Great write-up, and I 100% agree with this being the biggest value proposition Gridcoin can bring to the table at this point in time. Many different tokens, such as GNT, are all planning to do exactly what you just described. The key difference between those tokens and the GRC coin is that Gridcoin is built on top of an established research platform with coming up on two decades of development.
In terms of difficulty, which I see has been raised, in the grand scheme of things it is actually really easy to create a BOINC project. From a cold start, I got a BOINC server running, distributing work units, receiving them back and validating them all in the space of one afternoon.
The problem I am facing is that my research is a time-stepping model. This means that computations at time [t = x] have to be completed before computations at time [t = x + delta], where delta is small, can commence. As the model needs to step forward in time millions of times over, this means I would be distributing millions of tiny batches of work that would have to be 100% completed before sending out the next batch.
I am investigating accuracy tradeoffs using larger values of delta - work in progress!
Do you have publications or any other documentation of your work online? I would really like to read up on it. I am able to read almost any publications, since my university has access for everyone.
Nothing recent, primarily due to non-disclosure and rights to research output as we are externally funded. I will be publishing my PhD in the not too distant future and will link it on here.
Ok, great!
Being externally funded is not really a thing at my university since Switzerland is very generous with their funding for the federal universities. I have heard a lot about the cons of being externally funded since the results of ones research is very restricted as you mentioned. If you ever feel like it, I would really enjoy reading an article about your impressions of research funding, wether they are external or public.