For those of you in the engineering area, how much value is there in an NSF CAREER award toward getting you to tenure or not? If I bring in a decent amount of funding, just not a CAREER, will I be ok? Because my normal grants get funded. How much bonus do you get on your third submission? How does the panel know that you are on your last try? Do you just say it somewhere in your proposal?
I think you can guess how I did on my most recent submission. I really think that I'm submitting to the wrong panel because all of the reviews focus on nitpicky details that are not central to the proposal or even uncorrectable flaws. They all loved the instrument I proposed, but dinged me on how I proposed to use it. Wouldn't it be easier to just comment that 'hey, you should really run this and this with the new thing you're developing'? Because it will work for multiple applications and systems, which is why it's a useful thing to develop and you know it. I've learned my lesson, don't send proposals to a bunch of bioengineers that think they know everything about biology when the focus in my mind is on the device, not the application. Especially when you have supporting letters from actual biologists saying that the experiments you chose are important to them and their field. If I send it to electrical engineers though, I have to convince them that this is really new and not derivative of other devices and still hope that they don't have some preconceived notion of what biologists need.
I'm also worried that if I change panels on my next try, the reviewers won't know the history I've gone through already fixing up the proposal on previous submissions and find some other thing to complain about. I'll have to introduce myself to an entire new community and try to guess what they will focus on. This is the problem of being interdisciplinary. 1 or 2 people in 5 different programs might know my stuff, but I'll never get a panel where most of the people in the room know what I do. It's a double edged sword in my subfield. I can potentially get funding from 3 different divisions and like 10 programs, but only with a strong co-PI that is an expert in those areas. I can't do that with a CAREER grant though.
Finally, there is a major problem with the overworked panel review system and current structure at NSF. 3 reviewers find 1 or 2 reasons why they don't want to fund your proposal, but maybe there are 3 or 4 things that really need to be addressed. You fix those 2 things and they come back on the next round with you should fix this and this because now I bothered reading past the first page. Or you get different reviewers that say, no your "fixed" text is wrong and you should really do what you originally proposed because there is no rebuttal system. It's like working with a senile advisor on a paper. Anyway, that is my rant for today instead of calling the program manager.
I think you can guess how I did on my most recent submission. I really think that I'm submitting to the wrong panel because all of the reviews focus on nitpicky details that are not central to the proposal or even uncorrectable flaws. They all loved the instrument I proposed, but dinged me on how I proposed to use it. Wouldn't it be easier to just comment that 'hey, you should really run this and this with the new thing you're developing'? Because it will work for multiple applications and systems, which is why it's a useful thing to develop and you know it. I've learned my lesson, don't send proposals to a bunch of bioengineers that think they know everything about biology when the focus in my mind is on the device, not the application. Especially when you have supporting letters from actual biologists saying that the experiments you chose are important to them and their field. If I send it to electrical engineers though, I have to convince them that this is really new and not derivative of other devices and still hope that they don't have some preconceived notion of what biologists need.
I'm also worried that if I change panels on my next try, the reviewers won't know the history I've gone through already fixing up the proposal on previous submissions and find some other thing to complain about. I'll have to introduce myself to an entire new community and try to guess what they will focus on. This is the problem of being interdisciplinary. 1 or 2 people in 5 different programs might know my stuff, but I'll never get a panel where most of the people in the room know what I do. It's a double edged sword in my subfield. I can potentially get funding from 3 different divisions and like 10 programs, but only with a strong co-PI that is an expert in those areas. I can't do that with a CAREER grant though.
Finally, there is a major problem with the overworked panel review system and current structure at NSF. 3 reviewers find 1 or 2 reasons why they don't want to fund your proposal, but maybe there are 3 or 4 things that really need to be addressed. You fix those 2 things and they come back on the next round with you should fix this and this because now I bothered reading past the first page. Or you get different reviewers that say, no your "fixed" text is wrong and you should really do what you originally proposed because there is no rebuttal system. It's like working with a senile advisor on a paper. Anyway, that is my rant for today instead of calling the program manager.
If I bring in a decent amount of funding, just not a CAREER, will I be ok? Because my normal grants get funded.
ReplyDeleteYou will probably be just fine as long as some grants are peer-reviewed (i.e. you can't have all DOD money, you have to have at least some that have been funded after peer review). But a CAREER cements the case for your tenure.
How much bonus do you get on your third submission? How does the panel know that you are on your last try?
I don't think you get any bonus at all, unless the PM knows it's your 3rd try and also tells it to the panel.
'm also worried that if I change panels on my next try, the reviewers won't know the history I've gone through already fixing up the proposal on previous submissions and find some other thing to complain about.
You know, I would advise not to revise. It's just going to get clunkier and less fluid. Rather, scrap most of it and start fresh, and write it to your heart's desire. This is your hail-Mary submission, so you should really try to make a splash.
Which brings me to another point: instrumentation proposals always review poorly. I've had really bad experience with trying to get money at the NSF for building computational tools with wide capabilities (I got funded by DOE eventually in a computational program). I am wondering if perhaps you should completely change the topic for CAREER, or simply make it topic-centric. Unfortunately, if it's topic-centric, it will go to bio people and they have their own bones to pick. The EEs will not understand the problems you are trying to solve well enough... I really wonder if perhaps the topic is doomed for a CAREER, it really sounds like a great collaborative proposal.
Sorry I went into my preaching mode... This is tough stuff. My grants are expiring in 2015 so I have a year of grant writing ahead of me. Gulp! (If you want to chat more, email is always good.)
Good luck!
Thanks for the advice GMP! My work would fit well with DoD, but I'm still trying to get the attention of the right program managers. I'm also moving more toward NIH research. At least there they respect the M.D. co-PI when they say a problem is important. I don't know yet what I will end up doing for the third try, but I have several months to think about it. Oh well, back to paper writing.
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