From: "Jeffrey E." <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" Subject: Re: Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2016 01:29:13 +0000 Regards to danny On Tuesday, August 9, 2016, Seth Lloyd <1 > wrote: Dear Jeffrey, In fact, our conversation also has something important to do with the generous gifts you have given for my research. The ordinary government grant comes attached with large amounts of highly specific information about how it can be spent. These restrictions make the grant money significantly harder to take advantage of in a productive way. I foresee a time in the not so distant future when government grants will be so restrictive as to be not worth applying for. Murray once told me that running a theory research group is like owning a small family grocery store: you have around 5-7 mouths to feed, and the produce has to be grown and displayed, and the customers have to come into the store to buy it. Because it's a small business, you're always at the mercy of fluctuations in the number of customers, no matter how high the quality of the produce. My annual expenditures on research from government grants are around $500K, plus or minus $200K according to whether my proposals are going through or not. This can make things pretty tricky, as there is a minimum 2 year timescale for hiring postdocs and 4 years for graduate students. Since 2012, you have given my research group $100K, in two increments of $50K. This is about 5% of my total expenditures. However, because it is unrestricted by junk information, it has been tremendously useful. If you look at the attached accounting sheet (which is not very informative overall), you will see that the great majority of the money has gone for travel (primarily foreign travel) for my postdocs, graduate students, and for me. This is really essential, as the US grant money doesn't support it, and it is key for the postdocs and graduate students to get full international exposure. It is also very important for