NATUREJOBS For the latest career listings and advice www.naturejobs.com CHILE Tax credit may boost investment in mining, forestry and agriculture p.431 UNITED STATES Biomedicine, genomics and energy get charitable donations p.431 BY K A R E N K A P L A N WFlogel ith his primary grant coming to an end, neuroscientist Thomas Mrsic- was more than a little stressed. He had launched his lab at University College London (UCL) with a career-development fellowship from the Wellcome Trust in Lon- don, but it was set to expire by mid-2011. In 2010, with a worldwide recession in full swing, Mrsic-Flogel knew that he was hardly guaran- teed to land a new grant. He decided to apply for another Wellcome fellowship, proposing a project on how neuronal networks process visual stimuli. Applications had a discouraging success rate of about 20%, but the grant could be renewed every five years, which Mrsic-Flogel found attractive. He won the award ��� a ��1.7-million (US$2.7-million) senior research fellowship, which pays his sal- ary and lets him purchase lab equipment and support a couple of graduate research associates. Mrsic-Flogel attributes his success to more than luck. He followed the application guide- lines to the letter, making sure that his proposal was both high-impact and innovative. He spent a year preparing it, including developing his idea and gathering preliminary data. And he sought input from dozens of people, from UCL grant advisers to colleagues in neuroscience and other fields, in effect creating an informal peer-review panel. He revised the document several times, once deleting an entire section, and when something stumped him, Mrsic- Flogel called grant recipients he knew to find out how they had dealt with similar problems. In the current funding environment, the odds of winning a grant or fellowship are very slim. But Mrsic-Flogel���s success demonstrates some helpful strategies and guidelines ��� artic- ulating an original idea, seeking feedback from multiple sources and writing concisely ��� for putting together a winning proposal. EXCELLENT SCIENCE Before all else, applicants must make sure that they are presenting excellent and origi- nal science, say grant programme officers and successful applicants. ���You should be pro- posing a novel kind of research ��� not just FUNDING Got to get a grant A great idea will get applicants only so far. But there are other strategies that can add to the chances of success. A. SCHEIN/CORBIS 1 6 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 2 | V O L 4 8 2 | N A T U R E | 4 2 9 CAREERS �� 2012 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved

continuing some standard research you���re already doing,��� says Jochen Wosnitza, director of the Dresden High Magnetic Field Labora- tory in Germany and chairman of the review board for the German Research Foundation (DFG) in Bonn, the country���s main grant-giv- ing agency. To make sure that their projects are innovative, applicants should bounce ideas off colleagues and painstakingly comb through the literature. Grant officers are generally looking for work that could have an enduring influence. It should inherently lead to further study, although not necessarily to immediate appli- cations. ���Have you thought about what hap- pens next?��� asks David Crosby, programme manager for the UK Medical Research Coun- cil (MRC) in London and Swindon. Research funded by the MRC doesn���t have to lead to a disease cure in three years, ���but you do need to think about the implications of your work,��� he says. ���If you���re generating a fundamental insight, what is the consequence of that? How does that help the whole field? How might it go on to be utilized? How will it impact the science community and the public at large?��� Researchers applying for a grant from a mul- tinational organization, such as the European Commission���s Marie Curie Actions, or funding from the European Molecular Biology Organi- zation (EMBO) in Heidelberg, Germany, will also need to explain how their proposal would have benefits beyond their own country. Early-career researchers should keep in mind that many granting agencies frown on proposals linked to or associated with work done by the appli- cant���s mentor. ���You have to show that you���re an independ- ent-thinking scien- tist taking a different track from your for- mer supervisor,��� says Gerlind Wallon, deputy director of EMBO and manager of the organization���s Young Investigators programme. There are no hard and fast rules on which funder to approach, say granting and funding agen- cies. Colleagues with their own grants can offer advice early-career scientists applying to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), for example, can get the names of successful grantees from NIH RePORTER (go.nature. com/32v6n5). It can also be extremely helpful to speak directly to the funder however, pro- gramme managers recommend that applicants first learn the agency���s remit by closely read- ing its website and grant materials. ���Absolutely come to us,��� says Crosby. ���Phone up the funder and say, ���I���ve got this idea that I think pertains to your strategic interest. You���ve got a highlight notice on your website that says ���systems biol- ogy��� ��� what do you mean by that? Does my idea fit into that bracket?������ Crosby points out that a researcher���s institu- tion may also have a preference for example, the MRC and Wellcome Trust both fund bio- medical proposals, but the MRC pays some indirect costs and overheads to the institution that other funders don���t, and so might be more attractive. NUTS AND BOLTS Applicants must effectively outline their ideas in the application, including a clear and direct hypothesis along with the expected results. Programme managers say that an application for funding to ���explore a cell receptor���s signal- ling mechanisms���, for example, is unlikely to be successful because it sounds vague and doesn���t seek to prove anything. But a proposal to confirm that a particular protein is involved in a cellular reaction, for example ��� one that includes preliminary results and explains the potential impact of the discovery ��� would have a far better chance. Some applications call for both a summary, aimed at reviewers who are not in the relevant field, and an abstract, for those who are. Most also have a section for a research plan, in which applicants can explain technical details. How- ever, reviewers who see an application for the first (and perhaps only) time in a review- panel meeting usually turn immediately to the summary, say grant officers. That is where applicants should persuasively and succinctly explain exactly why their proposal deserves funding. ���It���s important to be able to clearly articulate your ideas,��� says Crosby. ���If you can���t do that, you���re not going to be able to inspire enthusiasm.��� Some funders also call for a pro- ject description or narrative, but veteran grant- writers say that if there is a choice, it is best to make the strongest case in the summary. Focus is key. If the summary is too techni- cal or rambling, the application���s score will suffer, even if the idea itself is brilliant. ���A bad summary is really disastrous,��� says Andrea Hutterer, programme manager for EMBO fellowships. ���It sets the tone for how I read the rest of the application.��� Applicants must state their research objec- tive clearly and straight away. ���The first sen- tence should begin, ���The research objective of this proposal is ���,������ says George Hazelrigg, a programme officer for design and integra- tion engineering at the US National Science Foundation. ���Every inch from the top that I have to go down in the proposal to find this sentence lowers the rating by about one percentage point.��� It is wise to get editing and streamlining rec- ommendations from as many senior colleagues as possible, both in and outside the research field, and to check the funder���s website for advice. In a mock application on the NIH website, the ���before��� summary, meant to dem- onstrate pitfalls, is long, rambling and technical (���G-protein over-activation triggers a bio- chemical signaling cascade that leads to b-AR desensitization and down-regulation ������), and contains several acronyms. The corrected ���after��� summary is clear and direct: ���Conges- tive heart failure is a common and lethal disease in the United States. Current med- ications ��� improve survival in some, but not all, patients. ��� This research will enhance our under- standing of the cel- lular and molecular mechanisms under- lying sympathetic neuron dysfunction that may progress to heart disease, and may identify a possi- ble novel pharmaceu- tical target.��� Applicants should make sure to request an appropr i ate amount of funding. Too little and there won���t be enough money to finish the project ��� and it is next to impossible, say grant officers, to get supple- mentary funding. Too much and reviewers are likely to question the applicant���s competence. ���It implies that you don���t know what you���re doing and don���t have a realistic grasp of the project,��� says Crosby. Applicants can get help with calculations from their department heads, senior supervisors and mentors. For the costs of supplies, such as lab mice, they can talk to the institutional research office. SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF Other fundamental requirements may sound mundane or even silly ��� but failing to adhere to them can derail an application (see ���Grant- writing blunders���). Investigators should read and follow all application instructions care- fully: most stipulate length and format, includ- ing particular typefaces, fonts, font sizes and margins. It does not pay to deviate from these in the hope of cramming in more text or fig- ures, warn programme managers. ���Bend over backwards to give us what we want,��� advises Maryrose Franko, senior pro- gramme officer for graduate science educa- tion at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Reviewers don���t want to sift through an application to find an investigator���s most significant published work or squint to read the text, she says. ���If we say 12-point font and you give us 10, the reviewers don���t even want to look at it.��� ���Bend over backwards to give us what we want.��� Maryrose Franko ���It���s important to be able to clearly articulate your ideas. If you can���t do that, you���re not going to be able to inspire enthusiasm.��� David Crosby C. VARGAS/HHMI MRC 4 3 0 | N A T U R E | V O L 4 8 2 | 1 6 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 2 CAREERS �� 2012 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved