There isn't much funding for protein folding and hasn't been for a long time. In general, there are ways to understand protein structure and impact in other ways and that's where the money is. Of course, nothing has the sort of funding that genomics has these days (in the life sciences)

Right. And there is zero funding for cat social networking.

My comment takes the parent pretty literally, which is mostly a response to how glib the parent comment is. If only the tech wunderkinds were pursuing interesting problems, they would solve them (and never mind the thousands of people and millions of dollars that are actively devoted to those problems).

One could argue that funding for any place that thrives on pictures of cats is not that far way from funding cat social networks. There are a ton of well funded hard problems that may or may not have monetary reward at the end. What they do often require is a lot of patience and perseverance over a period of time. Those who lean towards tech don't seem to have that kind of patience, at least in my experience working in both worlds.