[dekhn]

I've worked across a wide range of quantitative science fields and one thing I've noticed is that while the bulk of the funding goes to massive facilities, often a bit of clever engineering and $100K can make a huge difference. This is true in computing; one of the things that's interesting about computer science is that it can turn a complicated physics equation that is O(n4) or worse into an O(nlogn) approximation that is "good enough" to justify not using brute force.