Surprised to discover that MIT's indirect costs (i.e. for facilities and administration) on research grants recently crossed 50% (jumps to 55% in 2022). ras.mit.edu/facilities-and
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Interesting reflecting on this as an MIT student subject to this overhead :) I have an NSF fellowship starting next year and was surprised to find it only covers ~half of my support, despite paying out 48k / year.
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It's not obvious to me that that's a terrible ratio. I benefit greatly from having an advisor / department, getting to take classes, etc. (Also, can't get NSF funding in the first place w/o legibility of university! The government is paying me to explore things, exciting!)
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OTOH, it can feel slightly much sometimes. This year I'm sitting at home hacking on stuff on my laptop (no special nuclear reactors or anything), and the overhead is pretty steep
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Right, I imagine e.g. mathematicians might feel particularly sore about this.
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Yeah, although maybe mathematicians, being further from immediate applications than CS, are glad to have any funding at all? Idk.
I suspect that the time wasted applying for grants (even successful ones!) may be even more painful than the spending overhead factor...
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Curious how you think about "finding a campus" w/ indie funding?
Personally I get tons of value from Twitter / Internet spaces, but also find more rigid institutional structure helpful -- a committed advisor, peer groups, milestones... all help me grow and also just keep going
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I think about it a lot. I've written up some straw proposals. None of them is good. I don't know how to do it!
Among many challenging issues: my 0.7x-CAREER-level crowdfunded "grant" wouldn't even cover my mortgage if I paid typical F&A rates.
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I wonder about cheapest parts to unbundle...
I wonder how much of the value of a "campus" is just drawing stronger lines between communities, even if slightly arbitrary.
I find it quite useful being nudged towards repeated interactions w/ the same small-ish group of people
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Replying to
has remarked to me something along the lines of "minimum viable lab culture is a semi-consistent communal lunch environment." This was really true for my team at KA!