NSF announces initiative for new generation of research organizations | Hacker News Reader

NSF announces initiative for new generation of research organizations

nsf.gov

15 pointsmnky9800n3 comments

I'm not opposed to alternative research organizations, funding structures, etc. But this does seem like a fairly direct attempt to shift funding from universities into private firms, a funding structure which IMHO is much easier to abuse.

> Tech Labs will provide entrepreneurial teams of proven scientists the freedom and flexibility to pursue breakthrough science at breakneck speed, without needing to frequently stop and apply for additional grant funding with each new idea or development.

This sounds great, but has a few issues. #1 only funding proven scientists risks destroying the training pipeline which is the crucial edge that the US has over any other country in the world. It's also something that can and should be applied to universities as well. Lab groups or centers should be given much more runway than they are now.

> coordinated, interdisciplinary teams to achieve success

There are two places where this can really happen today: universities and national labs. The NSF should be fostering more cross-disciplinary and product engineering research across different departments at universities which already have deep talent pools across the board.

> The Tech Labs initiative will support full-time teams of researchers, scientists, and engineers

This sounds great, more university labs should have full-time researchers attached. Research Software Engineers are one somewhat common example in the computational sciences.

In general I support the overall mission statement but I am extremely wary of this kind of rhetoric from this government. They have failed to walk the walk on the sciences in any domain. This seems like a Trojan horse to transfer more money from the research apparatus into industry.

The proven pipeline you are discussing here isn’t going anywhere. PhD students still will do their phds. What this kind of funding structure will do is reduce the amount of time writing proposals. It’s not dissimilar to Norways research centres for excellence which are funded for ten years. I think this is good. Like, I have three separate proposals I’m writing concurrently. It’s annoying and takes away from my ability to interact with my colleagues and those I advise as well as my own research. Additionally, it’s basically impossible to hire engineering type roles which are way better than trying to convince a postdoc to be a software developer. Additionally I see a lot of colleagues not optimising for impact where I feel that this program will force that.

This is awesome, and is a great example of the type of funding structure that government orgs (looking at you, NIH) should be offering. Government-backed research is the bedrock upon which the US economy rests, and as science becomes more expensive, we need to support research at the intersection of academia and industry more explicitly.

ARPA-H was a great step towards this goal for public health-focused efforts (-omics experiments aren't going to pay for themselves, at least at first) but a more general funding mechanism has been needed. I think this is a great direction for the NSF, and to be honest it's refreshing to see something like this given the horrible stance that this government has taken towards science (which has been compounded by the biotech bubble/correction).

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