Science Booster channel: first crowdfunding platform for research projects
The crowdfunding platform "wemakeit" is launching a Science Booster channel. The SNSF welcomes this initiative to secure unconventional support for innovative research ideas.
"The crowdfunding platform offers young and innovative scientists the opportunity to formulate their first scientific ideas and explain them to a wider audience," say Mirko Bischofberger and Luc Henry, the initiators of the Science Booster channel. It will allow inquisitive researchers inside or outside of academic institutions to raise their own funds and test their less conventional ideas. This novel initiative on Switzerland's largest crowdfunding platform is supported by the Gebert Rüf Stiftung, which will double every franc raised on the platform.
Initiative boosts key aim of SNSF
The SNSF welcomes the launch of the Science Booster channel as it chimes with one of its key aims: the promotion of young researchers. By crowdfunding small and short-term projects, researchers can get their first taste of enterpreunership. And their efforts to put their ideas into practice include unconventional and direct forms of science communication, another priority area of the SNSF.
According to the initiators, researchers can submit research ideas on the Science Booster channel as of now. The channel will go live in early 2017.