We are happy to invite you to our workshop “Grant Writing for Natural and Life Scientists” with Dr. Christina Schütte. The aim of this course is to familiarize participants with the strategies for writing successful grant applications to various funding bodies (BMBF, DFG). The corresponding funding principles will be exemplified in exercises for preparing work plans and writing abstracts for grant applications.

Workshop dates: Thursday, 13 July (9-17h) – Friday, 14 July (9-17h)
Place: MPI-bpc, Foyer building, small seminar room (Am Fassberg 11, ground floor, to the left from entrance)
Trainer: Dr. Christina Schütte
Duration: 2 full days

Registration: To register, please write an email, including a short statement on your motivation to join the workshop (Why this workshop?) to ggnb-career@gwdg.de.

Contents:

• General points to consider when writing a grant application
• Structuring a story
• General points on good scientific writing
• The different parts of a grant application and their contents
• Strategies for successful grant applications: What information is necessary, how and where should it be presented?
• Differences between different funding bodies and funding principles (stress on DFG-, BMBF- and EU-funding)
• Common mistakes in grant applications and how to avoid them
• Analysis of grant abstracts provided by the participants (optional)
• Exercises for writing a grant abstract and for structuring a work plan

Requirements for participation:

The course is aimed at postdocs and late-stage PhD students in the natural and life sciences who are currently preparing or will recently prepare a grant application.

Participants will be asked to prepare a short “mini-grant application” (4 pages + scientific CV) as pre-work for the course which has to be submitted about one week before the workshop – please take this into consideration when planning to participate in this course.

These mini-grant applications will be evaluated by other participants individually before the course and in an evaluation session within the course. Each participant will also evaluate 3-4 proposals by others in the 4-5 days before course start. This will provide extensive feedback for all participants on their applications, but most importantly, will provide a clear impression of the situation and the view of potential evaluators.

After registration, you will get more detailed information about the pre-work and the “mini-grant application”.