment scores for a bit.
| arbesman wrote:
| I'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.
| ___luigi wrote:
| Would you consider HuggingFace as as industrial research
| group?.
| arbesman wrote:
| 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).
| [deleted]
| tomkat0789 wrote:
| Scrolling around the comments, I'm not seeing much discussion
| about funding. Are billionaire friends a requirement to set up an
| independent research organization?
|
| Asking as an engineering PhD doing what feels like gopher work
| for big companies. I have armchair dreams and ideas for doing
| research again, but I've never been clear on how one would get
| that first grant.
|
| Also, as an alternative to a purely academic route, is it
| practical to create an institute focused on more worldly things
| like patents or consulting?
|
| I imagine a professional network would be key no matter what path
| you take!
| op03 wrote:
| Contact administrator of closest Research Institute(s) and ask
| for a tour of the labs saying you want to sponsor research.
| That's the best way to meet the right people, hear the needs and
| figure out what will work. Put in 2-3 years doing the rounds and
| you will learn what it takes.
| xorsim wrote:
| I also look for such initiatives. We need something like the
| Invisible College [1]. And artificial life deserves more than a
| marginal interest, because is the gate towards understanding
| biological life as a computation.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_College
| toomim wrote:
| I'm building an invisible college in Berkeley and Hawaii, and
| happen to own the domain name: https://invisible.college.
|
| If anyone's interested in putting this domain to better use,
| please reach out!
| xorsim wrote:
| Great! Nice to meet you.
| dariosalvi78 wrote:
| You can consider setting up a joint centre with a university, it
| would help you inherit their prestige and access
| students/researchers and them getting funding. I work in a centre
| that has this strong companies/university collaboration and it's
| a model that can work well.
| enriquto wrote:
| Research institutes without a stable stream of new phd students
| every year tend to stagnate. Then they become mere displays of
| alten venerable greybeards. "Great minds" do not assemble, as you
| seem to mean. Young people _become_ great by their interaction
| with experts that they learn to surpass.
| unilynx wrote:
| Sounds a lot like "science progresses one funeral at a time"
| ta988 wrote:
| I'm watching this happen right now under my eyes here (U.S.).
| The director decides who gets in or not, favor friends and
| nothing is made for young people (there are none anyway). This
| is just a name, with names behind it and a website listing past
| achievements (that were made by others long gone) and false
| promises.
| pontifier wrote:
| I'm trying to build something like this myself. I acquired a huge
| building and am trying to set it up as a science museum,
| makerspace and business incubator. There will be on-site housing
| as well.
|
| I'm calling it Serendipic.org.
|
| I haven't had too much luck so far, but I've been working on it
| for a year and have had nothing but problems with zoning. I can't
| even get power turned on. They just don't understand what I'm
| trying to do, and can't comprehend that I don't have every detail
| of the entire project mapped out in minute detail yet.
| breck wrote:
| 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.
| kordlessagain wrote:
| > End goal as of now: assemble a few great minds, give them the
| space to work rent-free in a region with good academic
| infrastructure, ideally let them collaborate, watch the beauty of
| it.
|
| My advice is not to expect others to do the work for rent and a
| "stipend".
|
| This isn't a game. AI done wrong will be the end of us.
| villasv wrote:
| It's not like we will carelessly stumble upon world-ending
| technology. This is not a sci-fi movie.
| kordlessagain wrote:
| I think we will build it with intent and should be careful
| with our intentions/attentions.
|
| You are right. Sci-fi movies are short.
| etangent wrote:
| Yeah, we won't accidentally stumble upon it---we will
| painstakingly create one, with our best intentions in mind
| and while receiving accolades for it.
| vallas wrote:
| > AI done wrong will be the end of us. Everything of this is a
| game, this case is bad game
| NationalPark wrote:
| 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!
| Fomite wrote:
| 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.
| LeanderK wrote:
| 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.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| 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 five post
| docs used to living in genteel poverty for the cost of one
| established academic.
| evanb wrote:
| > There are plenty of really minted PhDs who would be quite
| happy [...] for a postdoc with no teaching duties.
|
| As one of those people, I'm happy to move to the middle of
| nowhere, IF it's for a place with a stellar reputation that's
| going to help me do good science and (unfortunately) has some
| name-brand recognition.
| mbreese wrote:
| 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 the future.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > 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.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| 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 in
| industry who collaborates with a researcher at the
| university (for example).
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Off topic, but I always do a bit of a double-take at
| how Americans use "Adjunct Professor."
|
| I think in the US, almost anyone with a job at a college
| is a 'professor'. You see 'professors' in their late 20s
| or early 30s.
| Fomite wrote:
| "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.
| azhenley wrote:
| In the US, it is hard to recruit postdocs unless you are at a
| top 10 school (I tried several times). Potential postdocs are
| largely incentivized by: (1) name recognition of their mentor
| since their letter and networking will get them their next
| job and (2) the likelihood of getting top-tier publications.
| Also, they get a decent salary and health insurance in
| engineering fields.
|
| A brand new research institute does none of these things for
| them. I don't see why a fresh PhD would choose this over
| either FAANG or a university.
| ___luigi wrote:
| 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 climb the ladder through their
| networks/recommendations.
|
| In Industry, you can come from no-name university, and you
| can still make it to FAANG (or top tier companies). In
| academia, that's impossible. To start, it is impossible to
| make it to good PhD program without publishing papers in top-
| tier conference, MSc student in no-name universities can't
| afford finding advisor to easily do that. Good PhD programs
| will help you to join a good Lab, and usually it is through
| network + recommendations.
|
| In Startup world, you can sit in your dorm room, without
| anyone believing in you and you can make it.
|
| P.S. I am a research engineer, I worked in both places and
| that was my observations. There is no shortcuts, everything
| is hierarchical in academia.
| LeanderK wrote:
| 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 is more applied (and
| therefore more niche!) so its not easy to find an advisor
| for this. But in my experience even if the professor is
| working in a more applied setting you can push for a more
| basic-research, research is research. But you can do a phd
| here without publishing a paper first, so I don't think
| most Msc Students see it as a priority.
| periheli0n wrote:
| As someone who went through German academia at a very
| high level, with a top PhD, early and lasting grant
| success, top-tier publications and a multidisciplinary
| network, but who still could not land a Professorship in
| Germany but had to leave the country for it, I can tell
| you, it is not too pessimistic what ___luigi writes.
|
| Hierarchy is everything in academia, especially in
| Germany. The only way to tenure is to have someone up
| there already who is willing to pull many strings for
| you.
| ___luigi wrote:
| >> .. 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.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| 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.
| ___luigi wrote:
| > .. more money most obviously of all.
|
| I would challenge this point. There are few research labs
| in Singapore and middle east (UAE, Saudi Arabia) where
| money is not a problem. I have seen many researchers fly
| there to build research groups, but many of them leave
| after some time. You can see papers coming from these
| groups in top-tier conferences (NeurIPS, KDD, etc) every
| years, but these papers come from individuals, not
| groups. Money is one ingredient, you need fresh blood and
| students to work on new ideas. You need an ecosystem for
| research and industry to adopt and develop some of these
| ideas (e.g. Standford/Google, UCLA/DeepMind, UoT/Uber,
| MIT/Boston startups, etc)
| nerdponx wrote:
| I don't think it's fickle to want to make a decent living from
| your hard-earned and valuable skills.
| NationalPark wrote:
| 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.
| Fomite wrote:
| I feel seen.
| tlb wrote:
| 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.
| JabavuAdams wrote:
| Was just talking about this with a post-doc in the lab I've
| joined. He was saying there's poor and then there's poor.
| Without downplaying the fact that post-docs are underpaid,
| there are many benefits. You get to work on something
| you're interested in; in many labs you have almost complete
| schedule freedom; you typically have good medical benefits,
| etc. So there's a lot of freedom. As in industry, a lot of
| the experience depends on whom you're working for, but
| moreso due to the recommendation requirements and power
| differential. If it's a bio-lab that expects butts in seats
| pipetting 9-6, that's outside of my experience.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Valuable skills will enable a decent living for sure.
| hooande wrote:
| It often makes sense to delay gratification. Like working
| with someone who is very well known in the field for little
| pay, knowing that their backing will give you many more
| opportunities in the future than a job that pays more now.
| Same is true of many startups. You make less than you would
| working for a FAANG company, but the experience and social
| connections can be worth far more in the future. It's
| definitely a personal decision
| an_opabinia wrote:
| Indeed, with a point of view like:
|
| > as I am currently acquiring some real estate that I want to
| put to good use in Germany
|
| > space to work rent-free
|
| > LLC-like structure
|
| It sounds like the poster's head is not in the game at all.
| Like what instead of buying a literally useless building, you
| just pay people?
| akhann wrote:
| Hi, not to go into too much detail on a public forum. In
| part of a larger deal for real estate that I do have
| commercial use for, some other buildings will be included
| that I could either rent out or use for a charitable
| purpose. It's all or nothing for the deal. I actually
| contemplated renting them out and using the proceeds to
| donate to another institution. If this can instead be used
| to provide young PhD students with a place to live rent-
| free there is no taxation inbetween, which would be
| subtracted from what they might receive via another
| institution. Honestly, I mostly want to do some good with
| this in a way that has limited downside, and hope for the
| general concentration of creative career-starters with some
| communal infrastructure to result in a great place to live
| for everybody involved.
| saltcured wrote:
| From your opening question and follow up, I am not clear
| on whether you really hope to create an institute, a
| limited duration retreat, a venue to host such things, or
| even a housing village and/or coworking space. But, from
| my US perspective, I might not appreciate the local
| issues you face.
|
| An academic institute, as I take it, is a sustainable
| organization that necessarily needs to think about
| funding and recruitment. It is not just a building or a
| community, but a host organization to support ongoing
| fund-seeking activities as well as providing the
| environment for academic interaction. In the US, these
| are often soft-money and so the senior researchers are
| writing proposals and bringing in funding to support
| themselves and the staff working under them. Overhead
| taken from such grants and contracts supports the host
| organization and can circle back to cover gaps in funding
| or new-business development efforts by the researchers.
| Other matching funds might be used to help bootstrap an
| institute (or a strategic expansion), but I think that
| self-sustainability is the typical operating mode.
|
| Recruitment needs to consider the opportunity costs that
| your candidates are facing to join you. The "cheap labor"
| of grad students and postdocs are not available to
| anybody who wants to pay the same rate as a university.
| The candidate is expecting to benefit from the prestige,
| experience, and social network when they take such a
| position. They need to see a path where this period of
| sacrifice helps secure their future career. Regular
| research staff, already in their career, would expect
| fair compensation. A place with no reputation is higher
| risk, and probably needs higher compensation to attract
| the same talent. Also, I think academics are usually a
| bit risk-averse or otherwise have a different cost-
| benefit model compared to those who would rush into
| industry, startups, or entrepreneurial adventures.
|
| I joined an institute in the US which was formed slightly
| before I was born, and to date I've experienced over 40
| percent of its life and mine on the research staff. As I
| was told, it started as a small set of researchers who
| identified a problem area and potential funding source.
| They shopped around for a university willing to be their
| parent organization, to provide the administrative, HR,
| and legal support needed to take the money and pursue the
| research agenda. By the time I joined, almost 25 years
| later, the division that inherited the agenda of that
| first group was perhaps only one fifth or less of the
| total institute in terms staff or funding levels.
| ssivark wrote:
| You might be interested in looking at the Recurse Center:
| https://www.recurse.com/
| ryan_j_naughton wrote:
| I have a recent experience in exactly this and can connect you to
| folks from the RAND corporation who just founded a spinoff
| research think tank. Reach out to me via my email on my profile
| johndoe42377 wrote:
| So called modern science is the biggest bubble ever.
|
| Higher social status in exchange for sophisticated bullshitting,
| exactly as it were with clergy.
|
| The transition is done.
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