Federal Stimulus Funds From NIH Go to a 'Facebook for Scientists'

A $12.2-million federal stimulus grant from the National Institutes of Health will finance a network some are calling a Facebook for scientists.

Several universities, including Cornell University and the University of Florida, will develop the network over the next two years in the hopes of helping scientists find other academics to work with.

If a researcher is looking for someone else in a very specialized field, he or she would usually think of all the people he has met or simply scan recent scientific journals for names, said Michael Conlon, interim director of biomedical informatics at the College of Medicine at the University of Florida and the principal investigator on the grant. Mr. Conlon calls those methods "haphazard."

People using the network will be able to enter targeted inquiries into a search box. The results will show scholars in very specialized fields. The site will also reveal relationships between academics, such as whether someone has published an article with someone else, or whether someone was an adviser to someone else.

Mr. Conlon said that researchers like to work with people they have a good rapport with. "In the end, it comes down to human nature and who you want to work with. But even to find people who could potentially want to work with you is an extraordinary challenge."

The institutions involved with the project include Cornell University; Indiana University; the Ponce School of Medicine, in Puerto Rico; the Scripps Research Institute; Washington University in St. Louis; and Weill Cornell Medical College.

The national project is based on a project at Cornell University, where academics use the search function to find others at Cornell.

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Comments

1. stevefoerster - October 22, 2009 at 06:05 pm

Boy, no one beats Uncle Sam when it comes to finding ways to piss away money. I mean, why not just set one up at ning.com and save twelve million bucks?

2. cmendis - October 22, 2009 at 07:08 pm

Isn't this what rest of us do through LinkedIn? The search requirement are vauge here but can't they leverage a platform like LinkedIn (even a private instance of their framework if needed) instead of trying to reinvent the wheel?

3. tskochanski - October 23, 2009 at 01:04 am

what about academia.edu

4. davi2665 - October 23, 2009 at 10:05 am

The ultimate in a frivilous waste of money! So how does this stimulate jobs. A sum of $12 million could fund at least 30 RO1 grants. It appears that there is no end to the stupidity of government give-aways.

5. williammchenry - October 23, 2009 at 10:57 am

Consider the Science Diversity Center at http://ScienceDiversityCenter.org and visit the research assistant

Bill McHenry

6. abhishekg - November 03, 2009 at 01:32 am

It would be interesting to have a list of already exiting networks for researchers to find each other. I am sure there are many and some of them would be excellent.

There is The Research Cooperative which is hosted on Ning.
http://cooperative.ning.com/

Anyone knows any others.

Academic.edu that tskochanski posted above, also looks interesting.