In an era of rapid scientific advancement and economic uncertainty, how we fund research has never been more critical.
To explore the evolving needs of innovation, Technology Networks posed a single question to a diverse group of academics and industry leaders: What changes would you like to see in the way research funding is allocated or awarded, and how do current funding models help – or hinder – innovation in your field? Here’s what they had to say.
Deborah Cragun, PhD, associate professor at the University of South Florida
I would like funding levels to be restored in the US. I do worry about the massive funding cuts and how that will hinder scientific progress.
Stephen Hilton, PhD, associate professor at the UCL School of Pharmacy
Current funding models often favor conventional, low-risk research proposals that align with well-established priorities. While this ensures reliable outcomes, it can significantly hinder disruptive innovation – especially in fast-evolving, cross-disciplinary fields like ours, where virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence (AI) and chemistry intersect.
To unlock true innovation, we need funding models that are more agile, more inclusive and more future-focused. Here are a few key changes I’d advocate for:
- Support for high-risk, high-reward ideas: Bold, transformative concepts – like autonomous AI-driven labs or global digital twin ecosystems – require room to fail, iterate and evolve. We need dedicated funding streams that explicitly support such frontier science.
- Faster, more responsive funding cycles: Innovation moves quickly. Traditional 12–24-month application cycles are often out of sync with technological progress. Models that offer rapid response microgrants or staged development funds would better match the pace of modern science.
- Funding for infrastructure and integration: In my field, breakthroughs come not just from new experiments, but from building ecosystems – VR platforms, multilingual AIs, low-cost sensors and global lab networks. Current schemes often overlook these as “non-scientific” costs, despite being essential to innovation.
- Cross-sector collaboration incentives: True innovation increasingly happens at the intersection of academia, industry and education. We need more funding models that encourage meaningful co-creation across these sectors – not just partnerships on paper.
- Global equity in funding: Many underserved regions have brilliant minds but limited access to funds or infrastructure. We should see more global partnership models that embed capacity-building and equitable resource sharing.
That said, some recent initiatives – like the European Innovation Council Pathfinder scheme – are moving in the right direction by recognizing unconventional, collaborative and interdisciplinary efforts. But for scalable, global innovation to thrive, funding models must become more experimental themselves.
Lindsay Davies, PhD, CSO at NextCell Pharma AB
Research funding is strongly linked to prior reputation and achievement, making it difficult for new researchers to break into the field. I believe it would be an improvement to change the way grants are applied for, perhaps through stepwise funding programs linked to milestone achievements, giving new researchers the chance to prove concepts, generate early datasets and apply for onward funding based on their achievements. Such an approach would also lower the risk to the funding agencies, who would see a constant return on their investment through milestone datasets.
Alexander Seyf, CEO at Autolomous
Introducing more data-driven funding decisions. By leveraging advanced analytics on prior research outcomes (including negative results), we can inform funding priorities and identify emerging bottlenecks.
One of the most important changes I would like to see in research funding allocation is a broader, more holistic evaluation framework – one that goes beyond scientific merit alone and considers the full end-to-end realities of the cell and gene therapy industry.
Evaluators should be equipped with not only a deep scientific understanding but also a strong grasp of health economics, regulatory pathways, scalability and the practical challenges of real-world implementation. Innovation doesn’t stop at the lab bench – it must translate into accessible, sustainable therapies for patients.
Current funding models often favor early-stage, academically driven research, which is crucial, but without complementary support for translational science, commercial readiness and system integration, promising innovations risk stalling before reaching patients.
To truly accelerate progress, we need interdisciplinary evaluation panels and funding structures that reward not just scientific novelty but also a clear path to feasibility, scalability and patient impact. Only then can we ensure that innovation serves its highest purpose – transforming lives.
Professor Samra Turajlic, PhD, group leader and consultant medical oncologist at The Francis Crick Institute and The Royal Marsden Hospital
Funding models need to evolve to support long-term, high-risk, high-reward science, especially in areas like cancer evolution and immunotherapy, where insights take time to mature. Currently, the emphasis on short-term milestones and narrow hypotheses can discourage exploratory or integrative work that could be transformative. Large-scale platforms like MANIFEST need both upfront investment and sustained support to yield impact.
Lori Ball, CEO, Astoriom
Current funding models often favor short-term outputs over long-term impact, which can hinder the development of infrastructure that underpins scientific continuity, like sample storage and compliance systems. I’d like to see more flexible, milestone-based funding that allows innovation in operational and regulatory support services, not just primary research.
There’s also a gap in funding collaborative ecosystems that bridge academia, startups and commercial providers like us. A more integrated funding approach would better reflect the interdependent nature of scientific innovation – and ultimately accelerate discovery and compliance together.
Madusha Peiris PhD, founder and CEO, Elcella
It is without debate that innovation and technology are the key factors for national growth and prosperity, but sufficient funding for academic research is needed to achieve these goals.
Science and technology funding is incredibly competitive and while this means the best science is funded, it also means the most innovative ideas are unlikely to be funded because of the inherent risk associated with thinking outside the box.
Increasing government funding to support world-class scientists – from junior scientists training to be world-leading thinkers, to senior scientists who are already world leaders in their fields – supports everyone because knowledge leads to innovation, and innovation adds right back to the economy.
Mara Aspinall, partner at Illumina Ventures
I’d like to see funding allocated to diagnostic research that passes the “so what” test – research on diagnostics/testing should be able to clearly identify the problem that the test is trying to solve and the benefit the result will bring to patients. There is tremendous value in studying basic science and disease natural history, but in our field, diagnostic research is often applied research.
In terms of funding, diagnostic products and services must be able to show a clear path to adoption and reimbursement in order to obtain venture capital funding. This has been challenging of late with the broken reimbursement system that does not reward innovation.
Tomek Czernuszewicz, PhD, director of ultrasound imaging, Revvity
This is a challenging question. While, in general, I believe that the grant system we have created in the US has been hugely successful, there are examples (probably too many) where excellent scientists and excellent ideas have been repeatedly rejected.
In my early years as a graduate student, I attended a conference, and the invited speaker (a former program officer at the National Institute of Health [NIH]) told the story of Dr. Stanley Prusiner, who repeatedly submitted (and was rejected) for his work on prions. Back then, the NIH allowed many resubmissions, but each time, the skepticism of the panel shot down the grant, despite the methodology being sound, the team and environment being excellent and the rebuttals satisfying criticisms from previous reviews. More recently, I read the story of Dr. Katalin Karikó, which followed a similar pattern of rejection for her work on mRNA technology. Both scientists, of course, went on to win Nobel prizes for their respective discoveries.
It seems that the flaw in our system may be that we have gotten too risk-averse in our allocation of money, and we are too afraid to “waste” research and development money on ideas that don’t work. This is only exacerbated by stagnant budgets that don’t keep up with the increasing number of grants or the cost of increasingly complex science. Perhaps creating more diverse funding mechanisms, particularly ones geared towards high-risk, high-reward ideas (through more granular-staged funding models), could help in the long run.
