Hi Ravi,
You wrote:
Rich
What is your tech on Foundations sponsoring or likely
to sponsor some research for reasonable knowledge seekers - such as
ontologists, likely to pave new ways?
Thanks.
Ravi
If your question means “what is your
TAKE on …” … sponsored research sources for R&D, I gave
up long ago looking for sponsored research. I tried it for years. It’s
cheaper and more effective to do research on your own nickel up to the stage of
a prototype and a patent; then you have ownership of the intellectual property.
But after that’s no picnic either;
you have to know how to turn intellectual property into money if you want to
recover your investment, amplify it, and move on to do more research. Lots of great,
smart, hard working people can’t make it fit financially that way. But
if it meets your personality and working style, I highly recommend it for fun
and games in your career.
Here’s why I have given up on the
usual academic and entrepreneurial research funding sources:
I have proposed, won and
performed SBIR contracts, but find the ROI on that R&D money is actually negative
– it’s too expensive to acquire a contract, and the contracts so
acquired are too small and too fast to be profitable, even as R&D work,
IMHO. The SBIR contracts were research oriented when first introduced, but
have evolved to be very effective ways for the various agencies to get small
company service tasks through the system. But that means the R&D has, over
those twenty five or so years, become a lot less R and a lot more highly
targeted D. It’s a great program for its purpose though; its just not a good
source for research funding, IMHO.
Compared to SBIR, the NSF
money is even more expensive to acquire, and is systematically (not
conspiratorially) biased to cronies at the usually suspect schools, with conventional
project plans to slightly extend something, but not too far. But I didn’t
try particularly hard to get NSF funding for any projects, because the size of
the contracts are so small, only a part time researcher would be supported. It’s
a good program for funding grad students, at naïve school wages, who need to
scrape through their educations. NSF gives teachers’ recommended
students a temporary job and relevant experience, so it’s a useful
program for stimulating science education, but research its not.
NIH money is subject to
so many reviews, in so many technology cubbyholes, and is committed to so many
highly vertical niches that are politically hot, that it’s only
profitable for the topmost researchers with long track records and convincing
research proposals that fit one or more of those tight niches.
Also, I found NIH
difficult for my research area because the medical record databases they use
(my own focus is on corpus analysis in databases) are wrapped up in the HIPPA
regulations. NIH is also focused on letting contracts to academia and
nonprofit companies to the point of an institutional guilt complex about making
money on illness. That interferes with their selection processes, and with the
efficiency of the work, but every source of funding has its own necessary bias
so it can achieve the approved goals for that year.
But even more important, when privacy
regulations apply to a proposed project, private investors walk the other way. No
investor I talked to failed to mention how difficult it is to safely data mine
with the HIPPA regs in place.
The nice thing about the <computer,
software, internet, engineering, linguistics> world today is that it really
doesn’t cost all that much to support individuals doing their own
research – forget the better soap suds your employer wants you to develop.
The main expense for your own research is just your time, not much expense in
equipment for computer science related research, supplies, tools, or anything
else.
So if you want to do computer science
oriented research, I recommend skipping the proposal mill completely and
developing something which you can demonstrate ownership of, demonstrate value
of, and teach other people how to use.
Your ability to solve real problems on a
very large scale, properly applied, protected and leveraged, initially funded
from your own pockets, can ultimately pay for your more esoteric research
efforts. But it isn’t an easy path to carve out, and it’s not
likely without a lot of drive and focus on your part. Oh, and you must have a great
idea about a demonstrable market problem and a good way to deliver it’s
solution.
JMHO,
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
From:
ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of ravi sharma
Sent: Wednesday, January 06, 2010
11:12 AM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum]
Ontologist Aptitude Test?
On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 12:31 PM, Rich Cooper <rich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Nicely stated Matthew. Companies are about investing money to
obtain more
value back, along with the money invested. R&D budgets have to be
justified
to the financial stakeholders based on ROI, risk, market share, strategic
and tactical grounds. If the parameters aren't within acceptable limits,
the investment moves along to the next choice.
That's why the blue sky stuff has always been done sometimes by wealthy
aristocrats (Newton),
the compulsively curious (Einstein), and other
oddballs (Turing, Von Neumann ...). At least, until DARPA started funding
targeted projects which the NSF hadn't thought worthy of science. And of
course Bell Tel spent its subscribers' money on blue sky R&D to justify
their investments instead of handing the money back as the regulators urged.
But no company is giving it away for free.
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Matthew West
Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2010 9:12 AM
To: '[ontolog-forum] '
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontologist Aptitude Test?
Dear John,
A nice cartoon. Although I think it is a little pessimistic. Whilst I do not
think you should attempt to justify blue skies research, I think there are
things you can do to work out if industrial, or applied research is
worthwhile, based around the reduction in risk of decisions that you make
based on the results of the research.
Let's take a topical example from the energy sector.
Should I invest in fission reactors, fusion reactors, solar cells, wind
farms, tidal barrages, carbon capture, biomass (which sort), clean coal? I
have $50b+ to invest over 20 years.
Making a bet on any of these today carries a huge risk. What is the
information that would help reduce that risk? Notice that it is almost as
useful to discover that any of these is a non-starter, as it is to discover
that one or more of them is viable, and at what energy price it is economic.
Tens of millions of dollars is a good investment to reduce the risk of
getting it wrong. You just need to be clear how the results of the research
are going to answer the questions, which is where research design comes in.
Regards
Matthew West
Information Junction
Tel: +44 560 302 3685
Mobile: +44 750
3385279
matthew.west@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.informationjunction.co.uk/
http://www.matthew-west.org.uk/
This email originates from Information Junction Ltd. Registered in England
and Wales No. 6632177.
Registered office: 2 Brookside, Meadow Way,
Letchworth Garden City,
Hertfordshire, SG6 3JE.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of John F. Sowa
> Sent: 05 January 2010 14:54
> To: [ontolog-forum]
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontologist Aptitude Test?
>
> Joel,
>
> A recent document appeared on the WWW today, which may help to
> clarify those points:
>
> >> ... we've been doing software (creating 1,000s of languages
in the
> >> process) for about 50 years & still have no widely
accepted means
> >> of measuring it.
> >
> JB> ... Yet every one of the ways of measuring software performance has
> > been successful in its own right for building a foundation of
> > something to improve.
>
> Following is the document (but check it for Jan 5, since it changes
> every day): http://www.dilbert.com/fast/
>
> The text without the graphics:
>
> Pointy-Haired Boss: "Maybe somebody can help you quantify your
> research and development work."
>
> Dilbert: "The only people who can quantify research are liars
> and morons."
>
> PHB: "Maybe we could hire a consultant."
>
> Dilbert: "That just turns a liar into a thief."
>
> John
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
> Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
> Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
> Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
> To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
> To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
--
Thanks.
Ravi
(Dr. Ravi Sharma)
313 204 1740 Mobile