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What a $500k grant proposal looks like

austinhenley.com

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Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#101

Post by neel_k »

yuuu wrote: post #89
azhenley wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn’t happy. I shared a bit more detail here: https://austinhenley.com/blog/leavingacademia.html

How do you cope with the feeling that you're missing out on future prestige?

Same way that I (who left industry to pursue an academic career because I wasn't happy) cope with the feeling I am missing out on a giant FAANG salary: mostly, I just don't think about it.

Like, I have enough money to afford a house and take my kids on vacation from time to time. So having lots of money is something I idly wonder about sometimes, but no critical need is going unmet by its lack.

Conversely, if you have a prestigious position, most likely everyone around you does too. For example, I'm a professor, and yes, it makes my mom proud. But all of my colleagues and many of my friends are professors, too. So in terms of day-to-day life, it just doesn't matter much.

I think everyone wonders about what might have been. But you can really only make one choice at a time, and so even if you had chosen differently you will still wonder what might have been.

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#102

Post by Fomite »

countvonbalzac wrote: post #7

I am not in academia but the 53% overhead to an outsider is absurd! Probably the same reason tuition has gotten so high, someone has to pay for all those deans, vice deans and vice vice deans!

53% is both not particularly that high and not unusual. Keep in mind that in private industry, that stuff is built into the price. I've also seen the indirect rates for several private research firms - they're higher.

I think the telling thing is that, even at that rate, companies often find working with us to be cheaper than working with another industry partner. Our pricing just tends to spook people because it comes in a big chunk just labeled "Indirects" rather than snuck into all the other budget lines.

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#103

Post by Fomite »

sndean wrote: post #17
countvonbalzac wrote: post #7

I am not in academia but the 53% overhead to an outsider is absurd! Probably the same reason tuition has gotten so high, someone has to pay for all those deans, vice deans and vice vice deans!

I've heard Harvard's is/was 96%? Or at least that was for a NIH R01-seeking person there in ~biochemistry in 2015. Where I'm at it's probably around 100% but I really don't want to know. We're all expensive.

It's 69%, so you were...close I guess?

https://osp.finance.harvard.edu/files/univ_july_2021_signed_...

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#104

Post by Fomite »

ModernMech wrote: post #62
countvonbalzac wrote: post #7

I am not in academia but the 53% overhead to an outsider is absurd! Probably the same reason tuition has gotten so high, someone has to pay for all those deans, vice deans and vice vice deans!

Keep in mind that many researchers are given a huge startup package at the beginning of their career to jumpstart a research agenda. They also don't pay for any rent for lab space, electricity, and other campus resources. All of those expenses are basically paid for by the overhead tax. It's the lifeblood of any academic research institution.

While "huge startup package" varies wildly - epidemiologists are cheap, for example, you are by and large correct.

The data center where my nodes for HPC are kept? Indirects.

The salary of the folks who review and submit the proposals, manage the budgets, and make sure we're complying with neat things like human subjects protections? Indirects.

Journal subscriptions? Indirects.

Direct costs cover remarkably few things.

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#105

Post by Fomite »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #35
ordersofmag wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Cost of space, cost of power, cost of business office staff to process the paychecks, cost of a bunch of CPA and auditors to make sure you're following all the federal regulations about how the money can be spend, cost of IT to provide WiFi and network jacks and bandwidth, cost of water in the water fountain, etc, etc.... At institutions where a large fraction of the work going on is grant funded if you didn't d…

> Cost of space, cost of power, cost of IT to provide WiFi and network jacks and bandwidth, cost of water in the water fountain Time to move to a WeWork? WeWork All Access - $3600/year. Or at home for "free" if no real lab is needed. > cost of business office staff to process the paychecks Time to move to Direct Deposit? For a grand total of $0! > cost of a bunch of CPA and auditors to make sure you're following all…

My institution employs about 7000 people.

I'm interested if there's a single company that employs that many people you can point to that pays $0 to handle payroll.

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#106

Post by Fomite »

danielmorozoff wrote: post #24

Having written NSF grants and other grants - DARPA etc. I have won some and lost many. I compiled a few non obvious takeaways: - Story telling is everything. It seems this is a huge lesson never taught in grad school. - Technical details sometimes work against you. The author is absolutely right that getting the general thought process across is crucial. - Who you get on your review committee tends to significantly s…

`The sad truth is $500k for a career grant seems like a lot when you're in the university, but when you get out and see where else money is being spent you realize how poor academia really is.`

This hits me every now and again.

But your first point is huge, and one thing we've been working on with our program's grant writing class. Students phone in their specific aims pages to go write their approach sections, which is what they're working on, and that's a huge mistake.

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#107

Post by Fomite »

j7ake wrote: post #59

I wonder what conditions need to be improved in order to make faculty positions more attractive? 0% or negative overhead? No teaching? Longer Sabbaticals? Fewer admin duties? Be left alone to do research?

It's not clear that "more attractive" is actually necessary - as mentioned, they're already hugely competed for. But to address your comments:

0% or negative overhead? - While indirect cost return, which is where I get some of my overhead back, is awesome when you can negotiate it, indirects are not the boogeyman HN likes to make them out to be. For government grants, these are known factors. For private industry, lower overhead rates can often be negotiated. Same for foundations, etc.

No teaching? - This depends entirely on the person, but generally, reduced teaching obligations help if you're interested in research. There are people who are passionate about teaching and don't want to give that up. There are people who are in purely research positions (like me) and maybe voluntarily teach a single graduate seminar once every other year. Many of both groups love their jobs.

Longer Sabbaticals? - There is some research showing that faculty who don't take sabbaticals are more likely to leave. I'd suggest instead of "longer" more frequent. An opportunity to "clear the deck" so to speak.

Fewer admin duties? - wistful, longing expression

Be left alone to do research? - This is probably our #1 request, but how to actually make that happen is something of an open problem.

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#109

Post by Fomite »

thrownawayalre wrote: post #73

What is missing here so far is maybe what happens on the other side. Some researchers meet for a few days at NSF headquarters to discuss the proposal with some NSF officers. It is called the "panel". The researchers essentially rank the proposals and decide the outcome:: proposals at the top of the ranking will be funded until money dries out. Researchers do not know how to evaluate grants the way the NSF wants them…

Coming from NIH-land and occasionally dabbling in NSF-funding via EEID, RAPID and some collaborations with CS folks, the broader impacts section remains the thing that's most opaque to me.

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#110

Post by Fomite »

xwdv wrote: post #20

Nothing in this proposal should take 5 years. For $250k you can easily do this research in a single focused year probably. I imagine researchers must actually be doing multiple grants in parallel or have other main jobs to earn decent money because if they only do this one thing at a time I have no idea why someone would choose this life of poverty when they could be making solid six figures building practical things…

NSF proposals are expressly not designed around funding 100% FTE research positions. "A single focused year" isn't what they're funding.
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