Feeling in the mood for some science funding beats? No problem, at Mo’ Money Mo’ Science, we’ve put together a playlist for you to listen to when you look through all our informative content about science research and funding.
Follow, listen, but most of all enjoy!
Kickstarter has seen the birth of thousands of crowd sourced projects around the world. From novels to music albums, dance theatre to humble potato salad, strangers can pitch in and help provide the capital to turn your idea into a reality in return for rewards. Project creators set a funding goal and deadline and if people like a project, they can pledge money to it. Funding on Kickstarter is based on a principle of “all-or-nothing”. Projects must reach or exceed their funding goals to receive any money. Since it’s launch in 2009, 84 000 projects have been funded by 8.6 million people who together pledged around a £1 billion, and science and technology has accounted for a slice of this very large pie.
Robert Schumacher is a pHD student at City University, London who together with a group of colleagues has developed a notification wristband called Nudge. The aim of the device is to stop you from having to constantly check your phone, thanks to the wristband that will let you know when you’ve received something important that needs your attention. They turned to Kickstarter to help fund their project.
Sadly their Kickstarter campaign didn’t reach its goal, with only £22 885 pledged towards their hefty £35 000 goal. However the team are confident that with the exposure they’ve gained and skills they’ve learnt, they’ll be able to go forward with their idea.
In terms of science funding, whilst Kickstarter seems to lend itself better towards technological developments, websites such as Experiment and Petridish.org have set up similar platforms to allow for research scientists to also appeal for crowdsourced funding.
Cancer dominates disease research funding, receiving around ten times the money than dementia research. The raw figure is £590,411,000 according to Dementia UK and Scienceogram. With an ageing population, you could begin to question whether this vast difference is justified, as more and more people are going to be suffering from degenerative brain diseases like Alzheimer’s.
To get an expert’s perspective, I spoke to Professor Tim Meyer from University College London Cancer Institute who looks at the role of cells called Circulating Tumour Cell (CTCs) in the blood of people suffering from cancer as a way to predict the patient’s prognosis in a new, accurate method.
CTCs break off from tumours and circulate the blood, attaching to other tissues in the body to form what is called metastatic tumours. This is how cancer can spread around the body. However, only several CTCs actually go on to form tumours, the rest just swim around in the blood. Professor Meyer’s research involves using these CTC readings fromb blood samples to detect whether a patient is responding well to cancer treatments or whether they are at risk of developing another tumour.
His research primarily focuses on using these cells as a prognosis tool, meaning that patients will be given a more accurate idea of how their treatment is working, or what their future will look like.
I asked him about his research and if he thought the amount that cancer research receives in comparison to other diseases is justified.
Last month Chancellor George Osborne delivered his budget speech outlining the UK’s economic plan for the coming year. Not to worry if you missed it, have a look at our live blog of the announcement to catch yourself up on what went down or watch the entire speech here. These are the bits of the speech that interested us the most Adam Smith is a senior reporter at Research Fortnight, a UK publication that focuses on covering science research funding and policymaking. He shared with us his thoughts on Chancellor Osborne’s announcements. Adam mentions the “eight great technologies”. In 2012 the UK government announced, as part of its industrial strategy, eight key fields of science, which were identified as being particularly important to the UK’s growth as a world leader. This announcement in many ways shapes what scientific research is prioritised for public funding. They include robotics, energy and regenerative medicine. 
Last month I spoke to Dr Simon Clark from The University of Manchester. in 2014, he was awarded an Medical Research Council fellowship. He told about applying to be a fellow and what being MRC Career Development Fellow now means for him, his research into eye disease and science funding.
His interview is useful for anyone wanting to know what a fellowship provides, who it’s for and just how you can go about securing one?
He had some interesting anecdotes about his interview for the fellowship (no picturing the interviewers naked, don’t worry!) Keep listening to about 3 minutes in to find out more!
Natalie Jonk is the founder of WALACEA, which helps scientists crowdfund their work. I spoke with her about where the name WALACEA came from, what types of projects & scientists are pursuing crowdfunding, and the challenges & opportunities in crowdsourcing science research.
Be sure to also check out our post about Nudge, the kickstarter-funded smart-wristband project based at City University London.
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