About this episode
Ilan Gur always wanted to build things. But after finishing his PhD in material science at UC Berkeley, he says he “bounced around, feeling like a misfit.” He left the publish-or-perish world of academia, and burned through a few million dollars before realizing that venture capital isn’t the right way to fund applied research, either.
If solving a problem like pandemic preparedness isn’t immediately profitable, the market won’t solve it, Gur, who founded the fellowship programs Cyclotron Road and Activate, now argues. That’s why he thinks the US needs a new way to allot R&D funds based on impact, not profits, and in an essay for the July issue of Technology Review, he calls for a new playbook for government funding of applied research. We sat down with him to learn more about why the current system of R&D funding is out of date, and how a new one could help the US better address its current needs as well as prepare for the future.
Episode graphic by Ian Grandjean
