Leverage Monthly - April 2025
Leverage’s monthly newsletter
Leverage is a non-profit institute that supports the scientific enterprise by advancing neglected or bottlenecked fields, including the history of science, the social sciences, and quantum biology. This update covers developments at the institute in April.
Q2 2025 Retreat — At the beginning of the month, the team spent three days in New Orleans reflecting on the institute’s progress and planning for the next quarter. Various decisions were made, including to structure the partner intake process more and to shore up the history of science research by having Oliver and Geoff review past case studies. The team also planned material for presentations to QBI and speculated about long-term trends in science. Overall, the retreat was great. New Orleans was a lot of fun with amazing food. One highlight was a spooky ghost tour, where the tour guide did confirm that one of Melinda’s photos was of an actual ghost. 👻
Presentations for QBI — Starting this month, Leverage has stepped back from day-to-day involvement at the Quantum Biology Institute and has started playing much more of a supporting role. This support includes weekly presentations on key topics, designed to communicate vital information about running an independent non-profit research institute. Two topics were covered this month: organizational design and team motivation. The goal for each presentation was to have it be both informative and brief, which required spending time refining the relevant information to the right level.
Leverage On Call for QBI — In addition to weekly presentations, the Leverage team is also ready to be called in at any time to help QBI with whatever it needs. This month, for instance, Leverage provided guidance on legal compliance and designing essential policies. Leverage’s support will continue to be crucial for QBI as it expands its team, manages a transition in leadership (Mike has replaced Clarice as president), and begins its research. QBI’s progress can be followed more closely on the Quantum Biology Ecosystem Substack.
New Introspection Video — Melinda has continued to chip away at our stockpile of recorded talks when she’s not assisting QBI. The latest video she’s edited, for the talk “Ten Metaphors for Understanding the Mind,” is definitely our highest production video to date. This is also one of our most accessible introspection videos, useful for people early in their thinking about the mind while also providing novel ideas for seasoned researchers.
Nucleonics — At the Q1 retreat this year, the Leverage team reviewed several different possible teams to support in the coming months. Special attention was paid to the Wolfram Institute, with whom Leverage has been discussing possible collaborations for some time. As it turned out, however, it was the low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR) team at MIT, led by Florian Metzler and Jonah Messinger, which may be ready to proceed. Their team has been supported by a grant from ARPA-E but will be looking for $5-10m by the end of 2025 to continue their work. Geoff, Oliver, and Melinda met their team, discussed their roadmap, and decided Leverage would begin its initial exploration of the area.
Leverage Weeklies #60-63 — Leverage Weekly continued this month, covering several different topics in organizational design. One theme was potential counterintuitive aspects of making an organization move quickly, like leaving time to think (Weekly #60) and having a normal pace other than “maximum speed” (Weekly #61). Other themes included deeper questions, such as how organizational power works (Weekly #62) and how to productively channel the competitive instinct which naturally arises out of the wider society (Weekly #63).
Leverage is, unfortunately, falling a bit behind on a few things, most notably, finishing the case study on Stephen Gray and electric repulsion and writing the Annual Report for 2024. For the case study, progress is delayed because Dan, the sole researcher on the project, has had other commitments this month as part of his academic position. For the Annual Report, the team is anxious to write it. Time just needs to be set aside.
Until next time,
The Leverage team