14- Prof. Marysia Placzek- Approaching grant writing with confidence

Grant writing is a pillar of any research life. Convincing funders to give you the cash to work on what interests you is a painful process. Building resilience in the process of grant writing is a must to thrive in research.

In this interview, I ask Marysia what her own approach has been to get started with grant writing. Based on her extensive experience as a research leader, I ask her how she advises early career researchers to think about grant writing and transition into research independence.

About Marysia:

Marysia is a Wellcome Trust Investigator and Professor of Developmental Neurobiology in the Department of Biomedical Science at The University of Sheffield. 

What a pleasure to interview Marysia as she was my very own PI when I started working as a Postdoc a great many years ago. She was an amazing PI who gave me lots of opportunities and supported me a great deal during my postdoctoral time.

Get in touch with Marysia:

https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/biosciences/people/bms-staff/academic/marysia-placzek

Find out about:

·      How thinking small may lead to great rewards in fellowship applications

·      What shifting to collaboration mode instead of competition mode can bring

·      How (as a PI) you can support your Postdocs explore their transition to research independence

·      Why “Just do it” may need to be repeated over and over to researchers who lack confidence

·      How exposing yourself to deep criticism in research is part of building your research resilience

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You can get this episode shownotes here on the website.

Transcript

Sandrine: Welcome to Research Lives and Culture, the podcast that offers conversations about the research environment. Each week, I interview someone who works or has previously worked in research. We discuss about the approach they have taken to navigate their career, the critical decisions they have made, the joys they have had in their work, and the challenges that they have faced.

I ask questions about what a supportive research environment really looks like and about the actions that we can take to help the research culture empower people to thrive. My name is Dr. Sandrine Soubes. I am a coach, facilitator, and trainer for the research environment and your host on this podcast. I am committed to ease the path to research careers by sharing stories of researcher's lives.

Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening where ever you are our listeners. Today I've got the great pleasure of interviewing professor Marysia Placzek from the University of Sheffield who is based in the department of Biomedical Sciences. It's a little bit strange interviewing Marysia because she was my PI when I first moved to the UK. I did one postdoc and it was with Marysia. It feels very strange, but it's really a pleasure to have you onboard today.

Marysia: Thank you.

Sandrine: We're going to be discussing grant writing and getting you to share some of your experiences in the process because obviously for many early career researchers and many academics, getting funding for research is really the hardest thing to do, something that never stops in a research career. Marysia, can you share with us your initial experiences in getting your first independent research funding? How did it all start for you?

Marysia: I was in fact tremendously lucky in that I did a very long postdoc. That's the first thing. I was the postdoc in one lab for six and half years. That was a very, very successful postdoc. On the basis of that, I got a tenure track position in a research institute, what was NIMR, National Institute for Medical Research. I was incredibly fortunate because that meant that I had my first five years of independence fully supported.

I didn't have to write grants at all in that first five-year period. During that time, I run a very, very small lab. I had one PhD student, one technician, and for part of the time a postdoc. I worked very closely with the PhD student and the technician, in particular, to try and build up a niche of my own science that was quite separate to anything I'd been doing as a postdoc. The reason I left was because I wasn't happy living in London.

I had two small children at the time, I was expecting a third and I just didn't like living in London. The opportunity came up to move to Sheffield. I really, really wanted to combine research and teaching. It seemed like a great move. When I arrived in Sheffield, I immediately wrote an MRC grant and a welcome trust grant having had some dependent publications already.

Sandrine: That's pretty unusual I guess in terms of thinking about the career that people have now because often when we give advice to postdoc, it's about building step by step portfolio of small grants. What was it like for you in term of that first jump into applying for the grants having not done it before?

Marysia: I'd never made a big deal of writing grants, and I think that is one thing that I would certainly advise. If you get it, it's great. If you don't get it, it's not the end of the world. You can have another go. I think the good thing about applying for grants is that it forces you to think very logically and very constructively in it. It forces you to think hard about an area that you know more about than anybody else in the world.

It's a chance to bring that excitement onto and put it down on a piece of paper. In terms of building up slowly, I think the key point is to try and develop some independence even as a postdoc so that you're beginning to carve out part of the research in the lab that is yours. It's not associated with who you work with. It's yours and you feel like you own it.

Sandrine: It's one of the challenge of many postdocs is identifying what is their next research area and this notion of niche is something that we often talk about during workshop. In your case, you had a period when you were in London where you were able to develop step by step that process of identifying what your niche is, but I guess for many postdoc, the first independent funding that they have may be a fellowship where in some ways, they already have to have articulated their research niche.

What advice could you give them in doing that reflective work during the period of their postdoc? It's very hard to do everything at the same time, so what is it that they could have in place to carry on with the work that they meant to do for the PI and at the same time finding a path towards articulating the research niche that they want to explore?

Marysia: I think my advice would be to think small. A really common mistake that you see are postdocs who-- or early-career people who write the first grant and you look at it, and you go, this is 50 years work and it's way too over it, way too ambitious. It's just impossible. What you're looking for is somebody who's just thought very, very deeply about a very small question that as soon as you see it written down on paper, you think, "Oh, that's so obvious, why didn't nobody else think of that."

I think it really is a matter of saying, "This is my small question." It doesn't have to be a rocket science question. It can be a really small, simple question. You know more about it and you have thought more deeply about it than anybody else around you, and you've got excited about it, and then you're conveying that excitement. An awful lot of what we do is actually thinking outside of the box.

You see so many grants, they all say the same thing. They just all say the same thing or they are all using the same technique, so anything that's just slightly unusual, especially if it's backed up by a paper where you think that person made a difference there, then that's the way forward I think. In all of the busyness of a postdoc and the busyness of the day, I think making time to think is probably really critical.

Sandrine: Marysia, what's your own approach when you are developing a research proposal? Do you always have one on the go or do you start writing when there is a funding call? What's your methodology?

Marysia: I've always maintained quite a small lab because I like the intimacy of supporting a few people well rather than just trying to have lots and lots of people. Also, I can never keep my head around too many individuals stories that are going on. I've always run quite a small lab, and what that has actually meant is that I've tended to get close to the end of one grant before applying for a second.

I haven't just put in grant after grant after grant because I just want more and more and more. If I have a particularly good person in the lab and I really want to support them further, then that will make me write an additional grant. Or for instance, if there is a particular call and I think that's made for my lab, or it's made for me, or it's made for my science, then it's a no-brainer, you apply for those.

If there is a ring-fenced funding specialist call, and it's absolutely up your street, just apply for it because those ring-fenced pots are easier to get than the average open to everybody grant. In terms of preparing, at the moment I've got in my head an idea for a grant that I've been churning over for probably the best part of a year, 6 months. What I'll do is I just have this going through my mind and somehow it will build up to the point where I think, this has to come out on paper now, and then I'll sit down and write it very quickly. I tend to write, try and write a draft of the grant in a week, not have it taking endless time and often that's because the deadline really is coming and I've left it too late. The good thing about that is that you have to then just do it.

Sandrine: It's not that you actually develop the grant in a week is that you write it in a week, but you may have spent most thinking about it and developing it in your head. How do you think your approach to writing grants has evolved over the years, has something changed in a way that maybe you've become more successful in the way you develop grants?

Marysia: No, I'm the same as everybody. I will have grants that are not funded, and some grants that you submit are better than others. That's for certain, they're a better hypothesis. They're better crafted. They're better suited to the calls, some grants are better than others. Some very good grants are not funded. Because there's a lot of good grants going in. You have to be very thick skinned about the funding mechanism. I was thinking about this, the biggest change probably over the years has been that in the past, there was an expectation in the space for junior people, that it would just be your name on the grant and you wouldn't have a lot of collaborators.

Whereas these days, I think the idea is that, it's your system, it's your idea, but you're not scared to say, but I can't do this bit and I'm going to get collaborative help from X, Y or Z. I think that's probably the biggest change in grants actually, the idea that it's revolving around an individual, but that individual is confident enough to say, but I'm not going to do this bit. I'm going to reach out and get support for that bit or a collaboration.

Sandrine: When you're developing this type of grant. Do you tend to work with people that you have already established a collaboration with, or do you also dare to bring in people that you just know from knowing their papers, but have not necessarily interacting with building trust in the research process is something that's important?

Marysia: I wrote a grant maybe 3,, 4 years ago with somebody in the states who I didn't know him well at all, but we worked on, we both published in the same field, so we could have been seen as competitors, but I think we both valued each other's science. I just approached him. He had a huge amount of expertise in a technique that I'm not familiar with. I said, "Do you want to write this grant together," and we did and we didn't get it funded, but that was the start of us beginning to sort of just talk a little bit not really very often. Then I put him as a collaborator on another big grant, about 2 years later, which was funded. We chat every week. We Skype for about an hour and a half every week. It's been a very, very successful collaboration. People on the whole will be pleased if you approach them and ask for their expertise. Everybody likes to be valued. If somebody says, no, I can't, it probably is just because they really don't have time or they haven't got that right expertise. I think reaching out to people is to be encouraged.

Sandrine: How do you think that when the postdoc is considering getting a fellowship or is thinking about small sets of experiments, maybe to have pilot data to apply for a fellowship, what advice do you give people in this situation? One of the things that you said earlier is to be maybe less ambitious in terms of the type of experiment that you may want to do, but how should they approach kind of refining their ideas?

Marysia: They have to distinguish themselves from the lab in which they've been in. That is the absolute number one thing, especially for fellowship, they absolutely have to put clear blue water between what they are proposing and what they have done in the past. That is part of the reason why traditionally it's been easier to get a fellowship if you move to a different place and you have a completely different sponsor, and it might be that you're taking an idea and an approach, but now applying it in a different system, or you have an idea about a system, but you're going to go somewhere else and use a different approach. It is possible to stay in the same place with a fellowship, but you cannot be working on anything like the lab that you've come from, that's a fellowship.

For grants, there are increasingly collaborative grants where a postdoc can begin to take the initiative, begin to write it, and that requires much less separation from the PI. I think that's a very good thing. I think the fellowship roots are really competitive and you have to know that you have an idea you've published. You're already known for that idea and you're going to take it forward independently and in a different way. I think the collaborative grants are, roots that it lends itself much more to team-working ,building teams of research areas where it's slightly different to what you've done before or what your PI has done, but it doesn't need to be million miles away

Sandrine: Going back to pilot data. Often, one of the questions that we are asked by postdoc is how much pilot data do I need to write my first fellowship? A linked question is, what advice would you give postdoc in negotiating with their PI, access to resources to be able to prepare these pilot data that's necessary?

Marysia: This is probably the biggest challenge really, because what you really want is a PI who has interested in developing somebody else's career as they are in developing their own careers. You'll either work with somebody who is really keen on that and will go out of their way to support you in that. The things that you look for are, are they saying that you can be in a senior author position, are they saying that you can go on as corresponding author on a paper? Are they saying why don't you write this review, giving you opportunities and are they inviting you to go to meetings and represent the lab independently?

Are they inviting if you have visiting speakers, especially if they're senior people in the field, are they inviting the postdoc to have a separate session with that person so that they're really treating the post, you're being treated as a postdoc as an equal research-wise. If you don't have that, you've got to make it happen. I think there's that short list, I can't remember how many things I came up with, but there's five things there. Every single one of those things matters. It gives you was the post-doc a taste of, do I really want to do this?

Sandrine: When I walked in Sheffield and we had funding for postdocs and even PhD students for small project for single student, I was always surprised that so few people applied, I would have expected considering the number of postdocs in the faculty, you will have expected minimal application to come. I was always surprised that money was there for people to have their own project, I guess, for many people, that's what differentiate, whether that's something that you really interested or not. What do you think really stops people from applying for their own funding in a way of taking that first steps towards research independence?

Marysia: That's a very difficult one Sandrine because I've come across so many different experiences that people have so many different experiences. Some people just don't want to run their own research group. What they would prefer is for there to be a system in place that supported long-term postdocs in somebody else's lab. I would say quite a lot of people fall into that I wish it was otherwise category because they love doing the bench work. They love doing the science. They love thinking about the science and they might have fantastic ideas, but they really just don't want this other, the accompanying increase in work and responsibility.

There's that. One of the problems is that people are often at that stage of their career, when they might have a young family that makes it incredibly difficult. It does make it incredibly difficult. Again, I was lucky enough that I got my first independent position before we had children. I can see with people who do have young children just how hard it is for them to do it all. It's a lot of work. I think that is off-putting. Then you have another set of people who, for whatever reason, don't have the confidence to do that.

I think that's the person who you really want to dig those people out and encourage them. It'll be people who really, they just need to be given a little bit more confidence that they can do it. Again, I think making sure that you're gently just pushing them to attend, not just given average posters and average meeting, but really step up and interact with the big players and realize that they're all human, make yourself known on the circuit. Unfortunately it's still a lot of it is still about putting yourself out there and saying, "I'm here". Getting out, going and offering to give talks, writing reviews, just anything to build up that confidence. Then of course it has to be linked to output. It has to be linked to, I've had a really good publication run in the last three years and now's my time. Timing often comes into it.

Sandrine: One of the things that often people ask is, what's the difference really in term of the research project that you may put between a fellowship and a grant. Often people are a little bit confused, is this any different? Is this the same? Would you say there is [crosstalk]

Marysia: It's the same. I think it's the same. I don't think there is any difference. The key point about a fellowship is that it gives you the opportunity for the fellowship will buy out your salary and so you won't have a lot of other commitments, a department or a faculty won't be paying your salary, and so they won't be able to ask you to do too much teaching that sort of thing. There's no difference between the grant and a fellowship. Not at all really. I suppose having that fellowship tend to be five years. Grants tend to be three years.

Sandrine: When you review fellowships, what's the common mistake that you see that applicant makes. One of the things that you've said earlier is that people may just put too much 10 years of research in a single application. When you review fellowships yourself, what's really puts you off, or what makes you have a sense of this is an amazing application this person has definitely got to be funded.

Marysia: There's three things. One is the CV needs to be strong. It needs to be strong. It doesn't have to be that you've got a string of nature and science papers and cell papers, but you do need to have demonstrated. You need to have evidence that you have developed this idea successfully, and that you've got papers that show that. That's the first thing. You have to show that. The grant has got to be built on firm foundations. Then it has to be easy to understand. It has to be sufficiently easy to follow because the chances are, what tends to happen is that a lot of grants go out peer review at one point or another and then it's in the hands of experts. At some point in time that grant will come to somebody who is going to introduce it or triage it. It can be way outside of their field of expertise and they have to understand it. They have to be able to understand it. Keeping the narrative easy to read and straightforward will make people go, "Oh yes," nobody likes reviewing grants.

You'll just want to be just one. It's so awful. If you think how is it? I didn't really understand what were they trying to say there? You have to go back and back and back. Just a well-written grant. Then the other thing is that the experiments and the approach need to be doable. You might have a brilliant idea, but if the experiments are just impossible. A panel's going to see through that. The approach has got to fit with what you want to get out. Then, as I say, most the biggest, biggest common mistake and it often happens because people have been in very successful, big labs, or they've been in places with a lot of infrastructure and a lot of money, and they think that they're just going to be able to do it and go and do all of this work and they put in a grant that is going to take 50 years to do, they tend to just get sent back immediately.

Sandrine: What's your approach when you get to grant rejected and in term of reworking the grants. When to be something that you really want to answer and you don't get the funding, but it doesn't make you stop wanting the answer. How do you motivate yourself and reenergize yourself to go back to it and work on it again?

Marysia: I have some very good experience in this. Probably the paper that I will end up having as my most cited paper was a paper on the adult mouse. Normally we work in the embryonic chick, but this was an adult mouse paper. We just really make quite an important discovery. I was so excited about this. I put in nine grant applications within the space of two to three years. I didn't get a single one of them funded. Then some of them were better than the others, it's true. Largely there were all, I was so excited about these, but they were all to work on adult mouse doing quite sophisticated adult mouse genetics, which is not what I'm known for. They were never funded. I had to drop that line of research.

In a two or three-year period, I just, as I say, I just put in nine, or I can't remember now how many had rejected, it was, 9, 10, 11. Then I thought, this isn't working. This isn't working. I need to go back and think about the impact of this work on a system that I am known for.

I had to do quite a lot of rethinking about how the adult work made us think again about the embryonic work and then I put in a big grant on that and it was funded. You sometimes have to go very, very, very circuitous route to get there. You have to be very thick-skinned and you just-- I'm thick-skinned, I just think I'm going to keep going, I'm going to keep going. I'm just not going to take no for an answer. it might be that you don't always get exactly what you want, you don't always get the research that you want to do funded. That's just the system.

Sandrine: What is it that you do to keep positive and to keep-- It's funny because I remember you in the lab and you were one of these persons who always arrives in the lab with a smile and some positive energy. I'm not sure everybody, every PI is like that, but that's something in my memory.

Marysia: The thing that keeps me going is getting into the lab. I still go into the lab. In lockdown I've been being the technician for my postdocs. I love looking at the real experiment. I just get such a buzz out of that. Then the other thing I really love going outside and walking in the peak district. I think you have to have something that gets you through these failures because you will have grants rejected. You will, every body will have grants rejected. You mustn't take it personally and you just have to pick yourself up and get on with it really

Sandrine: As a postdoc, how do you know whether you're really ready to go and apply for them? In a way, in some cases, some people may just wait too late to be starting applying for their own funding. You know what, when you give advice to postdoc, what do you tell them in term of going for it, or you're not quite ready?

Marysia: My advice here is not very good actually, because I wouldn't say I've been hugely successful. I always push people to do it and they don't always take my advice. [laughs] I'll really say these days you have proper formal staff reviewed schemes twice a year. I will sit down with my postdocs and I will point out to them that you should be doing A, B, C, and D because then you could become independent in one year, two years, three years. Some of them just don't want to take me up on it. The others who do have moved on to successful positions.

It is just a matter of that's the same as everything, isn't it? You just have to focus, write a list, what could I do, where could I go, what's this grant for, am I writing it to go and work with somebody else or to stay here? Just plan it out and then just do it. People just have to do it. There's so many reasons not to. I think that's the problem.

Sandrine: One of the things that you said earlier is in some ways do not overthink it and it's about basically practice and just going for it, whether you are successful or not is less in a way worrying less about whether you're going to be successful or not, but just get on with it and doing it and see what happens in a way.

Marysia: I think that's right. I think I was very naïve when I was a postdoc. I didn't really know how you would get an independent position. I just ended up writing to many, many different labs, actually, and many different institutes and asking whether I could come and talk to people, give job talks. Maybe that's something that people don't appreciate they need to do. They need to be proactive in making contact with departments, with faculties, with research cluster leaders, and not just rely on the PI to work it all. Maybe that is something that is seriously wrong with the way it works presently that people just don't appreciate that they have to just write a letter to somebody and say, "Your department and your research are great. I'm looking for it. I'm looking for my independent and can I come and give a talk?" That's something to consider rather than just waiting to apply to an advert, be proactive.

Sandrine: That's certainly something that I've repeated many times in the workshops that I run that's for sure. Marysia, what's one of the thing that's, again, a lot of early career researchers ask is, how do you respond well to comments on the fellowship or on their first grant? Obviously, there is the comments from the reviewer on the grant. In a way there is a back and forth that can happen on an application. What do you think really matters to do when responding?

Marysia: I think that you have to drill down to expose yourself painfully to the deepest criticisms that are there, and then really think about whether you can tackle those criticisms or not. Inevitably, you'll know deep down whether a reviewer has actually really, it's not so much touched a nerve, but they found the weak point. It's no point beating around the edges and flapping around, trying to address the more minor comments when there's this elephant in the room, is something major and you either have to address it, you either have to deliver new data that speaks to it, or you have to be brutally honest and say, "Yes. That review is absolutely right. It's possible that I'm not going to be able to do that." And then you twist it and you say, "It doesn't matter because either way, we're going to learn something new and exciting." I think honesty comes. You can't hide in responding.

Sandrine: When you reflect on all the grants that you've had, that you've obtained successfully, what is the one that you've cherished the most [crosstalk]--?

Marysia: Always the last one. It's always the most exciting because by now we've learned so much more, so always the last one. [laughs]

Sandrine: My final question will be about what would you tell to your young self in term of enjoying the journey, what would you tell yourself?

Marysia: I just keep enjoying it. Do because you'd love it. You've got to because it's hard work and let's face it. I've been doing this for nearly 40 years now and it doesn't get easier just because you get older. In fact, it gets worse because there's all these new techniques and you haven't a clue what anybody's talking about and you can't work the technology anymore. I think you can still think, "No. Actually I still just love that." Actually I think you mustn't care. I think the truth is there is a level at which you have to be quite selfish and say, "I don't care whether nobody else in the world thinks this is interesting. I think this is the most fascinating thing." I think that carries you a long way actually. Don't always be looking over your shoulder at what everybody else is doing and what's going wrong, just focus on what's going right.

Sandrine: Well, Marysia t's been really a pleasure talking to you today. I'm very, very grateful for you giving us time on this podcast for sharing your experience and words of advice for early career researchers really appreciated. Thank you

Marysia: Thank you Sandrine. Thanks so much.

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Sandrine: I hope you've enjoyed the discussion I had with my guest. I'm very grateful that you've been listening to us. I hope that you will join me in the future podcast. I wish you a very good day and if you wants to contribute to the podcast, I'm very interested to hear from you as I'm always happy to invite some interviewing on this podcast. If you've got an interesting story about life and research and about the research environment get in touch with me at Sandrine[unintelligible 00:38:19] development.com.

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