Grant Writing Tips: Submitting a Successful Application
Date: 2006-10-11 - 2006-12-05
Registration: -
Location: Manchester, United Kingdom
Web site for Grant Writing Tips: Submitting a Successful Application
Register
Grant Writing Tips: Submitting a Successful Application
University of Manchester , UK
Date: Friday October 6th 2006
Time: 1pm -5:00pm
Join Science Careers.org Seema Sharma and representatives from the funding bodies and experienced grant writers for hands-on advice about writing a grant proposal and submitting a successful application. This workshop is open to postdoctoral researchers from life sciences at the University of Manchester. For more information contact
ssharma@science-int.co.uk
Panellists:
Dr. Isabelle de Wouters
BBSRC funds research that increases understanding of how living organisms function and behave - from the level of individual molecules and cells to populations and ecological systems. Dr Isabelle de Wouters is the Senior Programme Manager for the Biochemistry and Cell Biology Committee, one of seven Committees that administer the BBSRC’s responsive mode funding scheme.
Dr. Viki Allan
Dr. Viki Allan is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Manchester. Dr. Allan has trained in cell biology and her current research interests include the regulation diversity and function of microtubule motor proteins.
Dr. John Bothwell
John Bothwell is a postdoctoral researcher at the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth. His current research interests include calcium signalling in plant cells
Moderator: Dr. Seema Sharma, ScienceCareers.org
Introduction
On Friday 6th October, Science Careers.org held the first of two workshops on the subject of writing grant applications. Grant Writing: Submitting a Successful Application, a workshop for postdoctoral researchers, was held at the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Manchester. Attending for Science Careers was Seema Sharma, Programme Director for Europe who organised the workshop with our local contact Christina Merlotti, Research Business Manager at Manchester University (pictured). The audience consisted of fifty postdoctoral researchers from the University of Manchester who received delegate packs which included relevant articles from Science Careers.
|
Christina Merlotti
|
Isabelle DeWouters
|
Programme
The session kicked off after lunch with a personal perspective into the trials and tribulations of grant writing by John Bothwell from the Marine Biology Association at the University of Plymouth. John drew on his experience of writing grant applications to reveal common flaws in unsuccessful applications, using some of his prior submissions as ‘how not to do it’ examples.
|
John Bothwell
|
Viki Allan’s two sessions entitled ‘The Art of Grant Writing’ and ‘Criticism: the Good, the Bad and the Down-right Awful’ provided an excellent step by step strategy on securing a grant. The first sessi on focussed on key points including the need to have good preliminary data, to have asked an important question and the necessity to have an experienced grant writer read your application. Viki also made the point that as well as referees who are experts in your field, your grant will be reviewed by two research council panel members who may not be experts in your specific field. This is something that applicants overlook and hence fall in to the trap of using ill-explained detail which serves to alienate the panellists. She encouraged the use of our online articles – How not to Kill a Grant Application
http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_development/previous_issues/articles/0280/murder_most_foul_how_not_to_kill_a_grant_application/ , resources on grant writing from Human Science Frontiers Program
http://www.hfsp.org/how/grantsmanship.php and a resource from the National Institute of Health
http://www.niaid.nih.gov/ncn/grants/write/index.htm
|
Participants Chat
|
Viki Allan
|
Dr. Allan’s second session tackled dealing with grant rejection. She pointed out that not all funding bodies provide referees comments. For example, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)
http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/ routinely provides them but the Wellcome Trust
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/ choose not to. She advised against a rushed respond to referees comments and encouraged ‘tempering any youthful enthusiasm,’ and not to repeat any positive comments you received in your response – a pet hate for reviewers. According to Allan, a critical point to decide how to move on from grant rejection is to know how close you came to being funded. If it was clear you were miles off the mark – she encouraged throwing out your proposal instead of rehashing it. If, on the other hand, you were close to being funded she recommended taking a break from it before revising and submitting it to an alternative funder.
Dr Isabelle de Wouters spoke about the application process and peer review from the perspective of the B.B.S.R.C. She clarified the funding criteria and issues of eligibility for a grant, including information about the new investigator scheme whose award depends on the potential of an application rather than a researchers’ track record. More information on funding schemes from the BBSRC are available one the following page
http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/funding/Welcome.html
|
Audience concentrates
|
Participants Lunch
|
Feedback
We would like to thank all the speakers who took valuable time out from their schedules to participate. Our special thanks goes to Cristina Merlotti who co-organised the session. The feedback forms showed that 54% and 39% of the thirty participants who completed evaluation forms felt the workshop met their requirements very well and quite well respectively. The survey also indicated that 100% would recommend the workshop to others and attend further events like this one.
Comments
We received comments that it would be good to have a one-to-one tutoring approach in the future and more information on career options for long-term postdocs. Other remarks included that some talks were slightly more targeted at problems faced by PI’s applying for grants rather than postdocs and also giving Dr. Viki Allan a longer time slot. We will take all of these remarks in to consideration when planning further events.
S. Sharma.