2023/04/28

Summary

We got our first non-academy earned income, are likely to secure our first contract for NMDA in the next couple of weeks. Open Publishing has initiated an advisory board and is currently fundraising. Academy has 4000 student applicants and we are extending applications by two weeks. Curriculum in climate is difficult due to dropouts and low-incentives for dayleads. We have $285,000 in the bank, $436,000 in accounts receivable, and $120,000 in projected grant income. We have hired two new administrative specialists: Surbhi Hablani and Viviana Greco.

Progress Updates

Data Analytics

We have our first contract in the pipeline, and it is likely to go through. It is small, but will let us figure out kinks in billing, contract work, etc and give us an example project we can link on our website. We are in the early stages of planning a grant with Simons for international neuro-lab collaborations between Ghana, Nepal, and labs in the US with the goal of setting up a sustainable research lab in both countries.

Open Publishing

We have initiated a partnership with Curvenote. They are creating a Scope of Work document to build the initial tech demo of our system that will help us further in fundraising. We have also been recruiting members to an advisory board and have currently secured the following people:
  • Ashley Farley - Gates Foundation
  • Laura Hanscom - MIT Libraries
  • Sean Takats - CEO Zotero (in conversation)
  • Others in earlier stages of discussion.

Community

VSS Matching event is next week! This is our first paid customer for matchmaking. CCN, and Cosyne have said they want to run it again. I am currently doing cold-outreach to see if this is an appealing service to people that aren’t just our friends already. Using our new website  matching.neuromatch.io  to help with this.

I submitted a ‘statement’ to the community group indicating that conference, as it stands, is not a successful program and we need to rework it piece by piece. General agreement in the group to focus on matching and networking activities first. Some good ideas for scientific communication ‘unconferences’ and content matching to follow it.

Academy

We have over 4000 student signups, with Climate looking likely to break 1,000. We are seeing a younger mix of applicants this year with more industry representation on the Climate side. Working on knowledge transfer to our two new administrative specialists. They will help with items like matching, pre-pod, survey work, and email and discord support. Primary difficulties at this point are Climate curriculum. The team had a lot of curriculum team members drop out and others had to step in to take their place on top of the volunteer work they were already doing.

A new academy board was formed and is first focusing on measures of success and desired outcomes to track.

Financial Report

Treasury Review

Bank of America Account: $172,591 USD
Lending Club Account: $112,976 USD
TOTAL: $285,567 USD

Fundraising Status

Received Donor Funds and Commitments
We received $55,000 CAD from our Open Science prize.

Gatsby has confirmed they will send their next $45,000 based on our progress report. Konrad has disbursed $36,000 in funds that were intended for COSMO but can be given to Neuromatch. And we have secured a NASA grant for $250,000 that will pay out over two years. Templeton has also confirmed their additional payment after our progress report, netting another $100,000.

Accounts Receivable in the short term is ~$436,000.
In Discussion Donor Funds
Deepmind is in discussion on a donation for development of a new course. So is Kavli.

We are not getting responses on our Sloan proposal for NMDA activities and workshops.

Unfortunately, Simons rejected our $150,000 proposal for the brain and behavior course. They said they are still generally interested in this and it was competitive, but they had a much larger number of applicants than expected as this is the final year of SCGB. We should look forward to new funds from their new big $750,000 M fund.
Fundraising Plans
Neuromatch is pursuing, with support from our contracted grant writer (Optimize Science), two federal grants from the National Science Foundation:
  • Innovations in Graduate Education: ~$350,000
  • INCLUDES: $10,000,000 (!)


Financial Projections

Earned Income
We will earn approximately $2,000 from matching as a service and $12,000 from NMDA service contracts.
Donations
Accounts receivable noted above. In addition to those amounts we have $90,000 more coming from Gatsby.
Major Costs
Our grant writing consultant will likely represent $30,000 in charges.
Runway

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Hiring, Team Changes, and People Updates

Operations/Admin

We have hired two administrative specialists to work part time as contractors to handle survey work, reporting, support emails, and help with matching, documentation, and TA selection scripts.

Next Hires

I anticipate that our next hires will be in marketing/comms/graphic design. We could strengthen the look and feel of our websites, and volunteer teams are struggling with coordinating comms strategy. A single dedicated person will be able to coordinate many more volunteers for outreach while also providing more strategic, planned, and regular social postings. We will not select the branding consultants that we met with.

Market Trends and World Event Impact on Neuromatch

GPT-4 and AI Tech
Khan Academy is moving to AI personal tutors. Schmidt Futures is investing heavily in AI based K-12 education. LLMs may superpower some jobs and eliminate some others. We are exploring how to use them to make Neuromatch Academy more efficient. We are leveraging them in our matching process.

Other Notifications

None.