With the help of the good scientists Jai and Jarrett, and the people at Rockethub, I plan on embarking on this journey to fund my research through the power of the people. The realtime/realworld/real people approach of this method is an exceptionally powerful and inherently interesting phenomenon. I’ve long been a fan of the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal and when Zach demonstrated the use of crowdfunding platforms to raise money for projects i thought “WOW! I wonder if it’ll work for science!??!?”
The answer, hopefully, is a resounding “YES!”
This is where you come in, dear reader. Patron extraordinaire. A lover of the sciences. Nourisher (if that’s a word) of the intellect. Benefactor of the downtrodden masses of grad students and impoverished Professors. You are all that is good with the world, all that is noble and pure and simple. You are the last bastion of that elusive attribute – Kindness. Also, you want the wonderful rewards promised in return for your patronage. Rewards you couldn’t get from a supermarket. Or even from a specialty store online. Rewards that are intimate and personal. An inside conversation shared only between you and the scientist you adopted. The satisfaction that comes with having known you’ve done a good deed. The deep personal peace that is a hallmark of having been part of something bigger and more beautiful than oneself. Of having had an impact on humanity at large and having been thanked for it.
With that piece of hyperbole (which is sincere but won’t be in any grant application), let me take this opportunity to welcome you all to this page and hopefully to many others like this at the SciFund Challenge.
Over the next few weeks, i will be putting up details of my project and outlining your role in helping me achieve its goals.
As a brief introduction – I work on the proteins that regulate the way cells move. For my studies i use a tiny little Green alga called Chlamydomonas. This work has important and far-reaching implications in disease research in humans, the specifics of which will have to wait till a later post. Suffice it for now to say that this cool little critter is critical for our understanding of the way cilia (the motile part of a cell) works and therefore absolutely essential in the crusade against diseases such as Poly Cystic Kidney disease etc.
Here’s hoping that you, wonderful reader, will find my work just as interesting as I do and would be willing to show your support for it by way of generous monetary contributions.
WELCOME! and THANK YOU!
Aditya
