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I'm a little unclear on the concept here, because this doesn't sound at all like Kickstarter.

Microryza sound like nothing more than middlefolk between my research and funding sources. They "vet"? And their domain knowledge in my field is...?

Am I missing the idea? Why do I want another layer between me and a funding source?

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Hi! The idea is that we don't do much vetting. The only criteria that we evaluate on are:

1) Is the researcher who he says he is? 2) Is it actually research? 3) Is the researcher capable of meeting the research aims? e.g. is it a matter of expertise, equipment time, etc?

Beyond that, we just work with universities to ensure that the standard research guidelines are in place (ethics, practices).

In the future, we have ambitious ideas of opening up this process into a more democratic and transparent flow.

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