• Question: How much money have you already invested into your research? And has it made any significant improvements or helped with any findings?

    Asked by johndee to Carla, Madgie, Nick, Vicky, Werner on 14 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Werner Muller

      Werner Muller answered on 14 Nov 2013:

      The question should be, how much public money was spend on the research I am doing. It is hard to come up with the correct figure and there is a fluctuation in the money. Also there is a lot of money invested in research buildings and infrastructure that is vital for my research. In the research we came up for example with a new compound that might be useful in the future but it takes many years until we know.

    • Photo: Nick Groves-Kirkby

      Nick Groves-Kirkby answered on 14 Nov 2013:

      My research is fairly cheap — I can do most of it with a decent laptop and a good internet connection. However, I do rely a lot on other people’s data, which they’ve often spent a lot to collect.

      Scientific research can be expensive though, particularly if you do lots of experiments. At the level I work (PhD student) people can spend up to around£10,000 per year on their work. As you get more experienced you get to control bigger budgets, and do bigger experiments. Some research projects can be very expensive — for example, the Human Genome Project cost over $2bn. The results are used by almost everyone who works in genetics, so it’s probably worth it.

      As a PhD student I also get paid a salary, which allows me to train and learn how to be a research scientist. It also allows me to travel so I can meet and learn from other scientists. Within the next year I hope I’ll have some good findings that will be worth what I’m being paid!

    • Photo: Vicky Forster

      Vicky Forster answered on 20 Nov 2013:

      Good question. Medical research is really, really expensive. For the 3.5 years of my PhD, it cost about £200,000 (and most of this did not go to me!). This is because the machinery and equipment we use is very expensive- and a lot of it can only be used once before throwing it away, if for example it is contaminated with chemicals. However it does work – I am just about to publish the findings of my PhD research so that other scientists can read it and hopefully build on it.

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