Things to do before you start writing the grant.
As a Ph. D. student in the Neuroscience Program at UWO, you will write a grant
proposal. Here are some helpful hints for this task and for when you have to write a real
proposal.
Write up your current research:
- Finish off you current studies and submit as many papers for publication
as possible.
- Papers must be in the 'in press' stage to count.
- An acceptance from a journal gives the research work an important stamp
of approval.
- You will be assessed largely on your track record. This is based almost
entirely on your published papers.
Get to know the agency you are applying to.
- Decide which agency is most like to be interested in your work by knowing
their aims. Visit your research office. Click here for Western's Office of Research
Services
- Find out the success rates for that agency. It will give you some idea of
the effort involved.
- Find out the average $ amount that was funded. This will give you an idea
of which items you can reasonably ask for.
- Get the forms. See what they want.
Click here for the current
CIHR of Canada
forms.
- Within the agency, find which committee deals with grants on your
sub-topic. Find out the background of the committee members.
Click here for the current
CIHR peer review membership. Click here for
NSERC membership
- Talk to someone who is sitting on or has sat on this committee. Find out
what they are looking for.
- Talk to people that have reviewed grants. Ask them what they are looking
for and in particular which type of grants were not rated highly. Ask them how the
committee operates.
Getting preliminary data.
- There is nothing as valuable as trying to do the experiment before
writing the application.
- This is the best way of discovering, for yourself, where the pitfalls
are.
- There is no better way to demonstrate that the experiment is feasible
than by showing preliminary data.
- Most successful scientists learn to develop a phase lead in their
research, using their present funding to explore promising new directions, focusing in on
those that pan out, and then proposing experiments that in large part are already in the
bag.
Copyright © 1995
Tutis Vilis
Department of Physiology and Pharmacology
University of Western Ontario
London Ontario Canada |
Created 28 Sept 1995
Last updated
10 January 2007
Comments
welcome: tutis.vilis@schulich.uwo.ca |