I would get good at making conventional engines first, get the process for making perfect P/L sets down pat. I think you would need to get the recipe for low expansion, high silicone piston material and crank out dozens of pistons, same goes for liners, you'll need dozens to mix and match your best P/L sets from. Once you are armed with lots of well matched parts, then let the fancy porting begin. I would make the R&D crankcases real meaty to allow different porting ideas. A flow bench is all you need to test volumetric efficiencies of different ideas, you don't even have to fire the engines up, just use a high speed electric motor to turn the engines over. I would baseline some of the world class engines to get a target to aim for as far as air movement is concerned. I have no idea what it would cost to rig this up, but all successful engine developers use similar apparatus.