Developing AFIRE – Platform Connects Research Funders with Innovative Experiments
The Accelerator For Innovation and Research Funding Experimentation (AFIRE) is a new tool dedicated to boosting and revitalizing the design, synthesis, and implementation of experiments through innovation and research funding. This tool is the result of a collaboration between the London-based Research on Research Institute (RoRI), the Innovation Growth Lab (IGL), and a plethora of additional partners, and will act as a broad research platform through which funders at any level of engagement can enhance the speed and ambition of their engagement by connecting with various experiments.
According to the internal report, ’RoRI Funder Lab: improving research funding processes through experimentation’, interest in scientific experiments continues to grow. However, research funders are finding themselves at various levels of readiness regarding their investments. To help remedy this challenge, AFIRE will utilize experimental methods and workshop facilitation to better support funders and their investments. As a tool, AFIRE aims to enhance the motivation to experiment, the awareness of possibilities, the capacity to experiment, the culture of innovation and research funding, and the existing scale and research of experiments – helping to boost the engagement of funders in the world of experimentation.
RoRI is an organization dedicated to transforming the way research is evaluated, communicated, and funded, and it is one of the world’s leading brokers for research funding experimentation. IGL is a global policy lab that aims to support the development of inclusive, sustainable, and productive economies through experimentation, novel policy ideas, data, and evidence. Together, they aspire to use their expertise to support more experiments and revitalize research funding as a whole.
AFIRE will bring in funders, researchers, and partners to foster new and ambitious experiments. The platform will have many capabilities, including a forum area for learning about experiments and peer exchange; structured support for assistance for partners who are creating and implementing experiments; in-house promotion of experiments and experimental approaches; mini-workshop series (called ‘sprints’) that will bring together a small-group of partners to tackle a specific cause or issue; and an opportunity to track the outputs and publications of trials being conducted. Because of this tool, a new roadmap would be created for bridging the gap between funders and innovative research, thus supporting more experiments, and improving the process of research funding.
Tom Stafford is the senior research fellow at RoRI and a professor of cognitive science at the University of Sheffield, and he will be leading the implementation of this project. He also serves at the postgraduate taught programs director in the Department of Psychology, and he has amassed a large catalog of research-based publications on the topics of neuroscience and cognition as a researcher. Stafford will be supported by Albert Bravo-Biosca, the founding director of the Innovation Growth Lab, and the entire team at IGL.
The following partners also support this project: The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the Luxembourg National Research Fund, the Austrian Science Fund, and Health Research BC. In addition to supporting the development and implementation of the AFIRE platform, these partners will be compiling data on reviewer confidence and uncertainty, building on existing funder interest and the prior work of RoRI, and redesigning the review process of experiments to mitigate biases.
To learn more about this platform, read further news on this developing project, and meet the entire team working on this tool, visit the AFIRE website.
