The way things are done right now with the specialists means that technologies come in bundles; you either have nothing, or everything.
For exemple, I had several sebilian t2 ships runs, landing ships and cruisers mostly. But I couldn't find a weapon officer, so I had nothing new to research, and my labs were inactive. Then, I got one, and suddenly I had about 7 different weapon branches to make progress in and it was too much.
"Would there be a way to have the new reseaches come in smaller amounts, but more regularily ?" is what I meant with something more streamlined.
On the other hand, to be honest, I don't see how it would be possible: more specialists would just make the whole thing tedious, and I'm not sure there are other game elements that could be used with just modding.
It would be cool, but I don't think it's really a possibility.