FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
A field is more than a topic. It’s the community, shared language and momentum that form around a specific opportunity in science or technology. Ocean alkalinity enhancement, cellular agriculture and frugal science are examples. Field building means taking a scattered set of ideas and, with focused funding and community, turning them into a recognized, self-sustaining area of work. Your field can be new, unproven and uncertain. We encourage that.
A Field Builder partners with the Experiment Foundation to design and run a grant program in their field. They recruit researchers and support them from application through funding.
The Experiment Foundation is a 501(c)(3) public charity that supports new ideas, people, and fields of science. Our mission is to embolden scientific curiosity.
They’re separate organizations run by different teams. We use Experiment to help support the logistics and administration of our grant programs.
No. You don’t need an academic position, a research degree, or an institutional affiliation. What matters is your vision for the field and your ability to bring people together around it. Past Field Builders have come from well outside traditional research, including party planning, biotech operations and economics consulting (see “Where are the Field Builders?”). If you’re working independently or between roles, say so in your application; it won’t count against you.
No. There’s no single formula, and we’re learning alongside you. Still, the Field Builders we’ve met and studied share a pattern: they pair funding with conviction about what’s possible. They spot overlooked people and ideas early. They back them with real belief as well as money. And they connect them to a growing network of collaborators, funders and institutions. To learn more, read “Where are the Field Builders?”
The payments platform we use can only send money to bank accounts in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. We recognize that science is a global endeavor and the research you support can take place anywhere, but to take part in the program, you and the researchers you fund will need a bank account in one of these countries.
No, we want each field to be led by a single Field Builder. If you and a collaborator are both interested, we encourage each of you to apply with your own field idea.
There are two parts: the application itself and a required metascience survey.
The application includes:
Questions about you and your background, plus one link that best represents your work
Your CV or resume
Short answers to five questions about your field:
- Describe the field you want to build.
- Who is already working in this space, and who should be?
- How would you run your grant program?
- Imagine it’s five years from now and your field has taken hold. What has changed?
- What is the strongest criticism of your field or strategy?
The metascience survey opens as soon as you submit, and every applicant must complete it. Judges won’t see your answers and they wont’ affect funding decisions. The Experiment Foundation will use the survey responses to better understand the metascience of Field Building and to improve the Accelerator.
At least 50, each working in one of five focus areas: Oceans, Climate, Conservation Technology, Toxicity, and Future Science.
Several judges review each application independently. They look at your vision for the field, how you’d find and bring together the people who could build it, and your judgment in spotting promising research and talent. Judges read each application as a whole, so no single answer decides the outcome.
Applications are due December 15, 2026. We'll notify selected Field Builders in February 2027 and hold a virtual orientation in March. Grant programs then launch on Experiment in waves through 2027.
Once you accept, we'll support you at every stage, from designing your grant program, to recruiting applicants, reviewing proposals, and making awards. Where the field goes from there is up to you.
We estimate about 30 hours over roughly a year, mostly around your program’s launch, recruiting applicants and choosing projects to fund.
Yes. You’ll receive a $5,000 honorarium for leading the work, separate from the $70,000 you award to researchers.
Each field builder will have $70,000. Grants will be administered to projects up to $10,000. To understand more about the project and grantee process, check out the early field builder leaders: Hyperspectral Biology and Living Thresholds .
Yes. Your network is a big part of why we chose you. We expect you to scout people who are already working in the field, or who should be. We will ask you to disclose any potential conflicts of interest to the Experiment Foundation team.
Yes. Your grant program has its own public page on Experiment, which lists every project you fund. Each funded project also gets a DOI, a permanent identifier that lets the work be cited like a publication.
The researchers. This is grant funding, not investment. We claim no ownership, equity, licensing rights or other intellectual property in the work your grants support.
Grantees are required to post at least one lab note on their Experiment project page within a year of receiving funding. The lab note shares progress on their work. We hope you’ll stay involved and keep building the community you started. We’ll also invite you to take part in optional metascience surveys about the program and about building your field.
