Crowdfunding for Science 2
With more and more constraints on scientific funding worldwide, researchers are having a difficult time securing supports for their work, especially among those relative early in their career like a PhD students, postdoctoral fellows or young PIs. Funding is crucial at this stage where new investigators can establish their career path.
With many startups turning to crowdfunding to help complete their projects, you are now seeing new campaigns offering all these fun gadgets and technologies almost everyday. What crowdfunding does here is to bring you, as potential customers, closer to the companies. It generates buzz for the biz, and you get a glimpse of the products you will likely purchase. Crowdfunding connects the startup owners with broader audiences who are as passionate about the projects as they are. In turn, these audiences have a chance to be a part of the projects through small donations. While money raised from crowdfunding may not entirely replace the more traditional routes like angel funding or venture capital, it allows the people who make the campaigns to take their first few steps.
Just like crowdfunding for business, crowdfunding for researches allows scientists to connect with the people they are helping. With the traditional route of research grants, you share your ideas with limited circles of people--grant reviewers, experts in the fields and that friend you asked to proofread your proposal in exchange for freshly-baked cookies. Now, with crowdfunding campaigns, you, as scientists, are sharing your ideas, hope and goal to the public. These are the people who are likely going to benefit from your next discoveries firsthand, whether it be a cure for cancer or a new anti-malaria drug or a new strain of rice with higher yield.
To give back to your backers, you, the science guys, are updating them on your progress, letting them know that even just small amount of donations can drive your experiments towards the next big discovery. In a way, this is your product to give back to your backers. With the magic of the internet, crowdfunding campaigns can bridge the gap between lab bench and the public, thus increasing transparency and building trust between scientists and the general public.
It is true that fund raised through crowdfunding is often far from the traditional research grants, and its success is not guaranteed. However, a small amount of money can allow researchers to conduct some preliminary experiments, set up a new space for future projects or generate enough data to make that Figure 1 for their grant proposal. Everything counts.
Crowdfunding is a relatively new and unexplored territory for scientific research communities. TDR at WHO recognizes this as a great opportunity to help researchers fund their projects given the increasing difficulties to secure research funding. Our project on "Blocking Zika Virus Mother-to-Child Transmission" won this year's TDR crowdfunding challenge. For this project, we will be using a new and innovative tissue engineering technique to study the biology of Zika virus and how it can pass from pregnant mother to her fetus. With your help through crowdfunding, we will develop a way to block this transmission and prevent the child from Zika-related complications such as microcephaly. We are set to launch our crowdfunding campaign in early 2020. Stay tune.
More on Research Crowdfunding, SESH (Social Entrepreneurship to Spur Health) and TDR (The Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases) at https://www.seshglobal.org/Crowdfunding
To catch up with our team, follow us on Twitter @TWiwatpanit594
With many startups turning to crowdfunding to help complete their projects, you are now seeing new campaigns offering all these fun gadgets and technologies almost everyday. What crowdfunding does here is to bring you, as potential customers, closer to the companies. It generates buzz for the biz, and you get a glimpse of the products you will likely purchase. Crowdfunding connects the startup owners with broader audiences who are as passionate about the projects as they are. In turn, these audiences have a chance to be a part of the projects through small donations. While money raised from crowdfunding may not entirely replace the more traditional routes like angel funding or venture capital, it allows the people who make the campaigns to take their first few steps.
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| SESH Global |
Just like crowdfunding for business, crowdfunding for researches allows scientists to connect with the people they are helping. With the traditional route of research grants, you share your ideas with limited circles of people--grant reviewers, experts in the fields and that friend you asked to proofread your proposal in exchange for freshly-baked cookies. Now, with crowdfunding campaigns, you, as scientists, are sharing your ideas, hope and goal to the public. These are the people who are likely going to benefit from your next discoveries firsthand, whether it be a cure for cancer or a new anti-malaria drug or a new strain of rice with higher yield.
To give back to your backers, you, the science guys, are updating them on your progress, letting them know that even just small amount of donations can drive your experiments towards the next big discovery. In a way, this is your product to give back to your backers. With the magic of the internet, crowdfunding campaigns can bridge the gap between lab bench and the public, thus increasing transparency and building trust between scientists and the general public.
It is true that fund raised through crowdfunding is often far from the traditional research grants, and its success is not guaranteed. However, a small amount of money can allow researchers to conduct some preliminary experiments, set up a new space for future projects or generate enough data to make that Figure 1 for their grant proposal. Everything counts.
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| TDR, partnered with SESH Global, aims to build capacity for crowdfunds among researches from low- and middle-income countries studying infectious diseases |
Crowdfunding is a relatively new and unexplored territory for scientific research communities. TDR at WHO recognizes this as a great opportunity to help researchers fund their projects given the increasing difficulties to secure research funding. Our project on "Blocking Zika Virus Mother-to-Child Transmission" won this year's TDR crowdfunding challenge. For this project, we will be using a new and innovative tissue engineering technique to study the biology of Zika virus and how it can pass from pregnant mother to her fetus. With your help through crowdfunding, we will develop a way to block this transmission and prevent the child from Zika-related complications such as microcephaly. We are set to launch our crowdfunding campaign in early 2020. Stay tune.
More on Research Crowdfunding, SESH (Social Entrepreneurship to Spur Health) and TDR (The Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases) at https://www.seshglobal.org/Crowdfunding
To catch up with our team, follow us on Twitter @TWiwatpanit594
Dear Tee and all, good to visit your blog and see the enthusiasm is building up. For me, the crowdfunding approach is a new and innovative way to get a research project started. I am excited and looking forward to your campaign on this interesting topic of Zika and the experiments that could lead to the development of tools for blocking of the virus transmission from mother to child. It is a great opportunity to be part of such an exciting project!
ReplyDeleteThank you Jackie! We are all excited to get this project going. Things are coming together. I complied all the paperwork needed and gave it to our physician on the team to submit the IRB. We should hear back in a few weeks!
Delete-TW
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