Ok first things first, link to the promised paper preprint...feel free to check it out. I submitted it to the Journal of Theoretical Biology about a week after the previous post. It's currently under review.
Now, I've been away from the blog for a while but for good reason. I have been working my arse off on some grant applications. This is my first time doing this in any serious way. I've been third CI on an ARC discovery application a couple of years back, but didn't really contribute anything and we didn't get the grant anyway. Years back I applied for an Australian Learning and Teaching Council grant and didn't get that either...so I'm counting these last couple of weeks as my first real serious effort at getting funded. That said, I completely expect that neither of them will be funded!
ALTC - Discipline Network
The first one is an application for a national learning and teaching network for the mathematical sciences. The Australian Learning and Teaching Council has been shut down by the Commonwealth Government, but before they close completely they are splashing all these grants around in the hope that the work they've done already will continue. One scheme is to set up national, discipline based L&T networks. I'm leading an application with some folk from JCU, Newcastle, UTS, Wollongong, UWS and with support from the Australian Maths Society and Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute to set up a network for mathematics. It's only for $100,000 over 2 years, but it could see some nice initiatives for recognition and sharing of excellent teaching practice get off the ground. It's due Tuesday...almost there.
Learning experience: I'm not really one to work with other people. I hate it actually. But I went extra hard at it for this application. I essentially cold called about 30 people including the president of AustMS and Director of AMSI as well as various academics who have never heard of me. It was awkward, but worked out well in the end. Lots of support for the idea and now I have a fairly large team of interested people coming along on the journey in the hopes of getting the $$$.
US Dept of Defence - Prostate Cancer
So it turns out the the US Army funds medical research! Most of it is for clinical, experimental type stuff, but they had this one opportunity listed for "innovative" projects that "explore hypotheses". They DISCOURAGED data and/or experiments. So I put together an application based around the concept of in silico (computational/mathematical) modelling and experimentation to inform laboratory experiments prior to actually running them, or to improve them when they are already completed. I did the awkward "approach people to be involved" thing again, and it worked out pretty well again! Yay for self-improvement.
This would be for $70,000US for a one year project...basically it would hire a postdoc researcher for a little while to get some work done. Hopefully with a view to building up a more serious project that could get more, longer funding.
The learning experience here was the pain of the admin side of the application. I ended up having to make 16 separate pdf files for parts of the application as well as a fill it in as you go pdf form from the US gov't grants system which was an absolute pain in the ass.
Research postgraduate students seminar day
Yesterday we had our annual research students seminar day. From memory, way back, this used to be a day when ALL of our research students gave talks. But these days we have about twice as many students, so only a few actually get/have to speak.
I know that most of the people who read this are research students or were once, so I'll say a couple of things more about this. First I used to find it boring as hell. Now, not so much. I'm even interested in the talks from students who I can't understand the work of. Next, I know some of you worry about giving talks - don't - seriously...look around - some people give absolutely shit talks, but it doesn't matter. Chances are you are doing good work. Don't get so concerned about looking good, or people thinking you are doing something hard or easy or whatever. KNOW that you are doing something good! Then just tell everyone about it. I think some of you do this and it really shows in how relaxed you are and how the point gets across so much easier. Just talk to everyone like you are telling them your story!
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Well, less than two months to go. I need to get more papers finished.... I need to get working on a book.... and I need to help my research students more...! That's all for now.
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