How and Why the Science Funding Database, scientifyRESEARCH, Was Launched

What led you to found scientifyRESEARCH?

Judy Mielke (JM): I am the founder of scientifyRESEARCH. I launched it in 2021, but before that I had a whole career in different areas. I was also a researcher; I used STEMCELL products. It's a small world. When you guys contacted us, I thought, of course I know STEMCELL Technologies. I was an immunology researcher. But then I went into science publishing. I was working as a publisher for quite a while in different countries and when I was in Switzerland, that's where I met Kate.

Nicole Quinn (NQ): I love hearing stories of former customers, existing customers. It's always awesome to see STEMCELL users out in the world.

Kate Gardner (KG): My name is Kate Gardner. I'm from the States. I have a background in child development and child psychology. In a former career, I used to work with hospitalized children as a child life specialist. I worked in the Washington, DC, area for about six years, in child life. And then in 2010, I moved to Switzerland, where I had a career change. I shifted and started working in academic publishing, which is where I met Judy. We were both working for the same science publisher based in Switzerland. I then moved back to the States, to Seattle, for six years and helped a Swiss publisher establish their presence in the US. I now happen to live in Brazil, thanks to my husband's job. I joined Judy as a co-founder of scientifyRESEARCH about three years ago.

Brenda Raud (BR): I approve. I'm from Argentina. I live in the Netherlands. I've done research in other countries, too. I really appreciate your geographically diverse experiences. That's really nice. It's a refreshing thing to hear from fellow world nomads.

JM: Brenda, I totally agree. I think this is the beauty of research. The people we meet in the lab are so amazing. They have been everywhere and go everywhere. It's so great.

BR: Let’s jump into the reason behind your company and behind the work that you're doing, just to give our listeners a little bit of context. I think especially for listeners that have worked in North America or Europe their whole life and maybe are not so aware about the opportunities for funding across the world. My question to you is, would you like to bring to us a little bit about the global funding situation? What does it mean to be a researcher looking for funding in different parts of the world? Well, if you are in America, you're thinking about R01s or K99s or other acronyms [R01 and K99 are funding mechanisms provided by the National Institutes of Health; the K99 is for late-stage postdoctoral researchers transitioning to a faculty position, while an R01 is the standard, independent research grant for established investigators]. If you are in Europe, you're thinking about the European Research Council (ERC) grant.

What does it mean to be a researcher looking for funding in different parts of the world and why is it so complex?

JM: Complex is the key word here. Research funding is complex. Research funding is the common challenge of pretty much all researchers around the world. When Kate and I worked in academic publishing, we talked to many different researchers in many different disciplines. The common problem, the common challenge, was always research funding. Whether it's your ERC or whether it's your R01, it's the same problem, really. But I think when we developed the database and the company, what we came to realize is that there's an 80/20 problem here in research funding information. Specifically, what it means is that 80% of the researchers are actually applying for 20% of the funds available. It's a generalization, of course. But what we see is that researchers are focused on funds that they know, and they think they know all of them. But what we would like to say is actually there's a lot more out there. But the problem, of course, is the complexity of the information. While there are funders that want to fund or diversify their funding and fund more researchers in different places, they're just not getting discovered. We would like to spread the word about this 80% that are maybe looking for more diverse applicants. We're trying to solve this to better connect the researcher and the research funder.

NQ: I had no idea. I've already learned something from you today. I thought you were going to flip it the other way and say that 80% of the funding is found and 20% is not. That's a shocking realization. I read your mission, which is to help researchers get scientific funding. Nice and simple. Your vision is for a world where the best research and the most promising researchers are funded. What is the database?

What is the database that scientifyRESEARCH provides and the big problem that it helps to solve?

KG: The problem we're trying to solve is simply that researchers do not see all of their funding options, and you don't know what you don't know. So the first step was building a funding database that is incredibly easy to use and accessible to everybody. So our database does have an open version. That brings a lot of attention globally to our database. And when we first set out, the first challenge we set out to solve was helping researchers and research managers find funding using a very intuitive database. But now we're solving the challenge for funders, which is reaching a global audience and getting the best-suited applicants. I talk to funders all the time, and when I speak with them, I often hear that they're getting the same applicants year after year and they would like to have more global applicants, but they don't. Now, when I say this, primarily I'm thinking about foundation funders. So foundation funders, they often are funding the same researchers and they would like to have their funding distributed more globally. So we're solving multiple challenges here.

JM: I think fundamentally we have a lot of challenges in society today. If anything, it's getting even more complex. It's about bringing research expertise together. I think sometimes in the siloed approach that people have been familiar with, it's not necessarily easy to address those challenges. Ultimately, research funding is an investment that we make as a society. A lot of the time, it's taxpayers’ money. We want to make sure that we make this investment properly. Ideally, people are spending less time looking for the funding and spending that time doing the research. That's what we try to do as well, make it really simple for people to find their funding so that they can apply and then do what they love to do most, the research.

NQ: I love all the things you said. I think all of it is really valuable. But researchers put so much pressure on themselves because they have to spend time finding funding, so much time teaching, so much time with mentorship, so much time reading publications and keeping up on the latest in their field. If we can do anything to help alleviate some of that burden so that researchers do what they do best and spend their time actually making amazing discoveries, that's certainly a shared mission we have at STEMCELL and with this podcast and the other podcasts that we do.

Practical Advice for Scientists Seeking Funding

JM: I think there's slight differences across regions, but I think there's also commonalities. You need to start somewhere. It's probably not the best idea to start in a very ambitious way and say, “Oh, I want to get this million-dollar grant,”when you haven't had a track record. You probably need to start smaller, looking for fellowships. Most students have scholarships. A lot of students don't see that as funding, but it is. You have already received competitive funding, i.e. your scholarship. So there's a place to start. There's some strategy to this. For the European funds, for example the ERC grants, they have timeouts, so you can't just keep applying every year. So you should think if you are actually ready to apply before you apply. Because if you don't get it, you may get a timeout. This is where the strategy comes in; when is actually a good time to apply? What we always like to recommend is that every researcher should go to this amazing place called the research office; they have such a wealth of information.

Sometimes researchers come to us directly and we tell them that their research office is a really great resource because they know the specific case for each university and what they need. We always recommend people start there first. But in terms of finding information, I think it's really important to have a structured way of going about it, because this is actually what we try to do to help people to make it easier. It's about structuring the eligibility criteria. Sometimes we hear from people that there is a 10% success rate, and they think this means they need to apply for 10 grants before getting one. We would say that's not necessarily the right approach, because if you find the right five grants that really fit you, then maybe you only need to apply for five to get one. You don't need to apply for ten to get one. This is also about economizing your time or strategizing your time because applying for nine grants that go nowhere is not really a very good investment of time.

Where do researchers start in finding grants?

JM: Finding the right fit is always a great start. What funders would say is, actually, very often they would like you to write to them if you're not sure about something. If you're not sure about something, if you're not showing a good fit, they actually very much welcome people to contact them. But people can be a little bit shy and don't necessarily take up the opportunity. But it's actually a great opportunity, especially if they welcome it and they actually do encourage that. Then also it saves you so much time. Find out if you're the right fit first. Of course, starting with a database approach because the database really helps you to look at the eligibility criteria so that you can weed out the noise and really focus on the grants that you would be eligible for. Then you can investigate further because eligibility is just actually the minimum threshold. I can talk about this forever, by the way. It's a minimum threshold, and you need a little bit more than that because it's also about why would they want to fund you or the other people.

KG: I think to go back to the question about what type of funding would we advise people to look at, I don't think I would say, “Oh, you should go for this government funding. You should go for this foundation funding.” Like Judy said, it should be a database approach. You go to the database and you see everything you're eligible for. Then think about if your research fits within the scope of the call. Because if it doesn't, you shouldn't apply. That would be my advice. I think so often researchers try to write their grant application to fit within the scope of something that's not exactly matched to what they're doing, and then the chances are not as good. So I think in addition to talking to the funder, you could also reach out to previous grant recipients as well. Talk to them. What did they do well? What do they think made their grant application a success? If you take the time to talk to the funder and people who were successful in the past, I think that certainly increases your odds.

Finding Grants for Specific Disease Research

BR: I guess gathering all the information you can is very important. What I understand so far is, first of all, don't be shy. Approach the funders. They are usually very happy to answer your questions, and they're excited that you're reaching out to them and considering their institution or their foundation. Related to this topic, when you think about funding types, you think of government grants, which could be either more regional government, federal government, or European, and then you're thinking of many philanthropic entities. What I think about often is foundations that are geared around a disease type or a particular patient, or a specific need for society, around multiple sclerosis or kidney disease, things like that. Something that I hear a lot, especially now we are trying to take into account more the needs of patients and the ultimate goal of some of these foundations is to reach out to patient groups and that they also often have a say on where the funding goes. They can let you know this is what we, as this organization representing this disease or representing this patient, this is what we want to fund because this is where we think the advances need to be made.

I guess that would, in my opinion, be another thing you can reach out and say, “Well, I want to research. I have a great idea for targeting Crohn's disease.” You might want to talk with people that have or find funding agencies or funding groups that are actually closely related to this patient, because oftentimes that's where the money comes from, people donating or foundations that are collecting money on their behalf.

Could scientists reach out to funding agencies closely related to a patient or disease type?

JM: When it comes to finding the right funding agency there are so many different options, and it's really about diversifying. Quite a lot of the philanthropic foundation funders have a very specific mission. When you find the right fit, they will be very pleased to see your application and they really want to hear from you. For example, we collaborated with the Diabetes Foundation. They were really excited to hear from applicants, and they also would like to have more applicants, especially when we're trying to tackle the problem from a multidisciplinary perspective. I think from a researcher's perspective, it's really about asking, “How would you best bring your expertise to help advance the mission of the funder?” It's important to keep in mind what it is that the funders or the patients are trying to get. People are trying to get a solution. That is about putting your research in that context of how you can advance the mission.

Does scientifyRESEARCH list scholarships and travel funding for students in addition to research funding?

NQ: With scientifyRESEARCH, let's go back to when you said that scholarships are funding and speak to the comprehension of your database.

KG: Yes, you can even use filters to narrow down funding by career stage, so then you could arrive at funding for PhDs or postdocs. You can come to our database and look for travel funding, specifically, or award money. So any type of funding you're looking for, we cover and we categorize it in a way that makes it very easy to find exactly what you're looking for, or to browse through all different funding options and see if something new and interesting that you've never thought of before might pop up.

NQ: And then my second question that stemmed from your answer previously is, do you follow up with the success? Do you follow the story through to see what matches actually did work and then feed that back into the database or into your understanding of what to offer scientists?

Do you follow up with funding successes?

JM: The answer to that is no, not right now. But definitely, we have anecdotal feedback from our users that say, “Oh, I discovered this grant. I didn't know about it before. I applied, I got the money. Thank you.” That's really nice to hear, but it's been a bit too anecdotal for now. I definitely would love to track more. Maybe we need to do a survey of our users and get some testimonials from people and hear their happy stories. Because so often people focus on the negative stories that are there. Let's focus on the positive stories.

FAQs About Research Funding

JM: My favorite one is keywords. What most researchers do when they look for funding is they use keywords that are relevant for when they are looking for journal articles because that's what they're used to doing. You need to put in the right keywords. The thing with funding is that it's very different because funders work on a much higher level. Of course, there are some mission-driven funders for particular areas. Then, of course, they would use more particular keywords. Also for the big Horizon Europe grant or in the NIH grant, they do have very specific programs. Then, of course, the [specific] keywords are useful. But again, the keywords are more about the challenge, the problem. They are definitely not talking about one molecule. But sometimes people are really literally putting a molecule name to find funding, and that is not going to be very helpful most of the time.

So 90% of the time, maybe that's not going to yield any really interesting results. Think about the context. If you have a very specific molecule you're working on, maybe you have a disease model that you work on. So diabetes, multiple sclerosis or lupus, whatever it is, maybe try that first. Then you can go to an even higher level with [words about] life sciences or to an even higher level, actually, if you think about ERC grants. ERC grants do not mention the subject area they cover because they cover everything. So a keyword search is not going to help. Funders don't necessarily think about search engine optimization. They think people are landing on their page; they usually name their grants just “research grants.” I mean, you can find research grants, but they won't be in the right subject area for you. What we do is really to take away that pain of seeing a list of research grants, and we explain what subject area [they are for]. Location is a big part of the requirements, and so we also clarify that. Sometimes it's global, but sometimes it's more specific. Then we also explain that.

What questions should researchers be asking to find relevant grants?

KG: I'm not sure if there is an FAQ, but going back to what Judy said, and I love this about what we do, we tell people not to use keywords, right? And it's important not to. There are better ways to search for funding. But we also add keywords into the grant titles to help make it easier when people are using the database and using the eligibility filters, which is what they should be using to find the best matched funding. We put in keywords into the grant information to make it easier, so that when people read it quickly they can assess, “Is this relevant for me?”

BR: Maybe the question is, “Do I really need to write all of this?”

JM: The question needs to be specific, but not too specific. I think that it’s a challenge to find the right fit. But I think this is something where a database approach is still much better than any Google search or AI search. It's not quite ready yet, but maybe this will come soon. Maybe we'll find a solution.

A Funding Crisis, or Not?

NQ: We've talked a lot about finding the right grant and this problem. I don't know, you can correct me if I'm wrong in rephrasing this, but we always hear about how there's not enough scientific funding. There's a scientific funding crisis globally. But what I'm hearing from you is actually it's not necessarily that, it's that there’s a crisis in that researchers are not matching up with the funding because they're not finding the right funding. Is that correct?

Is the crisis that researchers are not just not finding the correct funding?

JM: I think maybe we [as a scientific community] are exaggerating a little bit. There's definitely a crisis. Definitely with research funding. There needs to be more research funding if we want those solutions. But I do think there's a huge inefficiency in the system. It's the fact that people apply, and if it's really a 10% success rate, that time is not well spent. It's a poor way to spend time on the researcher's part. Researchers were also the reviewers of those grants spending time reading those grant applications that then don't get funded. I would also say that I think the magical number is something like 25%; that at least 25% of those grants should be funded. If the number is anywhere below that, then something is wrong. It is not an efficient way of spending time and energy. But I think what is even more fundamental, what I'd like to ask is, “Hey, we have these great people. What is so bad with their ideas? Really? Are they bad or are they just not? You just don't understand it.” Maybe communication is the challenge here in that these researchers are not necessarily communicating their expertise in the right way. Maybe that's where we could add value.

NQ: Then my second question is, is there any practical advice beyond where somebody has identified let’s say five grants that they are going to apply for. What would you say about what they put into those grants? Do I have to answer all these questions? How deep do I have to go? What is your number one piece of advice for people?

How can researchers stand out when applying for grants?

JM: From personal experience, and maybe Kate can add to this, I think what funders want to know is that if they give you the money, you can actually do this. It's not just a great idea. The idea needs to be great, but you need to think it through as well. You need to explain that this is actually feasible and that you have the tools. You are the right person, you have the right environment around you, and you have the right team. A lot of the time, it's about the team. Also, When you have a team, you really need to demonstrate that you work as a team, not that just one person writes a grant and that the other people are just nice to have. You need to demonstrate that this is a good investment for them.

KG: I was thinking a bit more about questions that people ask us. And one question people often ask us, and I wish I had an immediate answer for them, is how to find collaborators. They often come to us as the funding database with information about all of the research funding opportunities. They ask us, “Can you help me find a co-applicant for this grant?” They think that we help with that piece, too. Maybe there's more we could do, and we should think that through. But I think there's a lot of interdisciplinary funding that people have a challenge with thinking about who to apply with. I think that's something that people should think about a bit more. And earlier on, before they discover the grant and the deadline is in a month. I think that that's something people should focus on. Who should I collaborate with? Who can help me solve this research problem? And then what grants can we apply for together? I think that's something that people need help with. I know there have been companies and people and organizations that have attempted to work on this matching piece. But I think it's something that researchers have to take on independently to some extent to really be proactive about finding the right collaborators.

BR: That's something you have to do by yourself. I know the cliché of how important it is to network. You want to have your idea and your collaborator before, ideally, you find the grant. To have that already defined before you are too close to the deadline.

Researchers in Underfunded Regions

BR: As I mentioned, I care a lot about the research funding that is available for researchers that are not based in Europe, or some parts of Asia that are very well funded. But we know researchers in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East areas are chronically underfunded, particularly because in most cases there's not very strong state-sponsored science or there's not enough capital going around to invest in them. What has been your experience advising researchers from those regions and are there specific paths that they should consider when trying to bring a great idea to fruition?

Are there specific organisations or foundations with funding that are particularly well-suited for researchers in typically underfunded countries?

KG: It's an interesting question, and I think this question is very country-specific and may have, to some extent, something to do with wha