[tentonwire]

There are interdisciplinary PhD programs that are now gaining popularity. For example, I work on protein structure prediction in my graduate program, which involves lots of programming, robotics algorithms, machine learning, HPC, etc. as well as biochemistry, statistical thermodynamics, and molecular biology. If I were to drop out right now, I could find employment as anything from a software developer to DNA sequencing technician.

[Hawramani]

These are a pretty good start. What I had in mind is an organization that gives long-term grants for many areas of study. Of course, any returns on this kind of investment would be ten to fifteen years away, which would make it hard to find anyone to support it. And worse, we do not know if a we can have a good return on this kind of investment.