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NSF announces initiative for new generation of research organizations

14 points by mnky9800n

by patagurbon

1 subcomments

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.

by ray__

0 subcomment

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).