Overcoming Proposal Phobia Linda Petzold Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science University of California, Santa Barbara

Objective Convince someone to fund your research

Getting Started - Intrinsic Scientific Merit Convince yourself F What do you want to do? F Why?

Getting Started - Impact F Are there scientific/engineering problems that could be solved better as a result of this work? F Who is solving these problems? F How do they see the proposed work fitting in? F Are they willing to be your advocate?

Getting Started - Audience Who does this proposal need to convince? F Funding Agency –Who might be interested in funding this research and why? Gather information: colleagues, friends from other disciplines, web, publications, news… F Reviewers –colleagues in your field F Panelists –maybe interdisciplinary

Writer’s Block F Use another (successful) proposal as a model F Serve as a reviewer or panelist to see the process in action F Talk to your senior colleagues about how they do it

Contents of the Proposal F Background F Impact F Proposed work

Common Dilemma In order to write a coherent research plan, you will probably have done or know how to do part of the work. Don’t be afraid to propose the rest, along with the anticipated technical challenges.

Format Get the agency guidelines and follow the instructions.

Do’s and Don’ts Do: F Make your points clearly and concisely –What do you want to do? –Why? (intrinsic scientific merit) –Who would it benefit? (impact) F Present your ideas and results accurately F Outline the technical challenges and how you plan to meet them F Mention any experience you have relative to this problem F Put your work in context: what’s been done before, and what are its strengths and weaknesses? F Make appropriate references to the literature F Present a coherent plan of attack for the problem

Do’s and Don’ts Don’t: F Go to a smaller font to meet the page limitations F Confuse your proposal with your latest research paper F Use an overly pedantic style F Forget to mention others’ contributions F Go overboard with detail F Be too negative about potential difficulties

Interdisciplinary Proposals Essential Components F Challenging scientific or engineering problem F Potential impact for society F “Dream Team” for this problem - no weak links or missing pieces F Linkage - has this team or parts of it worked together before? F Leverage –Other sources of funding for this work or parts of it –Potential impact of the proposed work on other work by the PIs

If you don’t ask, you don’t get. - Ghandi