Scholarly research teams and startups are crucial catalysts of scientific advancement. Nevertheless, certain initiatives, such as the Hubble Space Telescope or the Human Genome Project, are too expansive for any singular academic laboratory or loose coalition. Moreover, they aren’t immediately lucrative enough for industry to undertake.

This is the void that researchers at MIT aimed to address when they conceptualized focused research organizations, or FROs. They define a FRO as a novel type of organization, often funded through philanthropy, that embarks on extensive research projects utilizing tightly coordinated teams to generate a public benefit that expedites scientific advancement.

The initial concept for focused research organizations emerged from discussions among researchers, predominantly those engaged in mapping the brain in MIT Professor Ed Boyden’s lab. However, as they started to publish their ideas, the researchers recognized that FROs could serve as a potent mechanism to unlock scientific breakthroughs in various other domains.

“We were quite pleasantly surprised by the scope of fields where we encounter FRO-shaped challenges,” says Adam Marblestone, a former MIT research scientist who co-founded the nonprofit Convergent Research to aid in the establishment of FROs in 2021. “Convergent has received FRO proposals spanning climate, materials science, chemistry, biology — we have even initiated an FRO focused on software for mathematics. One wouldn’t anticipate math to be an area with a significant technological research bottleneck, but we discovered a pressing software engineering challenge that needed resolution.”

Marblestone was instrumental in shaping the idea of focused research organizations at MIT alongside a group that included Andrew Payne SM ’17, PhD ’21 and Sam Rodriques PhD ’19, who were PhD candidates in Boyden’s lab at that time. Since then, the FRO idea has gained traction. Convergent has played a role in attracting philanthropic funding for FROs aimed at deciphering the immune system, identifying unintended drug targets, and examining the effects of carbon dioxide removal in our oceans.

Since its establishment in 2021, Convergent has facilitated the launch of 10 FROs. Many of these organizations have already produced essential tools for enhancing our comprehension of the world — and their leaders feel that the most exciting developments are still to come.

“We’re beginning to see these initial open-source tools released in crucial areas,” Marblestone notes. “We’re witnessing the first tangible evidence that FROs are effective, because no other entity could have disclosed these tools, and I anticipate that 2025 will be a pivotal year for our newer FROs to release new datasets and tools.”

A fresh model

Marblestone joined Boyden’s lab in 2014 as a research scientist following his PhD at Harvard University. He also held a new role as director of scientific architecture at the MIT Media Lab, which Boyden helped establish, where he aimed to coordinate individual research efforts into larger projects. His own inquiries focused on overcoming the obstacles of measuring brain activity at extensive scales.

Marblestone engaged in discussions about these and other large-scale neuroscience issues with Payne and Rodriques, prompting the researchers to consider broader gaps in scientific funding.

“The collective experiences of myself, Sam, Andrew, Ed, and others in launching various large brain-mapping initiatives convinced us of the lack of support for medium-sized scientific and engineering teams with startup-inspired frameworks, intended for the nonprofit objective of developing scientific infrastructure,” Marblestone explains.

Through MIT, the researchers also connected with Tom Kalil, who was at that time working as the U.S. deputy director for technology and innovation. Rodriques incorporated the idea of a focused research organization as the concluding chapter of his PhD dissertation in 2019.

“Ed consistently encouraged us to aspire very, very high,” Rodriques states. “We were always aiming to address the most challenging issues in biology and strategizing on how to confront them. My dissertation essentially culminated in articulating why we needed a new structure resembling a company, yet nonprofit and committed to scientific endeavors.”

During a fellowship with the Federation of American Scientists in 2020, and in collaboration with Kalil, Marblestone interviewed scientists in numerous fields outside of neuroscience, discovering that the funding gap was prevalent across disciplines.

When Rodriques and Marblestone published an essay regarding their discoveries, it helped draw philanthropic funding, which Marblestone, Kalil, and co-founder Anastasia Gamick utilized to launch Convergent Research, a nonprofit scientific studio dedicated to establishing FROs.

“I view Ed’s lab as a melting pot where myself, Ed, Sam, and others collaborated on defining a need and pinpointing specific projects that could potentially function as FROs,” Marblestone elaborates. “All those ideas were later refined when we founded Convergent Research.”

In 2021, Convergent assisted in the launch of the first FROs: E11 Bio, led by Payne, focused on developing tools to comprehend how the brain is structured, and Cultivarium, an FRO facilitating easier access to microorganisms for use in synthetic biology.

“From our brain-mapping research, we began to ask, ‘Are there other initiatives resembling this that aren’t receiving funding?’” Payne explains. “We recognized a void in the research ecosystem, where many of these interdisciplinary, team-centric science initiatives were being systematically overlooked. We anticipated that securing funding for these projects would yield remarkable outcomes.”

Tools to enhance science

Early advancements from the inaugural focused research organizations have reinforced Marblestone’s conviction that they’re addressing a significant need.

[C]Worthy is the FRO focused on creating tools to guarantee the safe, ocean-based removal of carbon dioxide. It has recently launched an interactive map detailing alkaline activity to augment our understanding of one technique for sequestering carbon known as ocean alkalinity enhancement. Last year, a mathematics FRO, Lean, introduced a programming language and proof assistant that was employed by Google’s DeepMind AI lab to tackle challenges in the International Mathematical Olympiad, achieving results equivalent to a silver medalist for the first time. The synthetic biology FRO Cultivarium has already unveiled software capable of predicting growth conditions for microbes based on their genetic information.

Last year, E11 Bio showcased a novel approach for mapping the brain called PRISM, which it employed to outline a section of the mouse hippocampus. It plans to make the data and mapping tool accessible to all researchers in the coming months.

“Much of this initial work has demonstrated that you can assemble a highly skilled team and move quickly from conception to execution,” Payne states. “The subsequent phase is proving that FROs can sustain this momentum and develop even more datasets and tools, establish larger collaborations, and expand their impact.”

Payne attributes the nurturing of an environment where researchers could contemplate issues beyond their distinct fields to Boyden’s influence.

“Ed’s lab provided a profoundly intellectually stimulating and collaborative atmosphere,” Payne remarks. “He trains his students to prioritize impact and work backward. It was a collective of individuals considering how they would alter the world, making it an exceptionally conducive space for cultivating the FRO concept.”

Marblestone believes that supporting FROs has been the most impactful endeavor of his career. Nonetheless, he asserts that the success of FROs should be evaluated over approximately 10-year spans and will rely not only on the tools they produce but also on whether they launch companies, partner with other institutions, and initiate larger, enduring initiatives to implement their creations.

“Initially, we feared that individuals wouldn’t be inclined to join these organizations since they don’t offer tenure or equity in a startup environment,” Marblestone admits. “However, we have successfully recruited outstanding leaders, scientists, engineers, and others to form highly motivated teams. This serves as compelling evidence that this initiative is effective. As we cultivate strong projects and favorable outcomes, I hope it will generate a momentum where funding these concepts becomes simpler, more scientists will devise them, and I believe we are beginning to observe that.”