Metascience and Decentralized Science

News, Jobs, Funding & Calls

News

Rise of metascience: Turning science on itself. Focus on the ‘science of science’ is ensuring better research outcomes by Luke Fehily of Progress Ireland. Oct 17, 2024.
Meet our Activation Partners: driving progress through science entrepreneurship by ARIA. Oct 9, 2024.
Carlsberg Foundation opens for submission of applications for urgent research projects by Chief Scientific Officer, Lars Egstrøm Kristensen. Oct 3, 2024.
Eight Scientists, a Billion Dollars, and the Moonshot Agency Trying to Make Britain Great Again by Matt Reynolds. Oct 2, 2024.
a16z begins investing in DeSci with AminoChain, leads $5M seed round by Vince Dioquino. Sep 27, 2024.
The UK’s $1-billion bet to create technologies that change the world by Nisha Gaind. Sep 18, 2024.
Healthcare projects are leading the pack in decentralized science by Robert D. Knight. Sep 9, 2024.
The UK launched a metascience unit. Will other countries follow suit? by Dalmeet Singh Chawla. Aug 7, 2024.
Decentralized science is modernizing outdated systems by Patrick Joyce. June 16, 2024.
The State of DeSci: An Ecosystem Overview by Jonathan Heppner. June 13, 2024.
Tom Kalil’s Renaissance Philanthropy Recruits Wealthy Science Funders by Sean Captain. May 28, 2024.
NSF partners with the Institute for Progress to test new mechanisms for funding research and innovation by U.S. National Science Foundation. Sep 28, 2023.

Jobs

Chief of Staff to the CSO at Arcadia Science. Deadline not stated.
Program Associate/Senior Program Associate - Innovation Policy at Open Philantrophy. Apply by June 30, 2024.
Partnerships Lead at ARIA. Apply by July 18, 2024.
Head of Platform at Astera Institute. Deadline not stated.

Funding & Calls

Announcing Astera’s Residency Program by Astera Institute. Apply by November 22, 2024.
Data sandpit for metascience by UKRI. Apply by November 21, 2024.
Synthetic Plants by ARIA. Apply by September 25, 2024.
Forecasting Tipping Points by ARIA. Apply by September 23, 2024.
Open Science Initiative by The Navigation Fund.
Science for Progress Initiative. J-PAL.
Metascience research grants. UK Research and Innovation. Apply by July 16, 2024.
Day One Project. Changing Policy from a Noun to a Verb. Federation of American Scientists. Apply by July 15, 2024.

Resources

Articles, Reports, Texts, Videos, Talks (ordered by date)

Ross Pomeroy - Can we automate science? Sam Rodriques is already doing it. November 18, 2024
Mark Hahnel - Innovating Academia From The Outside - The Web3 Solution to Academia’s Peer Review Problem. November, 14. 2024.
Yen Tran - Billion-Dollar Race: LIFE AI's Breakthrough as Avalanche's Petabyte-Scale Layer 1. October 23, 2024.
Joshua March & Kasia Gora - Graceful Exit. Navigating the Complexities of Winding Down a Deep Tech Venture. October, 2024.
Dan Elton - A Defense of Peer Review. October 22, 2024.
Eric Gilliam - A Scrappy Complement to FROs: Building More BBNs. October 16, 2024.
Statecraft - How to Build the British ARPA. September 5, 2024.
Abhishaike Mahajan - Things I learned talking to the new breed of scientific institution. August 26, 2024.
Onchain Research - DeSci – (How) Will It Make Research Great Again?. August 16, 2024.
Veronica Kirin - What is Decentralized Science (DeSci)?. July 19, 2024.
Lukas Weidener & Cord Spreckelsen - Decentralized science (DeSci): definition, shared values, and guiding principles. July 17, 2024.
Foresigt Institute Podcast - Stuart Buck - What is Good and Bad Science. May 30, 2024.
Tyler Golato - Disrupting the Decline of Disruptive Science. May 28, 2024.
Benjamin Reinhardt - Research Leaders' Playbook. Tools and tactics for leading coordinated research programs. April 4, 2024.
Jocelynn Pearl and UltraRare - DeSci Wiki. Last update: January 1, 2024.
Erik Canton - Being right or fair. A portfolio approach to research funding. November 11, 2023.
The DemystifySci Podcast - Science is a Strong Link Problem - Dr. Adam Mastroianni. August 31, 2023.
John Paschkewitz & Dan Patt - No, We Don’t Need Another ARPA. Fall, 2023.
Nadia Asparouhova - Early stage funding markets for science - an analysis. January 23, 2023.
Sarah Hamburg (16z) - A Guide to DeSci, the Latest Web3 Movement. September 2, 2022.
Michael Nielsen & Kanjun Qui - A Vision of Metascience. An Engine of Improvement for the Social Processes of Science. October 18, 2022.
Scott Moore (Gitcoin) - DeSci: The case for Decentralised Science. August 29, 2022.
Benjamin Reinhardt - Whence Systems Research?. What the the heck is systems research? Why is it important? Why are we bad at it? How could we do better?. August 11, 2022.
Juan Benet - DeSci, Independent Labs, & Large Scale Data Science (video). July 20, 2022.
Jocelynn Pearl - A Guide to Decentralized Biotech. April 20, 2022.
Nadia Asparouhova - Understanding science funding in tech, 2011-2021. March 2, 2022.
Benjamin Reinhardt - Shifting the impossible to the inevitable. A Private ARPA user manual. April, 2021.
Pierre Azoulay, Erica Fuchs, Anna P. Goldstein, and Michael Kearney - Funding Breakthrough Research: Promises and Challenges of the “ARPA Model”. 2019.
Patrick Collison & Michael Nielsen - We Need a New Science of Progress. July 30, 2019.
Patrick Collison & Michael Nielsen - Science Is Getting Less Bang for Its Buck. November 16, 2018.
Sönke Bartling & Benedikt Fecher - Blockchain for science and knowledge creation. August 14, 2016.
Pierre Azoulay, Joshua S. Graff Zivin & Gustavo Manso - Incentives and Creativity: Evidence from the Academic Life Sciences. October, 2009.
Ethererum - Decentralized science (DeSci).
Vincent Weisser - Decentralized Science and Biotech & Metascience
José Luis Ricón - Research Funding category on his website.

Podcasts

Idea Machines Podcast by Benjamn Reinhardt.
UltraRare. “A podcast at the intersection of science and web3."
The Desci Podcast by Molecule
Center for Open Science's youtube channel
Macroscience by Tim Hwang
The Foresight Institute Podcast

Newsletters & Publications

Desci Weekly
Speculative Technologies' newsletter
FreakTakes by Eric Gilliam of Good Science Project.
Molecule newsletter
Macroscience by Tim Hwang
Works in Progress. Part of Stripe.
Stripe Press. Ideas for Progress. Publishing house by Stripe.

Conferences

Bottlenecks, San Fransisco, September 6, 2024.
Progress Conference 2024: Toward Abundant Futures, Berkeley, October 18-19, 2024.
Metascience, London, June 30 - July 2, 2025
Desci Berlin, Berlin, May 23+24, 2024

Organizations

Think Tanks

Abundance Institute
Center for Open Science
DeSci Research
DeSciWorld
Federation of American Scientists
Good Science Project
Institute for Progress
Leverage Research
MAXi Science
The Metascience Working Group. Partnership of Federation of American Scientists, Institute for Progress and J-PAL.
The Navigation Fund
Onchain Foundation
Progress Ireland
Roots of Progress Institute
UltraRare Bio maintains a map of the DeSci space and runs a podcast.
UK Research & Innovation

Institutes & DARPA-like organizations

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). US government.
Astera Institute
Future House
Speculative Technologies
Arc Institute
Arcadia Science
Molecule
Advanced Research And Invention Agency (ARIA). UKs DARPA-like R&D funding agency.
New Science
Foresight Institute

Funders & Philantrophy

Focused Research Organizations

Convergent Research "a new type of nonprofit startup for science." (FRO incubator).
E11 Bio "building ambitious new technology for full-stack brain architecture mapping."
Cultivarium "creates open-source tools for life scientists to expand access to novel microorganisms."
Parallel Squared Technology Institute "accelerating research with high-throughput proteomics and open science."
EvE Bio "is on a 5-year mission to create a first draft of a map of the pharmom."
LEAN "aim to tackle the challenges of scalability, usability, and proof automation in the Lean proof assistant."
Forest Neurotech "developing a minimally invasive ultrasonic whole-brain computer interface."
[C]Worthy "building software that supports multi-scale oceanographic modeling and data integration for quantifying the efficacy and ecological impacts of ocean-based CDR."

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs)

DAO Central "The DAO Discovery Engine."
AsteriskDAO "working to backfill 500 years of missing womxn’s non-reproductive health data."
Cerebrum DAO funding research to "advance brain health and prevent neurodegeneration."
Vita DAO "tackling aging with the power of a global community."
Lab DAO "updating the standard for open and reproducible computational biology."
Athena DAO "funding women's health research."
Hair DAO "fixing hair loss for good."
Cryo DAO "advancing cryopreservation research."
Psy DAO "funding research at the intersection of psychedelics and mental health."
Valley DAO "funding and translational support for synthetic biology research."
Synapse DAO "Bringing scientific innovation from lab to life in‍ half the time."
Talent DAO "building the journal of decentralized work."

Biotech + Techbio

Rejuve.ai

Publishing

Communities & Chats

DeSci World
Desci Global. Calendar for Desci events globally.
DeSci NYC.
DeSci Latam.
DeSci London.

Data Storage and Protocols

Ecosystem

bio.xyz (DAO incubator)
Project LION
Talent DAO

Financing

Communities

Individuals

Nadia Asparouhova. x, website, linkedin.
Writer and researcher. Has written Early stage funding markets for science - an analysis and Understanding science funding in tech, 2011-2021.

Pierre Azoulay. x, linkedin, mit.
Professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

PD Dr. Sönke Bartling. x, website.
Radiologist and author of Blockchain for science and knowledge creation with Benedikt Fecher.

Gwern Branwen. Writer and researcher. Gwern.net.

Stuart Buck. x, linkedin.
Executive Director at Good Science Project.

Seemay Chou. x, linkedin, website.
CEO at Arcadia Science, Chief of Strategy at Astera Institute. Chair of the Board at The Navigation Fund. Executive Director at Good Science Project.

Matt Clancy. x, website, substack.
Research Fellow at Open Philantrophy.

Patrick Collison. x, website.
Founder of Stripe.

Tyler Cowen. x, website, podcast.
Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Faculty Director of the Mercatus Center, and Director of Fast Grants.

Milan Cvitkovic. x, website, linkedin.
Co-founder Integral Neurotechnologies.

Jason Crawford. x, website, linkedin.
Founder of Roots of Progress Institute.

Francisco Díaz. x, linkedin.
Researcher at Talent DAO and part of the team at DeSci Research.

Eli Dourado. x, website, linkedin.
Chief Economist at .

Allison Duettmann. x, website, linkedin.
CEO at Foresigt Institute.

Maria Goreti Freitas. x, linkedin.
CEO at deScier.

Anastasia Gamick. x, linkedin.
Co-founder and COO at Convergent Research.

Kumar Garg. x, linkedin.
President at Renaissance Philantrophy.

Eric Gilliam. x, substack.
Fellow at Good Science Project.

Tyler Golato. x, linkedin, website.
Co-founder and CEO at Molecule.

Mark Hahnel. x, linkedin.
VP Open Research at Digital Science.

Cate Hall. x, linkedin.
CEO at Astera Institute.

Patrick Hsu. x, linkedin.
Co-founder at Arc Institute.

Tim Hwang. Institute for Progress, x.
Senior technology fellow with the Institute for Progress.

Ilan Gur. x, linkedin.
CEO of ARIA.

Tom Kalil. x, linkedin.
CEO at Renaissance Philantrophy.

Veronica Zora Kirin. x, website, linkedin.
Founder of AsteriskDAO.

Philipp Koellinger. x, linkedin, website.
Chairman of the DeSci Foundation, co-founder of DeSci Labs.

Paul Kohlhaas. x, linkedin.
Co-founder of Molecule.

Adam Marblestone. x, linkedin.
Co-author of the Focused Research Organization (FRO) concept with Samuel Rodrigues. Co-founder and CEO of Convergent Research.

Adam Mastroianni. x, substack, website.
Experimental psychologist and author of Experimental History.

Carolina Menchaca. x, linkedin.
Core at DeSciWorld and DeSci Research

Paul Niehaus. x, website, linkedin.
Co-founder at Give Directly, Segovia, Taptap Send. Chancellor's Associates Endowed Chair at UC San Diego.

Michael Nielsen. x, website.
Co-wrote A Vision of Metascience. An Engine of Improvement for the Social Processes of Science with Kanjun Qui as part of their The Science++ Project. Works at the Astera Institute.

Gustav Nilsonne. x, website.
Associate professor at Karolinska Institutet, researcher in metascience. Affiliate at Stanford University.

Jocelynn Pearl. x, website, linkedin.
Biotech scientist, podcaster, writer. Maintains DeSci Wiki.

James W. Phillips - x, substack.
Senior Policy Advisor at Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.

Kanjun Qui. x, website, linkedin.
CEO at Imbue. The Science++ Project with Michael Nielsen.

Benjamin Reinhardt. x, linkedin, website, podcast.
Founder of Speculative Technologies.

José Luis Ricón - x, website, writings.
Head of Theory at Retro Bio.

Samuel Rodrigues. x, website.
Co-author of the FRO concept with Adam Marblestone. Currently working on Future House.

Stian Westlate. x, linkedin.
Executive Chair of the Economic and Social Research Council.

Vincent Weisser. x, website, linkedin.
CEO at Prime Intellect.

Heidi Williams. x, website.
Professor of Economics at Dartmouth University. Director of Science Policy at Institute for Progress.

Tools, methods, norms, heuristics, practices, ideas, visions

This section covers experiments and attempts at developing new social processes for science. It needs more sorting and better categorization.

Technology Roadmaps & Tech Trees

Towards ubiquitous metagenomic sequencing: a technology roadmap by Nava Whiteford, Andrew Heron, Leonard McCline, Ales Flidr, Jacob Swett, Ajay Karpur. Funded by Open Philantrophy and coordinated by Convergent Research. 2024.
Macromodular Additive Manufacturing by Chris Wintersinger for Speculative Technologies. September 5, 2023.
Nanomodular Electronics by Michael Filler & Ben Reinhardt for Speculative Technologies. February 15, 2023.
The Foresight Institute's work on Tech Trees.

Vision Papers See Michael Nielsens article Working notes on the role of vision papers in basic science. May 28, 2022.

Asterisk DAO - The Non-Productice Health Research Gap. Aug 27, 2024.
Samuel G. Rodrigues & Adam H. Marblestone - Focused Research Organizations to Accelerate Science, Technology, and Medicine. September, 2020.
Michael Stebbins & Geoffrey Ling - Creating The Health Advanced Research Projects Agency (HARPA). April 19, 2020.
A. Yu. Kitaev - Fault-tolerant quantum computation by anyons. May 20, 2002.
John Archibald Wheeler - Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links. 1989.
Alan Kay - A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages. 1972.
Alexander Rich - On the Problems of Evolution and Biochemical Information Transfer. 1962.
A. M. Turing - On Computable Numbers, With An Application To The Entscheidungsproblem. 1936.

Intellectual Property

IP NFTs by Molecule is "a hybrid legal-smart contract structure enables on-chain registration and management of IP and R&D data rights."

Governance & Leadership

Benjamin Reinhardt - Research Leaders' Playbook. Tools and tactics for leading coordinated research programs. April 4, 2024.
Enterprise foundations are characterized by long time horizons, philanthropic goals and the absence of personal profit motives.

Funding Mechanisms

Quadratic Funding

Vitalik Buterin, Zoe Hitzig & Glen Weyl - A Flexible Design for Funding Public Goods. September 18, 2018.
wtfisqf by Gitcoin.

Fund People, Not Projects

Stuart Buck - What is Good Science?. Foresigt Institute Podcast. May 30, 2024.
John P. A. Ioannidis - Fund people not projects. September 28, 2011.
José Luis Ricón - Fund People, not projects. December 27, 2020 - February 7, 2021.

Fund Organizations, Not Projects

Benjamin Reinhardt - Fund Organizations, Not Projects: Diversifying America's Innovation Ecosystem with a Portfolio of Independent Research Organizations. January, 2022.

Advance Market Commitment

Nan Ransohoff - How to start an advance market commitment. May 31, 2024. Works in Progress.