Instrumentl helps match scientists with the best research grants

Being a scientist means investigating why something happens and what corrective actions can be taken to fix problems. But any project requires funding, and it’s here that researchers spend a great deal of their time — not working on solutions, but rather searching for and composing proposals for grants. Instrumentl has launched to streamline this process, using artificial intelligence to pair scientists with the best grants across federal, corporate, state, and private levels.

Researchers enter details about their project, and Instrumentl handles the rest, removing the task of scouring the internet or combing through databases. The company provides email notifications and dashboard alerts about upcoming deadlines, while also providing updates of new funding options that pop up. Institutions that have received grants through Instrumentl include the Smithsonian, McGill, Cornell University, and the University of Oxford.

Instrumentl’s head of product, Gauri Manglik, told VentureBeat that her company is solving a big pain point in the research community — scientists are spending “half of their time looking for and applying to grants, which is crazy because it means our scientific progress is at half capacity.”

Angela Braren, Instrumentl cofounder and chief executive, promises that the company will work for researchers in any industry, from hard science to social sciences to the humanities — although at launch it’s focusing on the biological science space. But don’t call Instrumentl a crowdsourcing platform, although it was one in a previous life. The current iteration of the service only automates the search process, leaving the actual application up to the researcher.

And Instrumentl claims no responsibility when it comes to ensuring that research projects are legitimate, leaving that duty to the funders, who have expert panels. “What is our responsibility is discovering and recommending grants where our researchers have the highest change of success,” Braren explained, offering the analogy that “we’re kind of like Tinder for research grants.”

Grants on the platform range from $1,000 to $100 million.

Using Instrumentl is free for 14 days and requires no long-term contract. However, there are paid plans starting at $29 per month for individual researchers with one project that needs funding and $35 per month per project for larger teams.

The company was started by Braren and fellow cofounder Katharine Corriveau based on their experience as researchers. Barren, who previously worked as a grants administrator, discovered that the process was broken and felt there needed to be a better way. Right now, researchers organize their grant proposals using Microsoft Word and Google, but the launch of Instrumentl could bring relief and enable scientists to get back to focusing on things that could potentially save lives or change the world.

“There’s $160 billion in research grant funding that’s floating around, not being allocated efficiently,” Braren shared. “Researchers waste half of their week just trying to find and apply to these opportunities. That’s 50 percent of their week that they’re NOT working to mitigate climate change and cure disease. We’re working to change this.”