High Impact, High Effort
Overview:
Being an independent researcher(also termed as gentleman scientist or self-funded scientist) is an unconventional path that one can take. Work on your choice of science area, discover or invent something useful. Being an independent researcher is intellectually stimulating and brings sense of freedom as you can decide the direction of the research(as opposed to academia research where direction is decided by the funding organizations).
Being a self-funded scientist is not an easy path though when you don't have academia background(e.g. Ph.D.) or when your financial situation is not so good.
Doing research requires resources e.g. training of complex AI algorithms often requires hours/weeks of training on multiple GPU/TPUs.
There are no dedicated grants for independent researchers these days, only few small fellowship programs. So to succeed, you will have to be excellent at not only research but at independent fund-raising as well. Independent research had been quite popular in 19th century(most of the scientist you may have heard of e.g. Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, etc. had been independent researchers).
Patents and crowd-funding are good tools to succeed in this path. Licensing and royalties are most common way to make money for self-funded researchers. So having understanding of how you can protect your IP rights is quite useful.
Inspiration:
Thomas Edison is one notable example of successful independent researcher(without academia background) owning 1000s of patents
In today's context, Stephen Wolfram is one successful independent researcher. He's popular for his product Mathematica.
Get started:
Find the research gaps
Define your research area and prepare a research plan
Achieve milestones for your research objectives
Build your reputation via patents or presenting your research & knowledge via conference talks
Moving to next level:
FAQs & resources:
Current opportunities:
Royal Society is famous to fund independent researchers(e.g. Charles Babbage). Checkout their website for funding options. It provides 1m pound funding as Theo Murphy Blue Skies award to independent researchers(Update: Discontinued).
You may found some scholarships/grants for independent research on DAAD website, checkout their scholarship database. Filter out for your qualification level (for undergraduates there are few, keep checking)
Present your breakthrough research at Git Commit Show