About

Eureka Fund was founded around a simple yet troubling question: what happens when the next generation of scientific discoveries never happen?

This possibility is becoming reality as loads of high-quality, groundbreaking projects struggle to find funding from federal dollars. When these projects die, the promise of their innovation dies with them.

Eureka Fund allows the public to do something about this, by involving you directly in one of the critical challenges of our time. We are the world’s first platform for people to learn about, and directly fund, the energy and environment research they are most interested in.

Browse a range of real-time projects submitted from independent research institutions, and explore details about how the science works, what it will accomplish, and how your tax-deductible donations will be used.

When you find a project that inspires, get directly involved. With each donation you’ll be taken behind-the-scenes to become part of the research team: blog posts, photos and videos, live lectures and announcements make each donation a real-time research and educational collaboration.

The projects presented on EurekaFund.org are real projects run by real scientists with real promise, and they need your support. Check out our current projects, and get involved!

Team

Jason Blue-Smith – Founder & Executive Director

Jason developed Eureka Fund as a side project while working as Research Fellow for the National Geographic Society’s Genographic Project. While leading research and field expeditions to investigate human origins, Jason saw colleagues – in particular younger scientists – with great projects who were struggling to fund their research. Eureka Fund grew out of his desire to see those projects realized.

Prior to National Geographic, Jason was Product Manager at Silicon Genetics, a bioinformatics company that was acquired by Agilent Technologies in 2004. Jason graduated with Honors from Stanford University.

Zach Berke – Technology Director

Zach is in charge of tech development at Eureka Fund and is owner of Exygy, a web services and applications development company based in San Francisco. Prior to founding Exygy, Zach conducted academic research on computational neuroscience and large scale WiFi networking. He graduated with Honors from Dartmouth College.

RJ Bee – Communications

RJ guides communications and messaging for Eureka Fund, and is Director of the Energy & Environment Practice at Hattaway Communications. He has served as a communications consultant for clients in politics, government, clean energy, and technology. He has an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in Political Science from The Ohio State University.