Biology PhD Candidate Philip Strandwitz uses Experiment.com to Fund Research

Strandwitz studies microbiomes – more specifically, the approximately 10 trillion that live in the human gut. “It works out to be about four to five pounds of bacteria in every human,” Strandwitz explains. “I just fell in love with it!”

With the bacteria living in our gut making up so much of us, there has been a series of research fairly recently exploring how the relationship between us and them works. There have been several papers published showing certain colonies of gut bacteria that flourish within the intestinal tracts of those with autism, as well as links to other diseases such as obesity, certain cancers, and diabetes. Most of these studies have been done in mice, however. While there is massive anecdotal evidence, the human studies are slim. . .

And this is where the second interesting big-data aspect of Strandwitz’s experiment comes in. The issue that Strandwitz faces is that funding is notoriously difficult to come by for new projects. To provide funding, large grant organizations, the primary source for money of this type, want to see results, and to get results, you need to run experiments- experiments that, particularly when dealing with a lot of moving parts such as Strandwitz is, require a fair amount of money on their own. Strandwitz was internet searching other ways of funding when he stumbled across experiment.com.-COS News Article by by Emily Ashbolt, Biomedical Physics, 2017