SUPPORTING REPRODUCIBILITY INITIATIVES FOR THE BIOMEDICAL COMMUNITY – RICOCHET HAS BEEN AWARDED BY WORLD-LEADING INNOVATION GRANT FROM DIGITAL SCIENCE
Ricochet, the new tool by Ripeta, llc is the latest research tool to receive up to $30K (£25K) from the prestigious Catalyst Grant, courtesy of Digital Science – the technology company responsible for helping the global research community work smarter and discover more.
Founded by a team of three science-related experts who joined forces whilst working at Washington University in St. Louis, Ricochet was developed to assess, design, and disseminate practices and measures to improve the reproducibility of science with minimal burden on scientists, starting with the biomedical sciences.
Ricochet’s main focus is on assessing the quality of the reporting and robustness of the scientific method rather than the quality of the science.
Ripeta, llc Co-Founder and biomedical expert Dr Leslie McIntosh, shares her thoughts on receiving a Catalyst Grant:
“Technological advances, increased data, and complex analytical techniques have increased scientific discovery, yet convoluted the process of scientific reproducibility. At Ripeta, we are building the Ricochet toolset to improve reproducibility – separating the scientific method from the science. We are excited to win the Catalyst Grant to propel this work forward over the next year.”
Steve Scott, Director of Portfolio Development at Digital Science and one of the Catalyst Grant judges said:
“Reproducibility is one of the biggest challenges for the research and evidence community, so it’s great to know that Ricochet is working to improve this key area, starting with biomedical science research.
“Twice a year we open the Catalyst Grant to applications from all over the world – and each year we receive more applications. This year we were especially pleased to have received 30% of our applications from women, a trend we hope to see continue.
“The people best positioned to know what innovations are needed are researchers themselves – but it’s incredibly hard for those with an idea to secure early-stage funding – finding investors who understand the research market is a challenge, meaning many potentially successful ideas remain just that, ‘ideas’. That’s exactly why we created the Catalyst Grant – our financial support, alongside our advice makes a real difference.”
-ENDS-
Notes to editor
About the Catalyst Grant from Digital Science
Digital Science, the organisation that revealed how Brexit would cost the UK’s research and evidence market a whopping £1 billion, has created an innovation-friendly environment for anyone with an early stage idea that could impact global research, it’s called the Catalyst Grant. Twice a year anyone with an idea that could improve research can apply for up to £25K ($30K) and if awarded, they will receive incubator-type support from market-leading experts to help create their product and get it into the hands of the people who need it most.
About Ricochet by Ripeta, llc
Read more and meet the Ripeta team here.
Previous Awardees
Previous awardees of the grant include TetraScience (Boston, USA) – a mission control for research and development designed to accelerate scientific discovery by enhancing productivity; Figures (New York, USA) – a workflow solution to manage figure data including creation, tracking, editing and discussion – all on one platform; HackScience (London, UK) – a platform enabling scientists to create, share and control open and affordable lab automation tools; Nutonian (Boston, USA) an AI modeling engine that analyses vast amounts of structured data billions of times per second to build the most accurate and actionable models.
See full list of awardees here.
How to apply
If you’re a researcher with an idea, or even if you are new to research but want to challenge yourself to come up with an idea that would impact the research and evidence industry, you can apply for the Catalyst Grant before 31st December 2017 here.