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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

#111

Post by Fomite »

amcoastal wrote: post #28
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…

Yeah, but that's the way these things go. The people working on this project are working on 5 other ones as well. It would be nice to work on fewer research projects at once but the way these grants work (check out the low total amount), its generally unfeasible. Its sort of laughable extremely hard to get grants from the NSF, DoD etc. wouldn't even pay 2 typical FAANG SE 1 year FTE.

Especially once we're talking about staff.

Keeping a $100,000 scientific software developer on staff, at 10% hit rates (not out of the ordinary for the NIH), means writing a million dollars of grants per year.

And if one of them is successful, that salary is 40% of the total budget for a non-modular R01.

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#112

Post by Fomite »

prash_ant wrote: post #96
Fomite wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In contrast, ours focused almost entirely on polishing and refining our specific aims page. Eight weeks on what was effectively perhaps two pages of writing. Draft after draft, peer review, etc. Landed said grant on first submission.

This is impressive. Did others in the workshop have same experience as you of getting grant on first submission too? If so, the workshop can get credit, else you deserve the credit.

Candidly, my hit rate isn't high enough to assume it was me ;)

I didn't keep track of most of my cohort from that program, but the ones I have had been fairly successful. Mostly, I think the benefit was structured time and an available "red team" to read it (one contract research organization I've worked with had one of these, and it was an amazing experience) etc.

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#113

Post by pests »

anamax wrote: post #88
Spooky23 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sort of thing is factored into the programs and policies. Efficiency isn’t really the point. You don’t pay for the building, but a bunch of Vice Associate Provosts get paid to do something and the union janitors make a living. Economists can map this crap to direct and indirect labor hours generated and other economic metrics. At some level we do this stuff as a type of work program. Somebody calculates how many…

The janitors are paid for by the rent. The "efficiency" here is that the university gets paid for an asset that it didn't pay for.

Is that not allowed? If someone gives you a house or a car, is it wrong to profit off it by renting it out or offering it on rideshare?

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#114

Post by neel_k »

derbOac wrote: post #61
supernova87a wrote: post #29

You know, the thing I always found extremely frustrating or non-transparent about the academic grant process (and it leaks over into government / NSF / etc applications by the nature of who evaluates those: academics again) is how much unofficial or unspoken criteria come into it. You get extra credit points if you're active in visiting other universities and giving talks on the annual job circuit. You tend to do wel…

I went to a grant writing workshop sponsored by the university. When I got there the entire thing, and I mean entire thing, was about buttering up the grant review officers, how to network with people at the agencies, how to work your way into being their friends, and so forth. Not a single thing about the writing process, or how to frame your ideas, or anything like that. I know that's not how grants are always awar…

When I went to one of these things, it was pretty much entirely about how to scope the work and how to write the proposal. Eg, for a big ERC grant, you need to propose something big and exciting enough to be worth 2 million euros, but small enough that you and 3 students/postdocs can do it in five years, since that's what 2 million euros can pay for. But our grant office did make sure that most of the speakers were people who had actually applied for these grants in the last round.

One really key thing for me was to reach out to senior colleagues in the same area (definitely not just at the same university) to get multiple examples of what successful grant applications look like. There's a bunch of text in the grant call, but the panel are going to be senior in-area academics who may know what a good application looks like, but won't necessarily be able to articulate all the rules.

Everyone I know finds writing proposals hard. So much of writing papers is being careful about citing prior work and not over-claiming for your results, but for grant proposals we are basically forced to make big claims about things that we have not done. However, it's worth noting that no one on the panels or at the grant agencies see research proposals as binding promises to do certain work: they mostly all want you to follow the science and change course if you spot something better.

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#115

Post by tsbischof »

Fomite wrote: post #99
gumby wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

53% is pretty good! I believe Stanford and MIT have O/H over 100%

MIT is 55% Stanford is 58% The only place I've ever encountered with an overhead rate above 100% was Scripps, and that's because they have to maintain research vessels.

US National Labs (e.g. LBNL) can easily top 200%, based on what my colleagues told me at the time. I never applied for funding myself while there, so I cannot directly confirm the actual figures.

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#116

Post by Fomite »

tsbischof wrote: post #115
Fomite wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MIT is 55% Stanford is 58% The only place I've ever encountered with an overhead rate above 100% was Scripps, and that's because they have to maintain research vessels.

US National Labs (e.g. LBNL) can easily top 200%, based on what my colleagues told me at the time. I never applied for funding myself while there, so I cannot directly confirm the actual figures.

How national labs are funded is its own completely bonkers system.

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#117

Post by urthor »

pinot wrote: post #97
supernova87a wrote: post #29

You know, the thing I always found extremely frustrating or non-transparent about the academic grant process (and it leaks over into government / NSF / etc applications by the nature of who evaluates those: academics again) is how much unofficial or unspoken criteria come into it. You get extra credit points if you're active in visiting other universities and giving talks on the annual job circuit. You tend to do wel…

> You get extra credit points if you're active in visiting other universities and giving talks on the annual job circuit. You tend to do well if you advisors are well-connected. You have to sprinkle a bit of fad-ish topics into your research if even if it's a stretch to do so. Sounds a bit like any job: * Cross train in other departments * Demonstrate your functionality/team’s functionality to other groups through ta…

Instead of buzzwords and trends, more accurate to say:

"Communicate all your ideas using narrative form. Embed your ideas in motifs, illustrate them with visual icons. Explain their worth by using existing context."

The reason buzzwords and zeitgeist terminology works is because they're a shorthand to understanding a topic, and a linker to existing context.

It's important to consciously understand how that works though.

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#118

Post by jcelerier »

derbOac wrote: post #61
supernova87a wrote: post #29

You know, the thing I always found extremely frustrating or non-transparent about the academic grant process (and it leaks over into government / NSF / etc applications by the nature of who evaluates those: academics again) is how much unofficial or unspoken criteria come into it. You get extra credit points if you're active in visiting other universities and giving talks on the annual job circuit. You tend to do wel…

I went to a grant writing workshop sponsored by the university. When I got there the entire thing, and I mean entire thing, was about buttering up the grant review officers, how to network with people at the agencies, how to work your way into being their friends, and so forth. Not a single thing about the writing process, or how to frame your ideas, or anything like that. I know that's not how grants are always awar…

Those two messages are very different from my experience writing (and generally getting) grants in France. Grant reviewers are anonymous, how could you even butter them up ?

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#119

Post by jcelerier »

pests wrote: post #113
anamax wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The janitors are paid for by the rent. The "efficiency" here is that the university gets paid for an asset that it didn't pay for.

Is that not allowed? If someone gives you a house or a car, is it wrong to profit off it by renting it out or offering it on rideshare?

The idea that universities or other public services should be profitable in any way is bewildering to me

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#120

Post by j7ake »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #64
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?

Faculty positions are already some of the most coveted and competitive jobs on the planet

Universities still fight for top talent. So there is still incentive to improve conditions in order to attract and retain talent. Eg how to lure a candidate with multiple offers in hand.
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