Proposals

Another thing that Professor Greenside shared with us through the Adopt-a-Physicist Program was about proposals. When he first mentioned it in the forum, we thought that the proposals that he was talking about were no different from the research proposals we have done at school as our projects. He explained that these proposals that scientists like him work on are different from what we expected and are very important for a scientist for him to continue his research work.

Professor Greenside also shared with us that scientists like him submit proposals on a regular basis, in his case, every three years, to national scientific agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and the National Institute of Health. Each proposal that will pass the agency's panel of reviewers will earn him $300, 000 or more which will be used for funding his research work and sustaining his family's needs. However, there are also some times when his proposals get "rejected" by an agency. But according to Prof. Greenside, having his proposals rejected once in a while is only natural for a scientist like him because this means that the scientist is being innovative and is trying something new.

Here is an excerpt of our conversation with Prof. Greenside regarding proposals:

"In the United States, scientists need to obtain funding to support their research. They obtain this funding by submitting proposals to national agencies like the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and the National Institute of Health. These proposals are carefully evaluated by a panel of scientists and the best of the proposals are awarded money; the other proposals are simply discarded.

A proposal will typically support the needs of a scientist for about three years, in some cases up to five years. The money is used to pay for graduate students, postdocs, experimental equipment, summer salary for professors, travel to conferences or for collaboration, and to pay journals for the cost of publishing papers. Typical proposals would request between $200,000 to $1,000,000 over a period of three years, depending on how big the project is.

So basically as a scientist, I spend 3-4 weeks every three years writing a proposal that may be 15-20 pages long, and that is worth $300,000 or more if awarded. It is extremely difficult to do science without a funded proposal so writing successful proposals is an important aspect of being a scientist. "

~Henry Greenside