As a young laboratory researcher working on her thesis, Virginie Simon began to see the dilemma that scientists like her often face – the speed of research is proportional to the level of access to research.
Interview with Virginie Simon, MyScienceWork
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Nanotechnologists handle matter at the scale of atoms and molecules, but Virginie Simon is very definitely a scientist with a 30,000-foot perspective. Her prodigious academic accomplishments attest to her multidisciplinary interests. She trained as an engineer in biotechnology at the Technological University of Compiègne, located north of Paris, France. She also completed a BA in philosophy from the University of Nanterre, before earning her doctorate in nanotechnology for cancer therapy from Pierre and Marie Curie University (UPMC) in Paris.
As a young laboratory researcher working on her thesis, Simon began to see the dilemma that scientists like her often face – the speed of research is proportional to the level of access to research. In 2010, she founded MyScienceWork to map, structure, manage and measure research content as widely as possible. Today, MSW indexes over 70M articles and 12M patents, covering all scientific disciplines and all countries, and serves the voracious information diet of a global community of more than 500,000 researchers.
“Doing my Ph.D., I realized that science should be more open and that scientists needed tools to help them access research results and accelerate research,” she tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally. People needed a way to gather on a single platform to collaborate and communicate.”
