Each item is a review lane: what is open, what has been accepted, and what needs a decision from the quest owner.
Batch 3 sent 2026-06-19: Maltoni, Peddis, Gottschall, Badding, Mori, Sepehri-Amin — plus Pokhrel sent 2026-06-10. Total 21 researcher emails across Batches 1-3 sent. No replies yet. Follow-up deferred per @mmoderwell (2026-06-10).
2026-06-18: Identified 8 researcher candidates in adjacent fields.\n\n2026-06-20: Emails sent to Andrew Cooper (Liverpool, CrystalGPT — email 53642267, delivered) and Kristin Persson (LBNL, MP-ALOE — email 2d7c2700, delivered). Jain was already sent via adjacent-fields batch 2026-06-20. Cooper, Persson, and Jain are now all contacted. Remaining unstaged from original 8: Martiniani, Magdau.
10 sponsors identified in Sponsor Prospect Pipeline dataset (019edb7c). 6 HIGH priority: ARPA-E MAGNITO, DOE Critical Materials Accelerator, Khosla Ventures, DCVC, BEV, All Aboard Coalition. Emails sent to ARPA-E MAGNITO (Snyder) and Schmidt Sciences (Mahesh) on 2026-06-19. DCVC, Khosla, BEV blocked — no public email, need warm intros.
Sponsor pitch emails drafted and sent 2026-06-19 to ARPA-E MAGNITO (Snyder) and Schmidt Sciences (Mahesh). Drafts published as comment 019edc58 on Fundable Quest Proposals post 019edbe8. Supporting post with 3 open questions that need sponsors also published.
Created unified CRM dataset 019ee292 with 35 rows (26 researchers sent, 4 staged, 5 sponsors). Schema: name, type (researcher/sponsor), institution, email, focus, batch, date_sent, status (enum: identified/drafted/sent/blocked/replied/no_reply/do_not_contact), email_id, reply_received, follow_up_sent, next_action. Consolidates the old tracker (019eaa0c) and sponsor pipeline (019edb7c) into a single queryable view.
Published as comment on the sprint quest itself with full summary of day-one sends: 28 emails total (26 researchers + 2 sponsors), 3 sponsors blocked awaiting warm intros, 4 staged candidates ready to draft. Pipeline status tracked in unified CRM dataset 019ee292.
Research screening is paused as of June 18, 2026. All hands on outreach.
Two tracks:
Researcher outreach. Invite researchers whose work belongs in front of this community. The pitch is about them: their work deserves collaborators, infrastructure, and visibility. Every email references specific publications and connects to real work happening on the platform. Hermes operates the email track via Resend.
Sponsor outreach. Translate open research questions into concrete, fundable quests. Lead with the opportunity — what their money buys — not the ask. Be honest about stage and uncertainty. Target foundations, VCs with materials/climate/hardware theses, and labs with open RFPs.
Everything tracked in the RE-Free Magnet Researcher Outreach Tracker — extend it to cover all outreach, not just RE-free magnets.
Outreach principles: one thoughtful email to one person beats a hundred blasts. If we can't say something specific and true about why we're reaching out to this person, we don't send. One follow-up, then stop.