Episode Transcript
Interviewer: Crowdfunding science - up next on The Scope.
Announcer: Examining the latest research and telling you about the latest breakthroughs. The Science and Research Show is on The Scope.
Interviewer: experiment.com, petridish.org , the websites host crowdfunding campaigns for scientific research. Sounds like a great idea, but does it work? Today, I'm talking with University of Utah chemistry professor Shelley Minteer about her experience with crowdfunding. Dr. Minteer, you recently launched a crowdfunding campaign and reached your goal. Congratulations.
Dr. Minteer: Thank you.
Interviewer: What was the most surprising thing about this experience?
Dr. Minteer: I guess that strangers actually donate to science. You generally think of the general public as not being particularly excited about science and engineering, so it was really cool to see people who aren't scientists funding science.
Interviewer: How much money did you actually get?
Dr. Minteer: A little over $5,000.
Interviewer: That's not a whole lot.
Dr. Minteer: Exactly.
Interviewer: You think of an NIH grant, which could be like $100,000 a year. Is that really enough to do the work done that you're hoping to get done?
Dr. Minteer: The preliminary results, yes.
Interviewer: That's interesting because then you can definitely think of it as funding for a pilot project to get results that you can then take to a bigger funding agency.
Dr. Minteer: Yes, yes.
Interviewer: What led you to launch a crowdfunding campaign?
Dr. Minteer: There's a company that has been in the Salt Lake area for several years, 32ATPs, owned and operated by Carol George. Her expertise is in metabolism, so that's where ATP comes from as sort of the energy currency of the cell. She was interested in work that our group had done in looking at metabolism on an electrode. So, she basically contacted me to whether or not I would be interested in sort of going through and applying for SBIRs to try to make biologically inspired capacitors.
Interviewer: SBIRs, what's that?
Dr. Minteer: An SBIR is a small business grant . . .
Interviewer: Oh, okay.
Dr. Minteer: . . . to help a small business get started and do our research and development. They're not so easy to get without any preliminary data and basically a concept that is just a concept at this point, just an idea. That's where crowdfunding comes in, is in a situation where you're not really going to be marketable to be able to win an SBIR without preliminary data, you're able to get that preliminary data that you need to be successful for future federal funding.
Interviewer: So, she came to you. This isn't something that you necessarily would have thought of by yourself.
Dr. Minteer: Absolutely. I think the other thing to point out is that this is towards making a product and so that might be different than other types of research that would be funded.
Interviewer: Yes.
Dr. Minteer: It is not a basic science research project so we are not fundamentally, we have a hypothesis, but it's a hypothesis towards making a device that would be marketable rather than a hypothesis towards understanding disease state sort of things along those lines.
Interviewer: How was that experience for you? I mean, like you just said, this is very different than writing an NIH grant.
Dr. Minteer: It's very different on the backend as well, so all of a sudden I'm getting all of these emails from people that I don't know in a way that you simply don't get if someone is reviewing your grant proposal because that's confidential. It's a very sort of different process and all of a sudden you're getting all of these emails from people that you don't know and asking all kinds of questions. It's different, it's definitely different.
Interviewer: Yeah. But, I suppose maybe it has an alternative after effect, which is you're educating these people about this type of research and it's probably something they haven't heard of before.
Dr. Minteer: Yeah, so I thought it was really interesting because I don't very often get people who are not scientists contacting me, asking me questions about my science. That's just not something that is a regular occurrence, and it definitely then became a regular occurrence. You're providing them, in some ways, education about new science and new engineering.
Interviewer: Is this something you would do again?
Dr. Minteer: I guess I would be open to doing it again in a situation where it made sense. You were talking about a standard federal grant and rather than sending my renewal to the National Science Foundation, I wouldn't sign up for crowdfunding instead. But I think in situations where there is a relatively small amounts of funding and you need pilot funding and you need it maybe quicker than you could get it in other ways, then I think it would be a viable option.
Interviewer: Is this something you would recommend other scientists to try?
Dr. Minteer: Sure, why not?
Announcer: Interesting, informative, and all in the name of better health. This is The Scope Health Sciences Radio.