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
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