Print“Our goal is to free knowledge from the ivory tower, to digitalize it, and make it accessible for everyone in order to accelerate scientific progress.”
ResearchGate, a professional social network for scientists, has raised $35 million in a series C financing round from a group of investors to grow its open science platform. Bill Gates and Tenaya Capital led the round with participation from Dragoneer Investment Group, Thrive Capital, and existing investors Benchmark and Founders Fund.
The idea behind ResearchGate is to facilitate sharing by the research community by connecting scientists, data, and resources.
“Our goal is to free knowledge from the ivory tower, to digitalize it, and make it accessible for everyone in order to accelerate scientific progress,” says Ijad Madisch, ResearchGate co-founder and CEO. “To ensure everyone has the possibility to lead a healthy and productive life, science has to come up with new solutions to eradicate diseases and spread new knowledge quickly and effectively. We are building the digital infrastructure to make this happen.”
The new capital will be used to advance the network’s sharing and search capabilities for scientific data online, including raw data and data from failed experiments. ResearchGate is also working to improve the way scientific reputation is measured.
The company is based in Berlin and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded five years ago by Ijad Madisch and Sören Hofmayer, and computer scientist Horst Fickenscher, the network currently has more than 2.9 million members who publish and distribute their research on the site.
June 05, 2013
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-bill_gates_leads_investment_in_open_science_initiative.html
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