Achievement

UO/OSU IGERT trainees organized a grant writing workshop in conjunction with the Materials Science Institute/IGERT conference, Dec. 2009. Keynote speakers were, Tim Patten, NSF Program Director for Macromolecular, Supramolecular and Nanochemistry and Daniel Gaspar, Technical Group Director for Materials Chemistry and Surface Chemistry at PNNL. Attendees included 17 IGERT trainees, including 2 trainees from UCLA, and several non-IGERT PhD students. The program consisted of: discussion of the NSF's grant acceptance workflow, the differences in writing grants in industry and academia, how grants are prepared and executed in a national lab setting, and a Q & A session that focused on specific items that increase funding success in each of those fields. Concluding the workshop was an open forum focusing on two unfunded grants and one funded grant (provided by UO professors). Participants had two weeks prior to read the grants. The merits of each proposal were debated between focus groups.