Speaker 1: Have you ever been asked to write a research grant and not even known where to begin? I've been there, but I'm going to be talking about in today's video exactly how to write a research grant for trying to win some funding for your research, so exactly what you need to include in each paragraph, each different section, including diagrams and references, etc. So please do keep watching and subscribe to my channel to see more from me. OK, so a grant application or a grant proposal is a set of documents that you write and you submit to an organization, usually one that has money and with the explicit intent to win some funding or some money for your research. So this is not a statement. This is not a document that's written with the hope of like getting into university or something like that. No, it's specifically for trying to win money for your research, right? So it might be submitted to like Cancer Research UK grant side where they have money towards research and you are doing some research for something to do with cancer. And that would be something that you apply for and you have to win. All right. There are five main criteria that you need to consider when writing your grant proposal. And these are the following significance, approach, innovation, investigators, that's you and your team and the environment. So these are five criteria that usually your the body, the funding body that is going to award you this money will look for throughout your statement. Now I'm going to go through each one of those first before talking about the statement, because it is something that if you know and you are aware of, you will tailor what you say and how you say it. And that will allow you to be more likely to win that funding. So the first is significance. Now significance means that what the research that you are proposing to do has value. And that can be valuable in the industry that can be valuable for the like the society or the area that you're working in. Like, what is it that you are hoping to find? And are you are you addressing like an important research problem? Like how significant is it in your field? The second is approach. Now approach is another word for saying the methods and the techniques. So with approach, they'll be looking at how the framework, the design, the methods and the analysis and how developed are they, how well integrated are they and how appropriate are they to the aims. And they're going to ask if the applicants, that's you, do they acknowledge any problem areas and consider alternative approaches. So that means that you've thought a little bit within your statement about limitations. And that's something that we're going to be looking at when I speak about each of the paragraphs and each of the sections that you need to include. The next one is about innovation. So this is asking are the aims original and innovative? Are the concepts novel? Are the proposed methods and approaches novel? Are they new? Have they been done before? And then lastly, does the project challenge existing paradigms or develop new methodologies or technologies? So innovation means that you are looking at something new, original, right? For a PhD, for example, to be able to be awarded with a PhD program, the thing that you have found at the end of the three, four years needs to be something original. And that's a key component of being able to be awarded a PhD. It has to be something original. So similarly, when you're trying to apply for funding, you can't be asking for funding when what you are trying to be looking for is something that has already been published or we already know it has to be innovative. The next is the investigator. So the investigator is you, the you and your team. So it could be investigator, just one or it could be multiple investigators. But they're looking at you. Are you well-trained? Are you suitable for the job? Do you have the right qualifications and the right experience to be able to undertake and carry out this research? Now, this is a big one, of course. If you've never done any biological science research before and you're applying for money to be able to do biological science research, well, you're probably not going to get it because you've never done it before. And chances are you are not going to be able to and you have no experience with it. So that's something that you need to think about. The last is environment. So they're going to ask and think about does the scientific environment in which the work will be done contribute to the overall probability of success? So that means maybe is your institution or university or the building that you're going to be doing it in or the lab that you're going to be doing it in, do they have a history of success already? And secondly, do the proposed experiments take advantage of unique features of the scientific environment or employ useful collaborative arrangements? So within your statement, there is an opportunity for you to say, like, I'm going to be collaborating with this lab or I'm going to be working closely with that lab or I'm going to be using X method, which is in collaboration with so and so. So that's talking more about the environment, your university, like the techniques you're going to be using and all of that. So those are five key aspects that the funding body is going to be looking at throughout your statement. So let's get into it. Let's now talk about each of the sections of your statement and what you need to include. OK, so the first paragraph, the first section within the structure of your research statement is an abstract. So an abstract is what you think it is. It is a summary of your research proposal. So this could be around 150 to 200 words. And you're essentially just summarizing what it is that you want to do and your aims, the gap in literature, your methods that you're going to be using and how long you might take. So it's a quick summary. I would recommend doing the abstract last, because at this point you would have considered everything else. You would have written everything else out. And so writing the abstract would be a lot easier than trying to summarize things in the beginning when you haven't even fleshed out everything else. So I would say leave it to the end. But it is the first thing that needs to be there. The second part of your research statement needs to be the literature review, also known as the body. Now, the literature review, again, says what you think it is. It is a review of the literature related to your field. So this is a quick summary of the research within your field, speaking about the top papers, the top literature papers, the top review papers, and just summarizing what is already known about your particular field. Here you're mentioning any existing knowledge about your topic. And if you do have any preliminary data, here is where you can put it. Because what you can say is that this is what we know about this topic. And this is what my team have been looking at thus far. And here is some data, preliminary data, that shows what we've been doing. And it's a quick review of the literature and kind of what you have, if you have anything. At the end of the literature review, you could add your hypothesis. So this could be one or two sentences just stating what your hypothesis is. So you've got your abstract, you've summarized everything. Then you've got a literature review, and this way of summarizing the literature, adding any preliminary data that you may have. You then may want to add one or two sentences for your hypothesis. So you're really taking this reader on a journey, giving the background information, what you've seen so far, any methodological approaches that you might have taken so far, and then what the hypothesis is. The next section is the aims, right? This needs to be very clear. What are your aims for this particular project? You may have, you usually would have a couple of aims. So you might have two or three aims. If you're looking for funding for like two years or three years, you should have a couple of aims that you're going to be like having side projects for. So state very clearly what those aims are. I am going to be showing you an example of a research statement, like a really excellent one. And I think I'm going to do it in a new video, so it's not a very long video. So I will link that together and it will be shortly after this video. So do keep your eyes peeled for that one. But essentially it needs to look like this, like aim one, this is what it is. Aim two, this is what it is. Aim three, this is what it is. So it's very, very clear. You want to use strong action words within your aims. So something like develop a method for, explore how X and Y, you know, bind, determine the whatever, compare. So these are really strong action words. And I'll probably leave a little list over here so you can see what I'm talking about. But you want to use strong action words for your aims. OK, very, very important because that shows that you know exactly what it is that you are planning to do and you have the motivation and determination and the know-how to get there. One thing to point out in the aims is you want to avoid hierarchical success. Now that means that you want to avoid aim one linking to aim two linking to aim three, which means that to be able to achieve aim three, aim two must have been achieved. And to be able to achieve aim two, you must have achieved aim one. Because what happens then is that you're saying to the your funding body that if I'm not able to achieve aim two, aim one, sorry, that means I definitely can't do aim two, which means I definitely can't do aim three. The whole project's failed. Right. So you want to think about three different aims that are interlinked, but that do not rely on each other. So that's what I mean when I say avoid hierarchical successes. That is aim one deriving something for aim two and which then gives it to aim three. Now all of them are failure, are a failure if things don't work out, which happens all the time. But at least if you have three aims that are different and are standalone, if one doesn't work out, then two and three are still feasible. So think about that. That is a really big downfall for a lot of research statements that come out and that are unsuccessful. A lot of the time it's because their aims are too interlinked and the whole project is basically just one thing. OK, the next section needs to be to do with the significance of your topic. Now, this is where you're really selling yourself, yourself, I mean, the project. But this is where you're really selling the project. Like, why is this research important? Why is it significant? Why should you give us a hundred thousand, five hundred thousand, two million? Like, you know, this is a lot of money. Why should we give you this money? Why is it so significant in the in that particular research space? Why do you deserve? Why do you deserve this money needs to be really clear. So there are three things that you want to consider. The first is what the current state of knowledge is. So are there any unresolved issues that you want to resolve with this money? The second is that you want to determine the potential impact on whatever. So if it's health care, then health care. But what is the potential impact on your field? And the last is that you want your focus to be very, very small. So you want to make sure that you are not saying that you're going to cure cancer, right? If that's unrealistic, you're not getting the money for that. But you want to show that your focus is very narrow. And by showing a very narrow focus, you are able to show how, how significant being able to determine that research question is, which will then lead to helping the next question and answering the next question, etc. And you also want to show a relationship to other topics in that field. If you are a standalone topic, then you're only really helping that little area. But you want to show that by you winning and by you being successful in your research, you are going to help that topic as well. And you're going to help that topic as well. And so you're all interlinking. And that's more likely to get you the money. Because what that means is when you publish your research, you are more likely to firstly end up in a better journal because it's research that is more groundbreaking. But you also end up being excited by or being recognised by a lot of other research areas because you are all interlinked. So within this little bit of writing, you want to reference and you want to include other journal articles and other scholarly pieces that show how you are similar. Here, you may want to use referencing if you are mentioning other papers. And also in the literature review above as well, I forgot to mention, you want to also use referencing if you are using other papers. And there can be a referencing section at the end of your proposal with just some references over there. Not too many, by the way, like no more than 10. But definitely reference. And that shows that you are academically, you have the academic skill set of being able to reference, which shockingly is quite poorly done generally. OK, the next few sections are to do with the project narrative. So that's to do with like the methods, the analysis and like the goals in terms of like timelines and things like that. So section number five is innovation. Now innovation, as I mentioned earlier, is all about showing that your research is original and has some sort of like original method, idea, result, approach, anything original compared to what is out there already. So here you want to think about the importance of the problem, any barriers, critical barriers to progress in the field that your project would address. You want to think about how your project is going to improve scientific knowledge and technical capabilities. That means like you're adding a new method within the field or any clinical practice. And you also want to think about like just in general, whether your methods and your technologies and your approach is going to be unique. So this is a really important section, not too long, but long enough that you have shown that you're bringing something new to the table. Now the next section is probably the largest section and probably one of the most important sections. And this is to do with your approach. Now your approach is to do with your methods and your research methodology. So you want to start off with an overview. So the overview will summarise your methods and you kind of repeat actually your aims and your hypothesis. There's a bit of a repetition, what it is that you are going to be doing and the method and approach that you're going to be taking. So a quick few sentences just summarising this. Then you want to mention the research team. So you guys, the personnel, the investigators, who are you? What do you bring to the table? What skill set do you have? Have you done research like this before? Can you show us the paper where you published this? What is your experience? Have you done something like this before? Your academic background, like you need to justify why you are the one to be able to carry out, successfully carry out this research. You want to convince the reviewers that you have the best possible team. So who else are you working with? Who else is going to be working on this particular project? And what institution are you going to be working in or at? Because if you're proposing that you've got a lab in UCL, for example, that's a great university. You're going to have a lot of support there and you've got a great research network and a great research environment. So that's really good. And you want to also lastly describe the roles of each of the personnel within your team. So like person A is currently a researcher at this university. Person B is a PhD student here. Person C is this X, Y and Z and just mentioning who you are. This is so important. They're giving the money to you to do the research. So if you're not a great fit, they're not going to give it to you. Then you want to include the timeline for your research. This again is something that is missed out all the time. And I'm like, surely you want to show the reviewers that you have an idea of how long it's going to take. And this could easily just be a nice little table, a nice little chart to show how long things are going to take and the duration and the aims that show that you've thought out how long these things take. If you're saying that you're going to cultivate some cells and do some imaging and you're saying one month for that. That's unrealistic. It actually shows that you're quite immature and you have no experience. But if you say that could take a year, yeah, probably will take a year. And that's actually a good indication that you are experienced and you understand the field. So it generally includes graphics, as I mentioned, and I'm going to show you an image now of a Gantt chart over here or in front of my face over here somewhere. So you can see that I'm looking at it right now. You can see that you've got the activity. So exactly what you're going to be doing. So here they've said develop items for the survey. So that's going to take Q1 of the grant year one. So GY1 is grant year one. It's going to take them Q1, so that's three months. And then for month two, they're going to be reviewing the items along with pre-testing the items. That's going to take them Q2. Then Q3 is accounted for and Q4 is accounted for. And this recruiting a thousand subjects and administering the survey, that's going to take them like almost a year, actually. So it's quite a long time, nine months, almost a year. And then for Q7 and Q8, they're going to be analysing and preparing the manuscripts. So that's a really nice breakdown of a timeline. And that's all that you need, because that really shows that you've thought about the different components of your research, like what happens, how it works, like how it goes along. And then you've shown that you've got the different timelines, so you've broken it down into Q1, that's quarter one, quarter two, quarter three, quarter four. You can even break it down even more and break it down into months, but not much moves in a month in the research world. So Q1 is more realistic because in three months, something can actually happen. And then you can see that they've clearly added even like writing the manuscript and the research paper. That is all part of the grant because you don't want to run out of money and then you've got to still write the grant because now you're writing the grant with no, you're writing the paper, sorry, the research paper with no money. So you do need to make sure that you've accounted for that as well within your time. And then you want to include your methods in detail. So this is specifying like the methodology and how you're going to like recruit your participants if that's what you have as part of your research. Like whatever your methods is, you want to detail it and then any anticipated results and limitations. So you think this is going to happen and these are the potential limitations that could occur. And as I mentioned at the top, one of the five key components is knowing, is you knowing, well them knowing that you know, that you have considered that things could go wrong and these are the things and you've accounted for them. So never, ever, ever, ever, even anywhere in life, give a limitation without giving a solution. So you should never, ever say, oh, it's not going to work out because the cells could die. That's it. Oh, but actually, if they do die, this is what I'm going to do. But even better, I'm going to try not to get them to die by doing this. Right. And that's really, really important. Like you have clarified what the limitations could be and what you're going to do to overcome that. Okay. So there are five reasons why grants usually fail and these are what they are. Firstly, poor science, which means that the quality of the research is not great. It's the science itself is really poor and it's 100% going to get rejected. Second is poor organization. So it's not written in a way that is organized clearly. You've mentioned a hypothesis at the end, aims are in the beginning, like it's just not very clear. They will just give up and stop reading. Poor integration and the proposal has to be really clear with each other. You need to make it really clear that you've got your preliminary studies here, you've got a background here, you've got your methods here and you've integrated it all together really nicely and really well. Then you've got a grant will fail if you have any contradiction. So contradiction means that you've said one thing in the beginning and you said something else at the end. Just make sure that you aren't contradicting yourself in any way. And then lastly, lack of qualifications or experience. So if you're someone who has written an excellent grant, but you don't have a PhD or you don't have the research qualifications or the research experience, or you're not based in a university like where are you going to be doing this research? So that's another way. So those are five ways that usually grants get rejected like instantly. So as I said, I'm going to be following this video up with an example of a research grant, like an excellent one. So do check on my channel in the next week or so to see that video and that will help you sort of like actually see what those things look like. I'll leave the link down below for some excellent examples as well. Let me know if this video was helpful and I'll see you guys in my next one. Okay, bye.