• Question: Would you like to work for any major corporations to possibly get help with reseach/support

    Asked by trysono to Ailsa, Evan, James, Kath, Ryan on 20 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Ryan Ladd

      Ryan Ladd answered on 18 Jun 2011:

      It’s actually quite common for research to be funded by major corporations. I think doing research for a company can be a good thing as, hopefully, you get to see real results at the end of your work.

    • Photo: James Hargreaves

      James Hargreaves answered on 19 Jun 2011:

      I have done some work for a large corporation, and at the moment by work is being supported by a large company which you will know called ‘Birdseye’. I think working for a large company gives you more freedom to your research.

    • Photo: Evan Keane

      Evan Keane answered on 19 Jun 2011:

      It is unusual in many sciences to work for major corporations, especially in many fields of physics and in astrophysics. However I am not against it at all. In fact there are many big businesses out there that do great research and are well funded (which helps more research get done). For example, I would not be against against asking Google if they would build me some telescopes, or if they want to fund my work so I can hire others. Hmmm, perhaps I will do that. Thanks for the tip 😉

    • Photo: Ailsa Powell

      Ailsa Powell answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      It isn’t uncommon for biotechnology companies and large pharmaceuticals to be involved in sponsoring or collaborating with academic based biological science labs. Academia is often where the interesting new ideas in medicine development come from as we do the basic investigation work into how the disease works.

      Companies often give additional money to support PhD scholarships in biological science too.

      My work is not funded by a major corporation (I’m funded by the Wellcome Trust, who also fund I’m a Scientist!). But some large pharmaceuticals have made their chemical libraries open to academic institutions which is making an amazing resource available to everyone. Some of the chemists I work with have used these libraries to search for new starting points in developing new antimalarials. I’ve explained why we need these starting chemical starting points in part of my answer to this question http://ias.im/44.1214.

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