A Social Network Aims to Speed Up Progress in Science

27 April 2011

Ijad Madisch's profile on ResearchGate, the social networking website for scientists which he created.

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

A few years ago, a university researcher was having problems with an experiment that involved medical imaging. His adviser and his friends had no solutions. The researcher was Ijad Madisch at Harvard in Massachusetts.

IJAD MADISCH: "I was so frustrated. I said, you know, there has to be something online where I go, where people can, you know, present themselves as a scientist, and where they put their information about their research and their publications and you can search for it."

The solution was to start a scientific network to connect researchers and share information. ResearchGate is similar to another social network developed at Harvard -- Facebook. But Mr. Madisch says the purpose of his site is to make scientists more productive.

IJAD MADISCH: "My goal: to win the Nobel Prize. And I really believe in that. Like, if we think that ResearchGate will accelerate research in all the different fields, it will change the speed of science significantly in the future. So i definitely do believe that ResearchGate could win the Nobel Prize for that one day."

Investors liked the idea, including a former Facebook executive and the same investment group that put money into Twitter. So far, nine hundred thousand people have signed up as members of ResearchGate.