Kolabtree, the world’s largest platform for scientific freelancers, has joined NASA’s Open Innovation Services (NOIS2) program. As one of 13 new partners, Kolabtree will connect its highly qualified network of freelance scientists with NASA’s engineers, scientists and researchers, to help them solve their most complex technical challenges. As part of the project, Kolabtree is acting as a new avenue for NASA to scout subject matter experts (SMEs) from outside the organization.
2022 marks the third iteration of the NOIS project, where its efforts to foster enhanced collaboration include raising the ceiling value of NOIS from $24.9 to $175 million. It will see NASA run challenges that task partner companies with solving some of its most difficult technical problems. Using the additional touchpoints created by this program, NASA can take advantage of independent expertise to help test new ideas, further ground-breaking research, build prototypes and standardize best practises.
Kolabtree is an open talent platform that provides businesses with access to a global network of more than 20,000 scientific researchers, academics and industry consultants, many of them PhD qualified. Its scientific consultants bring knowledge from more than 2,000 scientific disciplines, and work for leading institutions including MIT, Harvard and The University of Cambridge. Kolabtree joining the program means NASA can put forward problem-statements to Kolabtree’s freelancers, who have the opportunity to provide a solution.
“NOIS2 sees a monumental commitment from NASA to accessing talent externally,” said Ashmita Das, CEO and co-founder of Kolabtree. “It ties in closely with Kolabtree’s mission to democratize access to scientific expertise, by facilitating easy collaboration between businesses and academia. Programs like this are testament to the fact that highly specialised industry experts are incredibly difficult to access on a short-term basis, even for an organization as renowned as NASA.”
The contract is run through the National Tournament Lab (NTL), which is building a global network of specialists that can be accessed to develop new technologies, share best practises and measure and evaluate results. Kolabtree and the other new additions join 19 companies that began working with NASA in 2020.
For more information about the NOIS2 visit https://www.nasa.gov/coeci/ntl. If you’re working on a scientific project that may benefit from access to independent specialist skills, visit the Kolabtree website and post your project for free https://www.kolabtree.com/.
