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these days I am supposed to be writing a research proposal for some major grant application.
I am trying to see it constructively as an occasion to a) organize my own thoughts about what I have done and what I should be doing next, and b) inform current and potential future collaborators about it in a usefully structured manner. (Probably famous last words spoken too late at night. )
I am still at a stage where I am re-writing large chunks in every new cycle, but now I am beginning to feel that it might be useful (for me, at least ;-) to start bouncing this off other people, to see their reaction, hear their criticism. So therefore… here are some early scratchpad notes:
(…)
Not sure if this is of interest to anyone at all here. But all comments are most welcome.
If you keep talking about gerbes, you may need to keep the ’No animals were harmed’ statement, in case people get confused with gerbils :)
For the scheme you’re applying to, do you need write sections for different levels of expertise? Would you need to say a few words to someone who would have difficulty even with
Classical Chern-Weil theory has connected cohomology theory with differential geometry.
This proposal makes a little effort.
Also, I wonder if your goals A and B on p.3 are stated crisply enough. I know you expand on them later, but our funding advisors are keen on the annoying acronym SMART – Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic and Time-Bound – goals.
Everything is about money.
Where does the organization you are submitting the grant proposal to get their money?
By funding you, how does that increase the likelihood that organization can raise more money to fund others?
Is this proposal a net drag on the organization or could it lead to economic benefits for them somehow?
This is probably not the most fun angle to come at this from, but if you could somehow spin this proposal as something that may lead to some tangible economic benefit, e.g. higher prestige attracting higher quality students leading to more publications leading to higher prestige (rinse repeat), that might help.
Can you cite other examples where a successful grant proposal like this has led to some economic benefit to the organization?
Thanks, David C.!
Right, the required non-technical introduction had been completely missing in the previous version. I have started to write that today. The new version has now a section “Background” starting on p.4. But I still need to go over that and polish. This is the first go.
Concerning the crispiness of the goals: yes, I had a similar thought. I have tried to make them slightly crispier now. But the thing is that the section where I am currently stating “goals (A) and (B)” is the “Summary of research proposal” where I am constrained to a maximum of 300 words. This puts a strict upper bound on possible crispiness.
But I should check, maybe I should not state any goals there, but only in the following more extensive section. I am not a fan of stating goals, but I thought those who are will enjoy seeing them stated right away. I’ll think about this.
David R. writes:
If you keep talking about gerbes, you may need to keep the ’No animals were harmed’ statement, in case people get confused with gerbils :)
What’s the right way to say what they would say at the end of a movie? Something like
All stunts involving gerbes have been supervised by a professional gerbe trainer.
?
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