It seems there’s a social network for everything and everybody these days. Not all of them take off, but I’m glad to see that ResearchGate has received funding to keep expanding.
ResearchGate announced yesterday their completion of its Series B financing. For those, like me, who don’t know what ResearchGate is; it’s essentially a social networking site for the scientific community.
The social networking site received a large amount of funding from Founders Fund which includes people like Luke Nosek, co-founder of PayPal. The other companies and people involved are Benchmark Capital, Accel Partners, Bebo co-founder Michael Birch and Yammer co-founder David O. Sacks. With their new capital, the company plans to invest in “transformational technologies and companies, particularly in the fields of medicine and biotechnology.”
“We are extremely pleased to have the support of prominent investors such as Luke Nosek and the rest of the Founders Fund team. Having been early investors in companies including Facebook and Palantir Technologies, it’s clear that Founders Fund is a firm that recognizes potential and can see how ResearchGate’s vision is being realized,” said Ijad Madisch, co-founder and CEO of ResearchGate. “With this round of financing, our main priority will be to pursue new innovations. We want to change the way scientific reputation is measured, calculated and built over time by providing our users with qualitative feedback, while enabling them to share their findings efficiently.”
Luke Nosek, a co-founder of Founders Fund, will also serve as a board member of ResearchGate. Nosek says that ResearchGate has the potential to change scientific discovery and “the way research is disseminated.”
ResearchGate has grown exponentially since its founding in 2008. The site now has 1.4 million members from 193 countries. The site allows scientists from all over the world to collaborate on research and exchange ideas.
The site just isn’t for medical research and other traditional forms of science though. Looking at the Web site’s home page, it breaks down the fields its members belong to. There are people exchanging research in the fields of design, education and even entertainment. It has a wide reach that seeks to allow professionals from any field to collaborate on new ideas and research from curing cancer to creating films.
Do you use ResearchGate? Does it seem like the future of scientific research? Let us know in the comments.