AcademicFellows

Why It Matters

Research shapes the future of our society. It creates knowledge that transforms industries, informs policy and opens possibilities we cannot yet imagine. Every piece of research carries value. The question is whether that value reaches the people and problems it could serve.

Institutions work hard to solve this internally, but this is not a problem any single institution can fix. It requires infrastructure that connects across them. There is no system that bridges organisational boundaries and allows knowledge to flow naturally towards meaningful collaboration. Research publishes success, yet the failures and dead ends that could save others months of work remain invisible. The next researcher encounters the same obstacle not because the solution does not exist, but because there is no way to find it.

We experienced this first-hand during our PhD and postdoctoral journeys at leading New Zealand universities. We watched colleagues spend months on problems that could have been solved in days if they had found the right person or equipment at the right time. The expertise was there. The infrastructure to connect it was not.

Across institutions, exceptional researchers are doing world-class work, yet their expertise remains scattered across departmental pages, personal websites and disconnected databases. Networking events bring people into the same room, but there is no lasting system to understand who was there, what they do and how to follow up meaningfully.

That infrastructure did not exist. We built it.

AcademicFellows maps researchers across more than one hundred dimensions, including expertise, methods, tools, publications, skills and research focus. It enables you to find precisely who you need, not just who you already know. Your work becomes visible beyond immediate circles. Your collaborations extend across departments and organisations. Your networks do not disappear after a single event.

The person working on your exact problem can find you in minutes rather than months. The collaboration that should happen, happens. Knowledge flows across boundaries instead of remaining trapped within silos.

This is infrastructure built for how research actually works, through connection, knowledge transfer and accumulated learning. We are creating the system that allows expertise to reach the problems it can solve, so research delivers the meaningful impact it was always meant to achieve.

The Team

AcademicFellows was founded by researchers who experienced these challenges firsthand and decided to build the infrastructure the community needed.

Waqas Munir, PhD

Co-Founder

Algorithm Engineer and Technical Founder

Building the infrastructure that every researcher needs to connect, collaborate and create a meaningful impact.

Bushra Anam, PhD

Co-Founder

Researcher and Data Scientist - Physicist

Committed to breaking down silos so research transcends publications, connects disciplines, and reaches beyond academia.

Advisory Board

Our advisors bring diverse perspectives from research, industry, technology, and entrepreneurship. Their profiles are coming soon.