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How does funding look?

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By scooby
Anonymously contributed:
How does funding support look for next fiscal year around your part of the Lab ? Is there any place at the Lab that is doing well right now with regards to WFO funding ?

Comments

Anonymous said…
We have actually had a 50% increase in WFO funding for our small group. But that means we need to hire at least 3 new people and in fact 1 person is leaving. It could take months to hire the new people - if ever! The fear is that we can't meet the deliverables now because we can't get/keep the people and essentially that'll mean we'll lose all of the funding in 12 months time. Different problem I suppose but with taxes so high, we don't anticipate replacing that funding even though we write dozens of proposals every year.
9/03/2008 1:09 PM
Anonymous said…
Well, 1:09 PM, you could always place some more managers onto your project team to help burn up the funding. That always works.
9/04/2008 10:37 AM
Anonymous said…
We've written about 25 WFO proposals in the last year and only 1 will be funded - providing 6 months of money for 1 person. It's likely that we spent much more hours applying for funding than getting that grant will pay for.

The funding of science worldwide is very tight at the moment (everyone everywhere has problems) but the lab's high taxes make them particularly uncompetitive for the shrinking pot of money.

The high taxes have created a death spiral. We were shouting to management about this for the last 3 years but no-one listened; The higher the taxes, the fewer agencies will pay them and the less money comes in, the less money that comes in, the more each individual grant must be taxed to support the lab, and so the taxes go up, and so on and so on.

The layoffs of support staff and lowering of other costs were supposed to help with this but the reality is that we need taxes to be 50% lower to genuinely compete, not the 10% (or whatever) they've eeked out. Even once they're 50% lower, we'd then need a year or 2 to wind everything back up again. This has become an impossible situation.

Think about it - do you really want your taxes paying for a $450K FTE when you could get the equivalent for $250K at a DoD lab, or in some cases $100K at a university??

We cost too much. I'm done.
9/04/2008 1:07 PM
Anonymous said…
I know a researcher who spent the last year writing 6 proposals. None of them got fundied and even if one of them had been funded, the insane tax burden meant it would only pay for about six months of this researcher's time! That's a losing proposition. This scientist saw the writing on the wall and just left the lab.

You are right, 1:07 PM. It's over. Many of us or in deep denial, but it's really over.

The current high costs and broken management system have make it impossible to grow new programs. A few areas may get lucky with a big program win, but that will be the exception. It's time to move on to more promising places to do research.
9/06/2008 10:38 PM
Anonymous said…
This year I wrote or participated in writing 15 WFO proposals, of which not one was funded. I cannot and will not repeat this exercise in futility again this year. In fact, I probably won't survive the funding melt down, and may soon be forced out. Hate to go after so many good years, but what a relief it would be to work somewhere else.
9/06/2008 11:00 PM
Anonymous said…
Hmmm...three new grants and still I can not afford the space, people and admin needed to make things happen.
9/09/2008 7:41 PM
Anonymous said…
Actually it appears that space charges are coming down quite dramatically for next year. A small group could possibly save enough to hire a whole person!
9/10/2008 4:28 PM
Anonymous said…
Working hard to write a WFO proposal is an exercise in futility at an NNSA lab. The likelihood of it getting funded is small and even if it does get funded, you can't count on our overhead and eager managers to eat away at the cash as soon as it hits the lab.

This place has little hope to grow. It's game over, as far as I can see.
9/12/2008 10:36 PM
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