Welcome to Engineering Discovery
Hi, I’m Smrithi! I am a research scientist focused on advancing imaging technologies to study brain health. I believe that accelerating scientific discovery and innovation is a powerful way to benefit society, and I spend a lot of time thinking about the structures that shape science.
In my time as a researcher across different roles and scientific structures, I learn not only about neurons and optics, but also about the broader ecosystems that shape scientific work. Scientific progress is not just the product of individual brilliance or laboratory output. It is shaped by the environments we build: the labs, institutions, funding structures, and cultures that support researchers and their work.
Despite significant investments in science, we still know little about the conditions that reliably produce high-impact research. Even when insights exist, they rarely translate into structural changes within a research organization. Why did places like Bell Labs generate sustained breakthroughs? How do we identify and nurture extraordinary talent? What makes a research organization not just productive, but also dynamic and enduring?
Engineering Discovery explores these questions. This newsletter sits at the intersection of scientific research, metascience, and data-driven inquiry.
In recent decades, scientific discovery has become increasingly dependent on collaborative ecosystems. No single person is “curing cancer” or “solving the brain.” As science becomes more interdisciplinary and team-based, we need to rethink how we design our research structures so as to not just reward individual achievement, but also to create cultures, environments, and institutions that enable teamwork.
Drawing from my scientific background, where I build multimodal imaging systems to study brain health, I hope to bring an analytical and systems-engineering mindset to the scientific enterprise itself. Just as imaging combines modalities to reveal complexity in living systems, we can combine data, history, and lived experience to illuminate complexity in the research ecosystem.
Of course, data has its limits. Some of the most interesting insights live at the margins, in what might appear to be outliers. Through Engineering Discovery, I aim to blend quantitative analyses with personal narratives by zooming out to see patterns and zooming in to understand the people and environments behind the discoveries.
Some of what you’ll find here:
Essays on the histories of scientific discoveries
Analyses of scientific trends using bibliometric data
Case studies on the people and environments behind scientific breakthroughs
Reflections on institutional culture and its role in scientific outcomes
Commentary on papers I find interesting, placed in the broader context of the field
Welcome again to Engineering Discovery! Here, I will explore scientific breakthroughs and how we might engineer better discovery processes to accelerate their societal impact. My first post will explore the impact of Nobel Prize-winning work over time by looking at citation patterns.
Please subscribe if these topics resonate with you, and reach out if you have feedback, suggestions, or just want to chat!
Smrithi