Tech Leaders Create $3 Million Award

[obgyn65]

Has anyone seen this :

"Three Silicon Valley leaders are the latest to join a movement among business titans to offer science prizes. Russian tech investor Yuri Milner joined with Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin to create a $3 million annual prize for health-science research."

Tech Giants Form Health-Science Prize - WSJ.com

If I had the time I would love to work in genomics-related projects. Would love to explore some ideas in this area. What would be your research idea ?

 

[obgyn65]

Wow. This is what I would call an interesting thread not a single answer I guess no one is interested in R&D

 

[HFWR]

Wow. This is what I would call an interesting thread not a single answer I guess no one is interested in R&D

I work in R&D, and I'm waiting for my check...

 

[scrinch]

I'd like to see research into the conversion of American cities and suburbs into places with minimized environmental footprints, healthy people, and stable responsive governments. What land use profiles, water usage and re-usage, sustainable food supplies, human and material transportation arrangements, economic and employment profiles, housing types and densities would work in a reduced-resource world? I'm not sure if the resulting research reports should be filed under fantasy or science fiction, but I'd like to see some thought-through, positive visions of what our world could become, and how we could start moving in that direction. [/NAIVETE]

 

[ERD50]

Wow. This is what I would call an interesting thread not a single answer I guess no one is interested in R&D

Interest may not be the issue. The link requires a subscription, so all I got was an intro that didn't provide enough info to comment on.

I googled a bit, there were some economists stating that prizes like this are probably not the best use of that money to spur innovation. I don't have time to follow up beyond that right now.

-ERD50

 

[Free To Canoe]

Maybe this link will work better.

Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences - Laureates

I believe the prize is a positive contribution. Definitely an exciting research area.
The prize originators are doing the best they can with what they got.

 

[ls99]

I spent many years in research, as a tech, Seismology for the most part and some ocean bottom geology to be specific.

I would never get involved in anything which includes a Russian investor, and especially facebook or google.

 

[CoolChange]

One area where I would like to do some development and think I might actually have a slim chance of providing some value to the ongoing efforts of others is asteroid hunting (finding the next dinosaur killer in time to avoid their fate).

I also hope to do some serious meta analysis and documentation of the current state of nutrition research (mostly for my own benefit but hoping to provide a starting point for others).

All of this will be post ER; possibly a part of ESR if I can find funding.