funding
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I think I might have never been this busy in my life. Today I was at the Eldest’s swim meet (didn’t need to volunteer, yey!) While all the other parents were sitting around, chatting, playing with their phones and iPads, I had a legal pad, a pen, and a freaking textbook , and was doing undergrad homework problems (i.e. writing…
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For my professorial readers (or otherwise readers with PI status): How long does it take you to write, from scratch, a single-investigator grant proposal that will undergo peer review? For physical scientists and many others, I am talking about a standard NSF 15-pager or similar. For biomedical folks, that would be an NIH R01 (however long it is).…
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When I was last hiring a postdoc, I had no problem waiting several months for the candidate I really liked. Sure, we all want the person to start the second the grant starts, but it’s understandable that it would unlikely happen that a good candidate would have his previous appointment end simultaneously with the grant money appearing in…
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Here’s a pretty common scenario in regards to coauthorship on papers from my group. Student A works on a certain project for which I have funding from a federal agency, grant GR1. I, Prof X, also draw some salary support from that grant, so you can say that I am funded for my work on…
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I absent-mindedly sketched this with a marker, with the intention of doing a clean version later (pencil first, then ink). But I actually like the rough version; it captures the frenzy. For nonacademic readers: NSF, DOE, AFOSR, and ONR are federal funding agencies that fund research in the physical sciences (NSF also funds biological and social sciences). SPO stands for…
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Over the decade that I have spent in my home department, I have witnessed several faculty colleagues retire. A number retired in their 60’s or 70’s; they had been active in research and faculty governance till the very last day, but were forgotten soon thereafter and are hardly ever mentioned today. Their labs were given to…
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For faculty on the semester system, there are only a couple of weeks of teaching left. This is probably the busiest time of the year, due to the sinister convergence of the semester ending and the conference season approaching. Program committees of many conferences are working hard these days to evaluate the abstracts; I am…
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We have been interviewing and it’s been quite exhausting. But, the process reveals more about the colleagues with whom I interact in regards to the search than it does about the candidates. My school is a large and reputable public school and the department ranks about 15th in the discipline. We are no MIT or…
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Shockingly, I am in DC. Again. [For my non-professorial readers, NSF (National Science Foundation) provides funding for basic science research across all disciplines. NSF panels meet to evaluate grant proposals. A lot of work is involved in reviewing other people’s proposals and serving on panels. A lot.] This post was brought to you by the crappy overpriced…
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