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Focused Research Organization
Convergent Research is an incubator for philanthropic ventures founded in 2021 and funded by Eric Schmidt, Wendy Schmidt and Ken Griffin as part of the Schmidt Futures Network. Convergent Research is designed to identify high-impact scientific or technological R&D fields, then launch companies to address these fields with a structure they call ''Focused Research Organizations'' (FROs). As of 2023, there are 7 FROs. Focused Research Organizations (FROs) A Focused Research Organization, or FRO, is a type of non-profit organization designed to address technical problems or perform scientific research. They differ from academic research labs in that they have medium-to-large size teams with corporate structures, embrace projects which are unlikely to yield publishable results, and frequently involve scientists and engineers collaborating across disciplines. FRO projects are not profitable enough in their initial stages for them to constitute a startup company, and unlike think tank ...
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Eric Schmidt
Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and former computer engineer who was the chief executive officer of Google from 2001 to 2011 and the company's chairman, executive chairman from 2011 to 2015. He also was the executive chairman of parent company Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 2017, and technical advisor at Alphabet from 2017 to 2020. Since 2025, he has been the CEO of Relativity Space, an aerospace manufacturing company. As of May 2025, he's the world's 55th wealthiest person according to ''Bloomberg Billionaires Index'' with an estimated net worth of 32 billion. As an intern at Bell Labs, Schmidt in 1975 was co-author of Lex (software), Lex, a software program to generate Lexical analysis, lexical analysers for the Unix Operating system, computer operating system. In 1983, he joined Sun Microsystems and worked in various roles. From 1997 to 2001, he was chief executive officer (CEO) of Novell. Schmidt has been on various other boards in acad ...
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Wendy Schmidt
Wendy Susan Schmidt (''née'' Boyle) is an American businesswoman and philanthropist. She is the wife of Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, whom she met in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the president of the Schmidt Family Foundation, which holds over $1 billion in assets. Biography She was born in 1955 in Orange, New Jersey. Her parents owned an interior design firm, Boyle Design Associates. She graduated from Smith College in 1977 and attended graduate school at Berkeley. While there, she met Eric Schmidt, then a doctoral student in computer science, and edited his thesis. They married in June 1980. After graduating in 1981 with a master's degree in journalism, she joined the marketing department of Sun Microsystems, where Eric Schmidt later worked as well. She left Sun in 1986 to start an interior design firm, which she ran for 16 years. Wendy and Eric Schmidt had two daughters, Sophie and Alison. Alison died in 2017 from an illness ...
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Kenneth C
Kenneth is a given name of Gaelic origin. The name is an Anglicised form of two entirely different Gaelic personal names: ''Cainnech'' and '' Cináed''. The modern Gaelic form of ''Cainnech'' is ''Coinneach''; the name was derived from a byname meaning "handsome", "comely". Etymology The second part of the name ''Cinaed'' is derived either from the Celtic ''*aidhu'', meaning "fire", or else Brittonic ''jʉ:ð'' meaning "lord". People Fictional characters * Kenneth Widmerpool, character in Anthony Powell's novel sequence ''A Dance to the Music of Time'' * Kenneth Parcell from 30 Rock Places In the United States: * Kenneth, Minnesota * Kenneth City, Florida In Scotland: * Inch Kenneth Inch Kenneth () is a small grassy island off the west coast of the Isle of Mull, in Scotland. It is at the entrance of Loch na Keal, to the south of Ulva. It is part of the Loch na Keal National Scenic Area, one of 40 in Scotland. It is within ..., an island off the west coast of the ...
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Schmidt Futures
Schmidt Futures is a philanthropic venture founded by Eric Schmidt and Wendy Schmidt in 2017. The philanthropy funds science and technology research and talent networking programs. The organization's grants include large-scale "moonshots". Schmidt Futures is based in New York City with offices in Washington, D.C., and London. Scope of work Schmidt Futures funds basic research for the public good in science, technology, and society. The organization searches for talented people and focuses them on hard problems through networks and competitions, new research or policy organizations, and scholarships and fellowships. In addition to basic science, Schmidt Futures also funds innovations toward basic societal needs such as internet access, COVID-19 relief, poverty relief, and relief for emigrants from recent war in Afghanistan and Ukraine. Programs Science and technology * Advanced computing for scientific research and development * Artificial intelligence * Awards for excellenc ...
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Non-profit Organization
A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or social benefit, as opposed to an entity that operates as a business aiming to generate a Profit (accounting), profit for its owners. A nonprofit organization is subject to the non-distribution constraint: any revenues that exceed expenses must be committed to the organization's purpose, not taken by private parties. Depending on the local laws, charities are regularly organized as non-profits. A host of organizations may be non-profit, including some political organizations, schools, hospitals, business associations, churches, foundations, social clubs, and consumer cooperatives. Nonprofit entities may seek approval from governments to be Tax exemption, tax-exempt, and some may also qualify to receive tax-deductible contributions, but an enti ...
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Federation Of American Scientists
The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) is an American nonprofit global policy think tank with the stated intent of using science and scientific analysis to attempt to make the world more secure. FAS was founded in 1945 by a group of scientists, some of whom had previously contributed to the development of nuclear weapons in the Manhattan Project. The Federation of American Scientists states that it aims to reduce the amount of nuclear weapons that are in use, and prevent nuclear and radiological terrorism. It says it aims to present high standards for nuclear energy's safety and security, illuminate government secrecy practices, as well as track and eliminate the global illicit trade of conventional, nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. With 100 sponsors, the Federation of American Scientists says that it promotes a safer and more secure world by developing and advancing solutions to important science and technology security policy problems by educating the public and ...
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Startup Company
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to Initial public offering, go public, startups are new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo-founder. During the beginning, startups face high uncertainty and have high rates of failure, but a minority of them do go on to become successful and influential, such as unicorn (finance), unicorns.Erin Griffith (2014)Why startups fail, according to their founders, Fortune.com, 25 September 2014; accessed 27 October 2017 Actions Startups typically begin by a founder (solo-founder) or co-founders who have a way to solve a problem. The founder of a startup will do the market validation by problem interview, solution interview, and building a minimum viable product (MVP), i.e. a prototype, to develop and validate thei ...
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Think Tank
A think tank, or public policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmental organizations, but some are semi-autonomous agencies within a government, and some are associated with particular political parties, businesses, or the military. Think tanks are often funded by individual donations, with many also accepting government grants. Think tanks publish articles and studies, and sometimes draft legislation on particular matters of policy or society. This information is then used by governments, businesses, media organizations, social movements, or other interest groups. Think tanks range from those associated with highly academic or scholarly activities to those that are overtly ideological and pushing for particular policies, with a wide range among them in terms of the quality of their research. Later gener ...
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Research Institute
A research institute, research centre, or research organization is an establishment founded for doing research. Research institutes may specialize in basic research or may be oriented to applied research. Although the term often implies natural science research, there are also many research institutes in the social science as well, especially for sociological and historical research purposes. Famous research institutes In the early medieval period, several astronomical observatories were built in the Islamic world. The first of these was the 9th-century Baghdad observatory built during the time of the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun, though the most famous were the 13th-century Maragheh observatory, and the 15th-century Ulugh Beg Observatory. The Kerala School of Astronomy and Mathematics was a school of mathematics and astronomy founded by Madhava of Sangamagrama in Kerala, India. The school flourished between the 14th and 16th centuries and the original discoveries of t ...
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Nature (journal)
''Nature'' is a British weekly scientific journal founded and based in London, England. As a multidisciplinary publication, ''Nature'' features Peer review, peer-reviewed research from a variety of academic disciplines, mainly in science and technology. It has core editorial offices across the United States, continental Europe, and Asia under the international scientific publishing company Springer Nature. ''Nature'' was one of the world's most cited scientific journals by the Science Edition of the 2022 ''Journal Citation Reports'' (with an ascribed impact factor of 50.5), making it one of the world's most-read and most prestigious academic journals. , it claimed an online readership of about three million unique readers per month. Founded in the autumn of 1869, ''Nature'' was first circulated by Norman Lockyer and Alexander MacMillan (publisher), Alexander MacMillan as a public forum for scientific innovations. The mid-20th century facilitated an editorial expansion for the j ...
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Venture Capital
Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number of employees, annual revenue, scale of operations, etc. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for Equity (finance), equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because Startup company, startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. Start-ups are usually based on an innovation, innovative technology or business model and often come from high technology industries such as information technology (IT) or biotechnology. Pre-seed and seed money, seed rounds are the initial stages of funding for a startup company, typically occurring earl ...
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Tony Blair Institute
The Tony Blair Institute (TBI), commonly known by its trade name the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, is a non-profit organisation set up by former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. Agenda The organisation is not a political party, but it is heavily influenced by the ideology and personal style of Tony Blair. Policy areas The Tony Blair Institute believes that extremism, governance, the Middle East and the fight against populism are all interconnected. For example, they say that countries will not develop where extremism flourishes. Without peace in the Middle East, grievances will continue to fester, and conflict will spill-over to other countries. Those seeking refuge have also been used by populists to whip up anger in the West – and, crucially, they say that the centre-ground has to deal with these issues and renew a politics of hope and optimism, rejecting fear and pessimism. Renewing the Centre Ground Headed by German-American political scientist Yascha Mounk ...
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