money money money

An enlightening article on the grant scene. Take home message: Ask for the money for projects appealing to the grant granters and use part of what you get for what you deem to be interesting/promising. Even though this strategy seems to have worked so far, it feels counterproductive in the long run…

That being said research funding is a subject where consensus is hard to come by. Even the source of funding incites heated debate as the spectrum of convictions stretches from absolutely no private funding, to no government or private funding for certain areas (ie. political science, public policy, stem cell research) to absolutely no government funding… Obviously some of these stances go hand in hand with the ideology and political beliefs of the individual. So if we cannot separate science from politics and policy making where does this leave the scientists and science policy? Here is one view on the subject.

elif

Movie

Revival of the mountain climbing (mountaineering?) movie genre:
This is a very nice German movie about the first climb of Eiger.
Trailer here.

Is this the right place to post this??

Few days later

Now, few days after the “official” announcement of this blog (Hi Betty!) I seem to be the only Neuro Jedi, mastering this universe. The force is not only with me, but it is rather following me everywhere.

This is where we keep our mug shots, continuously updated.
Whoop, sorry I did not realize that blog posts have to make sense. Ok, here is the first to a more focused, scientific and mature post:

The last two weeks have been good to the lab and we have increasingly interesting results. Almost two years of dedication, blood, sweat and (hidden??) tears it seems like we (excluding me) are onto something. Betty’s PDK paper (coming up in Neuroreport) will definitely outshine Obama’s efforts, a follow-up is in the works. Elif showed better than expected results, which in she in her classical manner undersold. Good job ladies. Yo’ Mamma, Lady Fletcher’s watchful eyes will be on you. BTW, congratulations to Lady Fletcher for her first first-author paper!! Coming up in Journal of Neurosurgery (in print as of today, online soon).
The gentlemen in our lab, Shane and Robert (S&R), are doing their own thing, in a typical guy manner, less talk and more mumble. S&R showed great images with cell tracker, folks you are the masters of uptake.

On a bitter note, our R01 grant is going to expire by the end of March 2009. We all are truly grateful for having had the chance to receive this support and continue our research. Grant money dried up, we all know that and the remaining little will go to the big boys, the ones that have multiple grants and devote 150% of their time to all their grants, boards, consultant jobs and start-ups. In contrast to us mere mortals, the big boy’s might have 36h days. Lets see if Obama’s additional funding for NIH of around 10 billion will trickle down to us small labs.
Very interesting article in Nature called “When grants go away”
Let’s see what is going to happen. We have good results, good ideas, now all we need is a little luck.
Selam, MD.