1. Hard Lessons in Proposal Writing Michael L. Nelson www.cs.odu.edu/~mln/

2. Your Mileage May Vary

3. My Timeline… 2002: Joined ODU 2005: Submitted my first CAREER proposal –returned without review; IM & BI moved from 1 page summary to body. Oops. 2006: Resubmitted, success. 2002-2006: PI/Co-PI on 9 different proposals (NSF, NASA, AMF, LC)

4. Batting.300 is Excellent Most of your proposals will strike out Tension between: –getting the CAREER early will help bootstrap your research program –holding on to your 3 shots until you know what you're doing

5. It Took Me Years to Learn… Grants are not technical publications with budgets attached –good conference papers != good proposals –"I'll just take the good parts from this workshop paper…"

6. It Took Me Years to Learn… NSF doesn't fund something just because it is a crazy cool idea –place in a general framework of evaluating competing ideas/designs/approaches

7. It Took Me Years to Learn… Grants are reviewed in stacks of 10-15 at a time: be kind to your reviewers –removing figures, tables, examples, etc. for more text is rarely a good idea –section/subsection headings keyed to RFP concepts help for quick reference

8. It Took Me Years to Learn… Grants are not necessarily reviewed by people directly in your research area –is your proposal readable by someone who hasn't tracking the last k SIGWhatevers? –background, motivating examples, related work, etc. is welcome

9. Preparing Get feedback from others, especially outside of your direct research area Appearance matters –paying for a technical editor is a good investment –Use LaTeX; MS Word == ugly proposals

10. Writing More than any other proposal, the CAREER is about you & your research program 5 years is a long time… –focus more on outcomes, directions, and student preparation than specifics

11. Revising Reviewers are rarely ignorant or capricious –"errors" in their reviews are most likely because you did not anticipate / explain something well –unfortunately, review panels are different every year…

12. Lessons & Advice Volunteer to serve on a review panel

13. What Panels Look For: Evaluation. Lots of evaluation. –lack of evaluation is the biggest proposal killer References / discussion of previous & related work Project management discussions or other supporting evidence that you can actually do what you’re claiming… Corresponding skills in your CV –make sure your 2 page CV emphasizes the skills needed

14. Other Panel Observations (for non-CAREER) Dr. Famous consulting on your project for 0.1 months is of little or no benefit Institutional affiliation was not important, but individual recognition played strongly –“I know person X, and they are doing good work” Panelists really read all that stuff –be careful what URLs you put in your proposal -- they had better work! Most panelists deferred to the panelist with: –most immediate knowledge –strongest opinion about the proposal