About FROs — Convergent Research

Academic research groups and startup companies are essential to science and technology development. But there are some projects they just aren’t suited for. A university astronomy lab couldn’t have launched the Hubble Space Telescope on its own, nor would a venture-backed startup have built the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Hubble and CERN illustrate a common pattern in science: a need for projects that are bigger than an academic lab can undertake, more coordinated than a loose consortium or themed department, and not directly profitable enough to be a venture-backed startup or industrial R&D project. Focused Research Organizations (FROs) are a new type of scientific institution designed to fill this gap. In brief, the defining features of an FRO are that: They are “focused” in that they pursue prespecified, quantifiable technical milestones rather than open-ended, blue-sky research. They must achieve these milestones within a finite time (usually ~5 years) to avoid mission creep and

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• Yoyo Yuan