1 hr 6 min
Focusing on Research with Adam Marblestone [Idea Machines #33] Idea Machines
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- Business
A conversation with Adam Marblestone about his new project - Focused Research Organizations.
Focused Research Organizations (FROs) are a new initiative that Adam is working on to address gaps in current institutional structures. You can read more about them in this white paper that Adam released with Sam Rodriques.
Links
FRO Whitepaper
Adam on Twitter
Adam's Website
Transcript
[00:00:00]
In this conversation, I talked to Adam marble stone about focused research organizations. What are focused research organizations you may ask. It's a good question. Because as of this recording, they don't exist yet. There are new initiatives that Adam is working on to address gaps. In current institutional structures, you can read more about them in the white paper that Adam released recently with San Brad regens.
I'll put them in the show notes. Uh, [00:01:00] just a housekeeping note. We talk about F borrows a lot, and that's just the abbreviation for focus, research organizations.
just to start off, in case listeners have created a grave error and not yet read the white paper to explain what an fro is. Sure. so an fro is stands for focus research organization. the idea is, is really fundamentally, very simple and maybe we'll get into it. On this chat of why, why it sounds so trivial.
And yet isn't completely trivial in our current, system of research structures, but an fro is simply a special purpose organization to pursue a problem defined problem over us over a finite period of time. Irrespective of, any financial gain, like in a startup and, and separate from any existing, academic structure or existing national lab or things [00:02:00] like that.
It's just a special purpose organization to solve, a research and development problem. Got it. And so the, you go much more depth in the paper, so I encourage everybody to go read that. I'm actually also really interested in what's what's sort of the backstory that led to this initiative. Yeah. it's kind of, there's kind of a long story, I think for each of us.
And I would be curious your, a backstory of how, how you got involved in, in thinking about this as well. And, but I can tell you in my personal experience, I had been spending a number of years, working on neuroscience and technologies related to neuroscience. And the brain is sort of a particularly hard a technology problem in a number of ways.
where I think I ran up against our existing research structures. in addition to just my own abilities and [00:03:00] everything, but, but I think, I think I ran up against some structural issues too, in, in dealing with, the brain. So, so basically one thing we want to do, is to map is make a map of the brain.
and to do that in a, in a scalable high-speed. Way w what does it mean to have a map of the brain? Like what, what would, what would I see if I was looking at this map? Yeah, well, we could, we could take this example of a mouse brain, for example. just, just, just for instance, so that there's a few things you want to know.
You want to know how the individual neurons are connected to each other often through synopsis, but also through some other types of connections called gap junctions. And there are many different kinds of synopsis. and there are many different kinds of neurons and, There's also this incredibly multi-scale nature of this problem where a neuron, you know, it's, it's axon, it's wire that it sends out can shrink down to like a hundred nanometers in [00:04:00] thickness or less.
but it can also go over maybe centimeter long, or, you know, if you're talking about, you know, the neurons that go down your spinal cord could be meter long, neurons. so this incredibly multi-scale it poses. Even if irrespective of other problems like brain, computer interfacing or real time communication or so on, it just poses really severe technological challenges, to be able to make the neurons visible and distinguishable.
and to do it in a way where, you can use
A conversation with Adam Marblestone about his new project - Focused Research Organizations.
Focused Research Organizations (FROs) are a new initiative that Adam is working on to address gaps in current institutional structures. You can read more about them in this white paper that Adam released with Sam Rodriques.
Links
FRO Whitepaper
Adam on Twitter
Adam's Website
Transcript
[00:00:00]
In this conversation, I talked to Adam marble stone about focused research organizations. What are focused research organizations you may ask. It's a good question. Because as of this recording, they don't exist yet. There are new initiatives that Adam is working on to address gaps. In current institutional structures, you can read more about them in the white paper that Adam released recently with San Brad regens.
I'll put them in the show notes. Uh, [00:01:00] just a housekeeping note. We talk about F borrows a lot, and that's just the abbreviation for focus, research organizations.
just to start off, in case listeners have created a grave error and not yet read the white paper to explain what an fro is. Sure. so an fro is stands for focus research organization. the idea is, is really fundamentally, very simple and maybe we'll get into it. On this chat of why, why it sounds so trivial.
And yet isn't completely trivial in our current, system of research structures, but an fro is simply a special purpose organization to pursue a problem defined problem over us over a finite period of time. Irrespective of, any financial gain, like in a startup and, and separate from any existing, academic structure or existing national lab or things [00:02:00] like that.
It's just a special purpose organization to solve, a research and development problem. Got it. And so the, you go much more depth in the paper, so I encourage everybody to go read that. I'm actually also really interested in what's what's sort of the backstory that led to this initiative. Yeah. it's kind of, there's kind of a long story, I think for each of us.
And I would be curious your, a backstory of how, how you got involved in, in thinking about this as well. And, but I can tell you in my personal experience, I had been spending a number of years, working on neuroscience and technologies related to neuroscience. And the brain is sort of a particularly hard a technology problem in a number of ways.
where I think I ran up against our existing research structures. in addition to just my own abilities and [00:03:00] everything, but, but I think, I think I ran up against some structural issues too, in, in dealing with, the brain. So, so basically one thing we want to do, is to map is make a map of the brain.
and to do that in a, in a scalable high-speed. Way w what does it mean to have a map of the brain? Like what, what would, what would I see if I was looking at this map? Yeah, well, we could, we could take this example of a mouse brain, for example. just, just, just for instance, so that there's a few things you want to know.
You want to know how the individual neurons are connected to each other often through synopsis, but also through some other types of connections called gap junctions. And there are many different kinds of synopsis. and there are many different kinds of neurons and, There's also this incredibly multi-scale nature of this problem where a neuron, you know, it's, it's axon, it's wire that it sends out can shrink down to like a hundred nanometers in [00:04:00] thickness or less.
but it can also go over maybe centimeter long, or, you know, if you're talking about, you know, the neurons that go down your spinal cord could be meter long, neurons. so this incredibly multi-scale it poses. Even if irrespective of other problems like brain, computer interfacing or real time communication or so on, it just poses really severe technological challenges, to be able to make the neurons visible and distinguishable.
and to do it in a way where, you can use
1 hr 6 min