Grant Proposal writing

This workshop takes a practical approach to teaching researchers in the life sciences how to apply for third-party funding. The workshop can be tailored to the specific funding needs of the workshop participants.

Through examples and relevant exercises as well as class discussions, each participant learns how to develop their funding idea by matching it to the goals of a targeted funding program. As a starting point, the workshop uses participants’ written outlines of their own funding ideas in the format of a short “mini-proposal” (2 pages).

Group exercises help participants not only to structure proposals that comply with funding agency requirements but also to write proposals that reflect the reading behaviour of reviewers. The interactive nature of the workshop is designed to pool the experience, ideas and opinions of the instructors with those of the students in order to enhance the learning experience for all participants.

When and where?

The training will be conducted in-house in Konstanz on 3-4 July 2023 over 1.5 days, with follow-up individual online feedback sessions (30 minutes) on 14 July 2023 via Zoom. These sessions allow more detailed discussion of the mini-proposals and remaining questions as well as next steps related to future funding plans.

If you are unable to attend an online feedback session on 14 July, then please inform the trainers as soon as possible to arrange an alternative time.

Preparation

Before the workshop, participants are asked to submit a 1-2 page "mini-proposal" that outlines their funding idea. Participants improve their mini-proposals throughout the workshop and receive instructors’ feedback on their proposal’s structure, content and language use as well as the overall research concept.The deadline for submission of your 2-page mini-proposal is 19th June.

You can choose to revise your mini-proposal using the techniques learnt in the workshop and to have this revised version discussed in the online feedback session. If so, then please submit your revised text by 7th July.

Who are your trainers:

Dr Babette Regierer joins Science Craft for the instruction of the Applied Proposal Writing workshop. Her 10 years of professional proposal writing and international teaching and consulting experience encompass 200 proposal consultations and active participation in writing more than 50 proposals. This has informed her design and teaching of proposal writing courses at Pearls – Potsdam Research Network.

Dr Brian Cusack comes from Cork, Ireland and received his Ph.D. in Genetics from Trinity College, Dublin in 2007.During his Ph.D. Brian received the kind of mentoring that he continues to consider as the gold-standard for graduate students. After completing his first postdoc at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, Brian conducted post-doctoral research in evolutionary genomics at the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin.In February 2012, together with Rick Scavetta, Brian co-founded Science Craft in Berlin. Since then Brian has provided high-level training workshops for more than a thousand researchers throughout Germany as well as in Norway and China.