Investment helps enable cloud-based funder intelligence

Digital Science has invested in ÜberResearch, a technology company focused on providing data-led intelligence to providers of scientific research funding.

The investment capital will be used to accelerate development of the German company's cloud-based grants solution and to open offices in the UK and the USA.

ÜberResearch was launched by former founding executives of Collexis, a developer of semantic technology and knowledge discovery software that was acquired by Elsevier in 2010. The first ÜberResearch prototype launched in August 2013 to its ten development partners and the first beta release of the platform is scheduled for late 2013.

ÜberResearch will provide funders with tools and data to help them award, manage, analyse and report on the funding of scientific research. The platform will also facilitate the secure sharing of awarded grant data amongst participants. By analysing other grants awarded around the world, it will ensure that funders are not duplicating the efforts of other institutions and will suggest opportunities for collaboration on complementary projects.

'The way that billions of dollars of grants for scientific research are awarded, managed and measured is still highly manual and time consuming,' said Christian Herzog, founder and managing director of ÜberResearch. 'The research funders have limited data mining and technology support at hand to avoid duplicate funding or analyse trends and new developments in large datasets. They also don’t have any easy way of consistently reporting on the real impact of the research they funded and measuring its success.'