I’m at the Institute for Advanced Study, or IAS, this week.

There isn’t a conference going on, but if you looked at the visitor list you’d be forgiven for thinking there was. We have talks in my subfield almost every day this week, two professors from my subfield here on sabbatical, and extra visitors on top of that.

The IAS is a bit of an odd place. Partly, that’s due to its physical isolation: tucked away in the woods behind Princeton, a half-hour’s walk from the nearest restaurant, it’s supposed to be a place for contemplation away from the hustle and bustle of the world.

Mostly, though, the weirdness of the IAS is due to the kind of institution it is.

Within a given country, most universities are pretty similar. Each may emphasize different teaching styles, and the US has a distinction between public and private, but (neglecting scammy for-profit universities), there are some commonalities of structure: both how they’re organized, and how they’re funded. Even between countries, different university systems have quite a bit of overlap.

The IAS, though, is not a university. It’s an independent institute. Neighboring Princeton supplies it with PhD students, but otherwise the IAS runs, and funds, itself.

There are a few other places like that around the world. The Perimeter Institute in Canada is also independent, and also borrows students from a neighboring university. CERN pools resources from several countries across Europe and beyond, Nordita from just the Nordic countries. Generalizing further, many countries have some sort of national labs or other nation-wide systems, from US Department of Energy labs like SLAC to Germany’s Max Planck Institutes.

And while universities share a lot in common, non-university institutes can be very different. Some are closely tied to a university, located inside university buildings with members with university affiliations. Others sit at a greater remove, less linked to a university or not linked at all. Some have their own funding, investments or endowments or donations, while others are mostly funded by governments, or groups of governments. I’ve heard that the IAS gets about 10% of its budget from the government, while Perimeter gets its everyday operating expenses entirely from the Canadian government and uses donations for infrastructure and the like.

So ultimately, the IAS is weird because every organization like it is weird. There are a few templates, and systems, but by and large each independent research organization is different. Understanding one doesn’t necessarily help at understanding another.