The relationship between the R&D funding system and the research community is a paradox. The funding system has been established to support the research community and the research community is a happy receiver of the funding. However, the research community is often struggling to approach the funding. Why? Because it is complex, because it requires investing time in understanding procedures, because it is difficult to get an overview of the fitting funding sources and because, simply, researchers are very busy professionals.

scientifyRESEARCH is a consultancy company born out of wanting to give an answer to these challenges for the research community. Founder Judy Mielke and Co-founder Kate Gardner have themselves a background in the research community and know the in’s and out’s of exactly these paradoxes. They have build a company with services that helps researchers to get an overview through a funding scheme database including funding schemes globally including private funding schemes. All to open up a broader perspective of funding opportunities for the researchers for them to identify other sources of funding than the very competitive EU funding schemes for R&D.

I managed to get the two ladies into the virtual podcast studio for a talk about their services and for a talk about the research community and the difficulties approaching funding. It became a nice talk about the conditions of the research community and how to improve access to funding.

Time codes:

00:02:14 Introduction

00:07:18 Fly in on Scientify

00:13:49 Understanding Scientify

00:19:42 The database and how it works

00:45:34 The challenges of the researcher and the research offices

01:13:26 The research funders

01:24:26 Practical examples

01:27:34 Future

01:34:48 The toughest challenge