2024/02/01
Summary
We navigated the German government and Paul Heubel was able to join us as a Curriculum Specialist for Computational Climate Science, and we got a nice quote from our funder: “Wow, you really do just want to make this thing [global education in climate science] happen even if it doesn’t directly financially benefit you. You are very determined; it’s nice to see.”
Our January course in Computational Neuroscience launched with almost zero issues on operations and delivery. The results of the pilot seem already clear, but we will report them in a better format after the course completes. Importantly, by paying TAs by our payment policy and reducing their time, we were able to cut the suggested student fee in half and end up break-even for the course.
We have entered another R&D Partnership contract and received the PO just this week.
We submitted for $1.3 Million of government funding from NSF this month and $450k of foundation funding in grant applications.
We have $350k in the bank, $228k in billable (money on grants or contracts we could bill for now), and an additional $1,175,000 in long term accounts receivable (money on grants or contracts for the future). We have $1.8M in submitted grants, $0k in submitted contract bids, and $800k in grants we will submit in this quarter.
Program Updates
Sciencematch
January pilot course is running, and we have been asking for feedback from TAs on a near daily basis. General trend of learnings:
- Overall, the continuity between having the tutorial TA also guide more in projects is valued
- Having a higher density of experienced and high quality TAs is valuable
- More senior students can deal with less TA time better
- TA payment adjusted to COLA is acceptable
- Student timezone mismatching is a big problem
The Climate Impact Scholars Program got feedback on their first micropubs. The registration for the research seminars is here:
Scholar Nexus
PubPub is critically evaluating our design documentation, and it isn’t going that well. Product lacks a clear strategy to create an initial, small user group, useful product. We are struggling to figure it out.
Financial Report
Treasury Review
Bank of America Account: $200,456 USD
Lending Club Account: $65,443 USD
Mercury Account: $88,720 USD
Stripe: $0
TOTAL: $353,829 USD
TOTAL NM SPENDABLE: $265,889 USD
Note: I show Mercury account here for a financial picture overview, but it is not considered in our runway and budget calculations. It is budgeted and managed separately.
Fundraising Status
Received Donor Funds and Commitments
We did not receive any new funds this month. Gatsby owes us $50k after we provide them our yearly impact report.
In Discussion Donor Funds
We have submitted two NSF Grants:
- Training-based Workforce Development for Advanced Cyberinfrastructure: $1,000,000
- Innovations in Undergraduate STEM Education: $300,000
Tools Competition:
- Neuromatch Algorithm: $150k
- Implementation Competition: $100k
- OpenAI AI in Education Competitition: $100k
- Collaborative Learning Class Monitoring Software: $50k
We submitted a proposal for funding from Connected Minds totalling $150k over three years.
We are still waiting on the CREST D-MAP Supplement for $100k
Fundraising Plans
We are engaging with Simons Foundation on a new conference and school fund they are launching. We plan to submit to two R25s from the NIH for Short Courses in neuroscience this month.
We will apply for a $200,000 prize from the Einstein Foundation for supporting research quality.
Earned Income
We received $25,000 in payments and POs this month.
Financial Projections
Income
Our main sources of funding for this year will likely be government grants and earned income through R&D partnerships.
Major Costs
Our greatest upcoming costs are new hires, but we also expect an invoice for $15k from 2i2c.
Runway
Our runway is much better than it was a few months ago, and our out of cash date is March 2025.
Hiring, Team Changes, and People Updates
Next Hires
Fellow for Civic Science Program. Data Scientists and cloud service contractors for NMDA.
Other Notifications
We are hosting a workshop with several of our funders on funding international research collaborations.
We are launching a new website in the next two weeks. You can preview the messaging here while we finalize imagery and styling: www.dev.neuromatch.io