Successful Grant Writing – How to Do It Right

Aims

Participants will learn the basics of third party funding and how the evaluation procedure is implemented in practice. Derived from this, some fundamental recommendations for writing a good proposal are explained. Afterwards, we will practice them with some real proposals.

After the course, the participants will be able to avoid typical mistakes in proposal writing and will know how to write a competitive proposal.

Content

Basics of Third Party Funding
Planning your project and the writing process of the proposal
What does the evaluation procedure look like?
What does that mean for proposal writing?
Evaluators and Panel members report on the evaluation practice
Simulation of an evaluation procedure
Checking proposals regarding good writing practice (if possible participants’ own proposals)

Methods

We will focus on content that is not written in call documents etc. and take a close look at the practice of the evaluation procedure. Recommendations for proposal writing will be derived from insights into that procedure. In exercises, we will deepen the understanding of these recommendations.

Target Group

Advanced Doctoral Candidates & Postdocs

Requirements

No special requirements, i.e. participation is possible also for researchers who have never applied for a grant. The course is suited for researchers of all disciplines.

About the Trainer

Ingo Hebach

• PhD in Physics, Research experience in Philosophy
• 13 years experience in industry (Project Management), thereof 6 years as team leader
• 5 years experience as Research Manager in the office for international grants of ETH Zurich and University of Zurich

Workload

Total of 22-25hh (As preparation, the participants will have to read ca. 5 proposals, which will take about 6 – 8 hours
The course will take 16 hours of work in presence. Volunteers need to spend about 30 to 60 minutes for their preparation of special roles in the exercises.)

Feature

Should the covid-19 situation change and we are required to switch to an online format, the course will take place on 16, 18, 23 and 25.09.2024, from 09:00-13:00.

Once registration is open, applications will be collected for 24 hours and course places allocated by lot. All registrations received after the initial 24h period will be put on a waiting list and assigned on a first come, first served basis.

Course places/places on the waiting list will be confirmed by e-mail. Course registrations can only be canceled before the registration period ends (send an e-mail to grace@unibas.ch). Full course attendance is mandatory. Participants who fail to attend a course without prior notification or withdraw after the registration deadline are subject to a fee of CHF 30. In addition, participants who cancel their course registration at a later point in time, are absent without an excuse or do not attend the entire course will, for reasons of fairness, not be considered for course registration in the following semester and will be removed from other courses offered in the same semester. Please find the detailed regulations on the Transferable Skills Homepage.