RESEARCH PROPOSAL PREPARATION
Writing a good research proposal is one of the most challenging aspects
of being a scientist, as it requires both a good new idea and a very clear
description of why this idea is relevant and realistic.
In this course, we try to learn how to prepare such a proposal.
Since the majority of research proposals are intended for obtaining
research funds, we use such 'grant proposals' as our examples, and expect
students in the end to produce a simplified grant proposal (but ignoring
the administrative and financial parts).
The course consists of 2 phases:
- We teach students how to write proposals, using existing proposals from
our group as examples. Each student is to write a review for each
proposal and also rank the proposals. After that, we will discuss all the proposals
and reviews in a meeting, so you get an idea of how such review meetings
work.
- Each student then writes a 4-page proposal and reviews all the other student proposals.
These reviews will be double blind (i.e., the reviewer will not know who wrote each proposal).
Finally, we will meet as the "program committee" again to discuss all the proposals.
From experience, we know this course requires a lot of work, so please budget enough time for it.
As background reading material we have collected several guides with
useful hints about how to write a good research proposal (you can ignore
everything about administrative/financial issues). These guides can be found
here
and
here.
The meetings are scheduled as follows (for phase 2 the students
will be split into 2 different groups):
- 10 Nov. 2011, 15.30-17.15 Phase 1, Room C648
- 15 Dec. 2011, 13.30-17.15 Phase 1 Group 1, Rooms M648, M664
- 16 Dec. 2011, 13.30-17.15 Phase 1 Group 2, Rooms S640, S648
NB The deadlines for phase 1 and 2 are as follows:
- 07 Nov. 2011: 1800 CET: Title and summaries of your proposals due
- 08 Nov. 2011 1800 CEST: Reviews due
- 05 Dec. 2011: 1800 CET: Your proposals due
- 09 Dec. 2011: 1800 CET: Your reviews on the proposals due
Here are the detailed instructions for
phase 1
and
phase 2.
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