Hello Fellow Researchers,

I am writing on this forum, since most likely the majority of you are either planning or have planned a research career. However, I am interested in how many of you have considered working as freelancers within the R&D world? Has anyone tried or knows someone who tried? From what I can see most of us face either academic future or working in some established company that has means to support the research.

But do you know any individuals who followed a different path? Please share your stories.

When it comes to me, two years have passed since I have left the university. Although I have not completed my degree, I did manage to find a R&D job. It's not impossible. But now, after working in a company for 2 years I would like to be independent, leave the office, but still do science. Does anyone have ideas or advice? Or perhaps is in a similar position? Maybe we should touch-base?

Knowing whether or not you need a lab and /or expensive equipment would help people answer.

Good point. In principle I would only need licenses for software such as MATLAB and/or COMSOL. They cost a few thousands of dollars, but perhaps they could be covered by the customers? Especially if they'd need the licenses themselves later or they already have them. As an alternative of course there is Python and others that are free of charge.

Hi,
After Masters I had a long spell of unemployment. During this I approached a company I knew (it was a technology startup that some uni friends had started, and which I was also involved in before), and did some freelance technical writing for them.
People hate writing grant/client proposals (government R&D funding/client project proposals), especially if they haven't exactly come up with the technical implementation yet. As research students (esp in engineering I guess), we get quite used to this. What the company used to do was give the general idea about what the project was about...I would go and do the research and writing. For most of the projects I would do the system and sub-system design, identify/work out algorithms and flows, do component selection, budgeting/time-lining/milestoning, etc. Even did presentations to the evaluation committees, as an "technical advisor".
Did several of these - they were shopping around for funding/projects, and I didn't charge much for it. They would also call me up for any "tough" technical negotiations they had to do with clients. Had dealings with 3 different unis like this.
Won a 80,000USD govt R&D grant for them (not much, but something). Good experience to point out when applying for PhD/post-doc/academic jobs I guess.

This is quite impressive. You must certainly be right when it comes to the experience.
If I am not mistaken, your work was something like a mixture of technical writing and consulting. Am I correct?

How about other people? Any experience? :) Please share!

Yes, that's right - it was something like consulting, technical writing, and system design. Sometimes I would sit down with the clients and discuss requirements of projects too.
Its actually a nice job (sometimes I do miss it!) because the projects can vary widely and you get to learn a lot when you do the research for the system design/writing. Also, you get good practice in sizing up and breaking down projects into chunks and workflows.

If you plan on going in this direction, you will have do develop some business sense though. Companies only care about 2 things: increasing revenue and reducing man-hours. Understand the business, what their portfolio, market and business model is, and really sell the contributions you can make in revenue and efficiency.

OK. I can see. Well, what you say makes sense. However, people understand different things when talking about research. I can see in your case it is more refer to researching customers needs, right?
However, did you stumble across any need in making computer models of technological things such as hardware or a physical sensor? Or writing a piece of software that could help other engineers/researches do their work?
I guess I am mainly interested in sort of "scientific research" rather than "customer" or "market" research. Still, looking for a technological candidate to solve a potential problem... that also interesting. Was it this that you were doing exactly?

@Others? Any other ideas? :)