Save the Trees,
Save the Scientists
Over a dozen scientists set out to save our forests & change how research gets funded.
Today, the Forest Challenge launches on Instrumentl, a new initiative aimed at funding world-changing science. The Forest Challenge features scientific research projects ranging in subjects like: conserving tropical forest-dwelling mammals, invoking indigenous knowledge for reforestation, and discovering new water bear species in the Pacific Northwest treetops, among many more. The first of these Instrumentl researchers to raise 50% of their funding goal via public contribution will receive a $500 Instrumentl Research Grant ensuring that their inspiring research gets funded.
As an undergraduate intern, forest researcher Alex Young (pictured above) discovered an entirely new species of tardigrade. If you don’t know what a tardigrade is you might recognize it by it’s much-more approachable and rather comical name: the water bear.
When you first see a photo of a tarigarde, it appears more to be either recently discovered life on Mars or a fictional character from the mind of an imaginative 8-year-old. Lucky for us, water bears are found here on Earth in a wide range of habitats like the canopy and undergrowth of the lush rainforest of the Pacific Northwest, where Young researches tarigardes to this day.
Young’s discovery of a brand new form of life is like hitting scientific paydirt, but even though his contributions are ground-breaking, he suffers from the same problem experienced by millions of researchers around the world: an inability to conduct their work due to a lack of funding.
At Instrumentl we hear countless stories of intelligent, passionate researchers who decide not to push further into their research simply because they don’t want to spend all their time applying for grants just to be rejected.
Today only 17% of proposals to the National Science Foundation (NSF) are successfully funded. Since the NSF is the largest public funder of academic research in the life sciences that means that only 17% of ground-breaking research, like Young’s, ever turns into results.
It’s Young’s story and the thousands of other stories of brilliant research underfunded that led us to create Instrumentl’s Forest Challenge, a public crowdfunding competition featuring a private grant for the winner.
So take a look at the people saving our forests and cast your vote for the project you’d most like to see become a reality (though truly they all deserve our vote). Instrumentl aims to fund every deserving researcher. It’s time to get these researchers out from behind their stack of grant applications and back into the field mitigating climate change and curing disease.
To learn more about how Instrumentl funds research, read about our Grant Challenges or check out our Grant Challenge Schedule to see a schedule of upcoming Grant Challenges (fossils, genomics, amphibians, oh my!)
If you’d like to sponsor an Instrumentl Research Grant please contact team@instrumentl.com.
