Astera Institute
@AsteraInstitute
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We empower visionary, high-leverage science and technology projects with the capacity to create transformative progress for human civilization.
Joined December 2020
💫Applications are open for Astera’s first residency cohort💫. We are seeking creative, high-agency scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs passionate about building open projects for public benefit 🧵
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We are launching two new opportunities in Science: a Science EIR program & a Request for Ideas. Help us think scientifically about how to solve bottlenecks in publishing. Please spread the word!.
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Many exciting announcements rolled into one: we're thrilled to share that we've brought on @catehall as the new CEO of @AsteraInstitute to help drive forward our vision to amplify and accelerate science. Also, we're hiring! 🚀🧪.
AI is about to change everything & Astera is on a mission to rebuild the machinery of science for a radically different future. We’re hiring a visionary team to help leverage our $2.5B endowment to make science better, faster, cheaper & more widely shared. The future is open 🧵.
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We’re hiring for Rejuvenome (aging), Obelisk (AI), Astera VC and researcher roles.
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We’re excited to announce @catehall is joining us as Executive Director! Cate’s background ranges from law to professional poker to biotech, and we’re excited for her to bring her approach to experimentation, risk, and systems-level thinking to what we’re building.
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We believe the future is open. Open data coupled with the explosion of compute will accelerate what is possible with science. We’re thrilled that John Wilbanks @wilbanks is joining Astera as our first Head of Data to drive this vision.
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Our Data group is launching a new project to generate and publish massive amounts of genomic and phenotypic data from diverse microbial species. You can help steer this effort for maximum impact by submitting to our RFI. More details in thread 🔽
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Some exciting updates from @AsteraInstitute! Check out our new website for latest on our work in AGI, science, & climate 👇Quick thread on our newest area of growth - evolution of open scientific publishing 📖🧵.
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How can philanthropy power change in emerging technologies? Kyle McEneaney is joining Astera as our first Head of Strategic Investments to drive our approach in catalytic philanthropy for science and technology 🧵
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The next deadline for our Open Science Fellowship is fast approaching! We’re looking for visionary builders developing new tools for openly sharing scientific knowledge.
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90% of startups ultimately fail. Failure is a necessary part of making new things, but failing well takes courage and foresight to do what it takes to wind down a company in a way that informs and empowers future efforts.
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New on Human Readable, a conversation between @thisischristina and Astera resident @erika_alden_d about agency, microbes, Mars, and the practice of science.
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New Mars microbes lab just dropped. We @AsteraInstitute are so excited to be a part of their journey and seeing our scientist-in-residence @erika_alden_d take off!.
Introducing Pioneer Labs, a startup engineering microbes for Mars 🚀🌼 @Pioneer__Labs.
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Could open public review like the superconductor debate have sped up rigorous evals of ~4.6k journal articles that were retracted in 2022? If you think yes, put (our) money where your mouth is by enabling the experiment
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Looking forward to Day 2 with all these smart, dedicated people giving their time to think hard about ways we might support the field of synbio 📈🌱
Day 1 of the @AsteraInstitute workshop was so fun! Got to meet some sci twitter locals IRL and give em big ol hugs. Weirdly productive day with lots of cool discourse. Really looking forward to the report that comes out of this effort. Exciting. 🧬🚀💚.
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Selected Fellows will be employed full-time by Astera and, in addition to a salary, will receive up to $350,000 in support of their projects. Apply by December 31st:
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Check out our first mathematics initiative!.
For a long time I have had an interest in automatic theorem proving, and have done a small amount of research in the area. I am happy to say that I will soon be stepping up these efforts, thanks to a generous grant from the Astera Institute. 1/.
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For guaranteed consideration, apply by November 22 on our website
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Beautiful post from the folks at Pioneer Labs, an Astera residency-incubated project. Erika & team are engineering microbes for extraterrestrial biology, while leaving the ladder down for others by thoroughly documenting both experimental successes & failures. We love to see it!.
Pioneer's first proof of concept experiment checks out. We transferred a Mars-relevant property from one microbe to another. 🚀🦠. How? ⬇️.
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We believe that openness is the key to faster, cheaper, and better innovation, and that many public goods with the potential to broadly increase human flourishing are systematically under-produced by government, academia, and markets
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We are looking for people with the creative vision & technical skills to build new publishing tools to Upgrade Scientific Dialogue. Apply to our first Science Entrepreneur-in-Residence program.
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We want to provide talented people freedom and support to create new pieces of the machinery of science that are adapted to the era of advanced technology that we’re entering. Learn more about Astera’s residency program and apply via our website
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Did you see we launched our first Science EIR program? Do you know any technical people who have the skills to build new publishing tools? Send them here.
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Microbes make up 95% of biological diversity on earth and have had enormous impact on our understanding of basic science and applied biotechnology. Yet less than 0.001% of species have been studied to date.
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We are looking for high-agency entrepreneurs and engineers who are ready to make sharing research easier and more interactive.
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3. “No secret sauce”: Residents must be enthusiastic about openness not only on the project level but on the metascience level, which means making it easy for others to learn both positive and negative lessons from their work.
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We want to help address these gaps by seeding and supporting a vibrant ecosystem of mission-driven, open projects that can catalyze further private and public sector advancements.
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The central organizing principle of the residency is an unwavering commitment to leveraging open science and non-proprietary technology for the public benefit.
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To shepherd this expanding program at @AsteraInstitute, we’re excited to welcome Michele Weber as our newly appointed Dir of Science w @seemaychou heading strategy. Read about our team:.
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His vision is revolutionary and necessary for this time of change in how science is made.
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Want to be considered for our Astera Science EIR program in 2023? Submit your materials by November 6. Applications received after the 6th will be reviewed in Q1 of 2024.
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4. Future-focused: Our view is that we are approaching a technological discontinuity, and we prefer projects that will leverage the resulting opportunities or create new ones.
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2. High-impact: They must have line of sight to generating positive impact on a societal scale (though additional years of work and funding might be necessary). We particularly like projects that have the potential to catalyze government or market funding in new directions.
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We want to fill this gap. We’re calling for a diverse group of experts and practitioners working across application domains and across the tree of life to join us and provide input to guide our long-term prioritization of species, data types, and protocols.
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Go to our website to learn more about the project and share your thoughts for our current RFI, due February 24th
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And we're off to the races. Our very own Michele Weber and @michael_nielsen are #Metascience2023 so come find them to say hi and share your ideas 👋.
We're just a few hours away from the start of the Metascience 2023 Conference! Whether you're attending in person or virtually, join the conversation by using #metascience2023. ℹ️ Agenda: .💻 Virtual Registration:
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We were honored to support brilliant founders Kasia Gora and @joshuamarch in sharing some of this knowledge with the wider community. You can download their white paper from the Astera website
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At the same time, high quality data on biological function has been a critical bottleneck in the advancement of AI for understanding and engineering biology.
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Key constraints for our residencies include:.1. Open-first: Projects must yield public (open, accessible, nonproprietary) products and research that are unlikely to be created otherwise.
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Read the full Q&A with John and subscribe to our new newsletter, Human Readable, on Substack
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“In answering the question, ‘Can I change the world?” you learn about yourself (your own abilities and limits) and the universe (how it works and what is possible to change).’”
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Where do you see clear technological bottlenecks currently limiting innovation in life sciences publishing? Send us your ideas for Unblocking Scientific Publishing. #openscience.
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So many people are thinking about these problems. Let’s do some experiments together. Come implement your solution @AsteraInstitute.
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We have two very good engines for scaling and distributing good things in the world: markets and governments. But markets and governments have some limitations that can prevent them from scaling good things well, or quickly.
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At Astera we are rebuilding the machinery of science for our abundant future. This means new datasets, infrastructure, and institutions for advancing science. John brings incredible experience to Astera from the world of Open Science.
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We are eager to support work like Kasia and Josh’s towards preserving knowledge and keeping it open. If you are a founder with resources that you’d like to share, please reach out to us at info@astera.org.
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Reminder of the upcoming #Metascience2023 conference! Should be an exciting one, and we've sponsored virtual streaming to expand access to this important conversation.
One week left until #Metascience2023! If you’re unable to join us in person, we are excited to announce that we are offering a free virtual streaming option. Streaming sponsored by @AsteraInstitute. Agenda: Virtual Registration:
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Philanthropy is uniquely suited to address market or government failures because of its flexibility with respect to time and outcomes. Philanthropy can both act quicker and also take a longer view than those institutions.
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This is a compelling opportunity for philanthropy: to mobilize the far greater resources in markets and government toward scaling good things by altering incentives and/or filling gaps those other actors by their nature cannot.
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After five years and raising $40M from top investors, the shifting market brought them to the end of the road. They wanted to share what they learned from this difficult process with the wider community of founders and innovators.
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So, why should philanthropies invest? Philanthropy’s advantage is that it can address risks others can’t or won’t (because they can’t price the risk or the return, or capture value on a particular time frame, etc.).
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There may not be a perfect formula, but philanthropies that can overlay a scarcity mindset – which undergirds markets’ ability to innovate – on top of an abundance toolset – government’s power to scale – are positioned to outperform.
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Read Kyle’s full post about his philosophy of catalytic philanthropy on Su*stack
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Stay tuned via our website and twitter. If you have Qs or big ideas, more re: how we approach problem-solving at Astera on our new strategy page.
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There are so many opportunities for intervention in how emerging science and technology are funded and translated into impact. We hope a new, independent institution like Astera can have an unreasonably outsized impact here.
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How we share info in life sciences impacts pace of progress. To spur innovation in how research results are exchanged & discussed, we intend to expand investment here. Stay tuned for more deets on this in coming months!.
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Have you been frustrated with the many problems plaguing scientific publishing? Send us your perspective on the technical bottlenecks that are limiting innovation in this space. We are collecting ideas here:.
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Could new infrastructure improve scientific dialogue? Come help us build the upgrade. The opportunity for Science Entrepreneurs-in-Residence @AsteraInstitute is still open.
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Mobilizing governments and markets for scale is highly efficient. For philanthropy, focusing on things those institutions can’t or won’t do well helps avoid duplication of effort and waste of scarce, flexible philanthropic capital.
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Investing can serve as a price discovery mechanism to resolve this tension. Putting a “price” on philanthropic support — making a grant recoverable upon certain milestones; lending on favorable terms; or sharing in underlying economics —.
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It's true! Exciting things are already in the works. There's no need to wait for those who want to jump in:
I think about a lot. Would love to see more people working on this! @AsteraInstitute wants to fund projects.
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Enormous amounts of important and socially valuable science, knowledge, and IP disappears when companies wind down, locked away in private repositories and models, personal anecdotes, or simply lost.
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— helps minimize adverse behavior (people undervalue “free” things), provides a signal of utility (people don’t “pay” for things they don’t need), and creates a source of sustainability (returns can be recycled into new philanthropic initiatives).
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But then one of philanthropy’s main challenges is how to introduce and promote discipline and efficiency as risks are retired and initiatives become ready for markets or governments to scale them.
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