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Hard Lessons in Proposal Writing

Hard Lessons in Proposal Writing. Michael L. Nelson www.cs.odu.edu/~mln/. Your Mileage May Vary. My Timeline…. 2002: Joined ODU 2005: Submitted my first CAREER proposal returned without review; IM & BI moved from 1 page summary to body. Oops. 2006: Resubmitted, success.

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Hard Lessons in Proposal Writing

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  1. Hard Lessons in Proposal Writing Michael L. Nelson www.cs.odu.edu/~mln/

  2. Your Mileage May Vary

  3. My Timeline… • 2002: Joined ODU • 2005: Submitted my first CAREER proposal • returned without review; IM & BI moved from 1 page summary to body. Oops. • 2006: Resubmitted, success. • 2002-2006: PI/Co-PI on 9 different proposals (NSF, NASA, AMF, LC)

  4. Batting .300 is Excellent • Most of your proposals will strike out • Tension between: • getting the CAREER early will help bootstrap your research program • holding on to your 3 shots until you know what you're doing

  5. It Took Me Years to Learn… • Grants are not technical publications with budgets attached • good conference papers != good proposals • "I'll just take the good parts from this workshop paper…"

  6. It Took Me Years to Learn… • NSF doesn't fund something just because it is a crazy cool idea • place in a general framework of evaluating competing ideas/designs/approaches

  7. It Took Me Years to Learn… • Grants are reviewed in stacks of 10-15 at a time: be kind to your reviewers • removing figures, tables, examples, etc. for more text is rarely a good idea • section/subsection headings keyed to RFP concepts help for quick reference

  8. It Took Me Years to Learn… • Grants are not necessarily reviewed by people directly in your research area • is your proposal readable by someone who hasn't tracking the last k SIGWhatevers? • background, motivating examples, related work, etc. is welcome

  9. Preparing • Get feedback from others, especially outside of your direct research area • Appearance matters • paying for a technical editor is a good investment • Use LaTeX; MS Word == ugly proposals

  10. Writing • More than any other proposal, the CAREER is about you & your research program • 5 years is a long time… • focus more on outcomes, directions, and student preparation than specifics

  11. Revising • Reviewers are rarely ignorant or capricious • "errors" in their reviews are most likely because you did not anticipate / explain something well • unfortunately, review panels are different every year…

  12. Lessons & Advice • Volunteer to serve on a review panel

  13. What Panels Look For: • Evaluation. Lots of evaluation. • lack of evaluation is the biggest proposal killer • References / discussion of previous & related work • Project management discussions or other supporting evidence that you can actually do what you’re claiming… • Corresponding skills in your CV • make sure your 2 page CV emphasizes the skills needed

  14. Other Panel Observations • (for non-CAREER) Dr. Famous consulting on your project for 0.1 months is of little or no benefit • Institutional affiliation was not important, but individual recognition played strongly • “I know person X, and they are doing good work” • Panelists really read all that stuff • be careful what URLs you put in your proposal -- they had better work! • Most panelists deferred to the panelist with: • most immediate knowledge • strongest opinion about the proposal

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