Thursday, May 1, 2014

Research funding? For me?! Awww you shouldn't have...

Imagine me as a 7 year old opening a birthday envelope and squeezing the card to have the check drop out. That's how it feels like when you received the "Your proposal has been recommended for funding" notice. These past few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity but during it all I received good news on two fronts, one project has definitely received funding for 2 years and another has been recommended for funding for 1 year. While these aren't long term funding streams (and the 1 year project hasn't been officially granted yet), it definitely eases my group's financial footing. In total it would cover 3 of my students for the next year and the 1 year grant will hopefully lead up to a Phase II, and covering students for the remainder of their PhDs.

The other reason why this is very good is that these are two new funding streams, one indirectly from NIH and one is Phase I project with a company. Hopefully the more medical focused project will lead to future R01 funding while the Phase I will lead to Phase II and then continued funding directly from the company.

And while I'm extremely happy and fortunate that at least 1 and maybe 2 of my projects will get funding, I still can't seem to shake this funk that I'm in. It's really weird but the "highs" from my current successes don't seem so high as in the past during my PhD work, even though they should. But the lows are definitely lower than in my PhD work. I'll save that topic for a future post.

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