In Blog

At the start of the year, we launched our “fresh look” grant editing service. We have already started working with many of you and look forward to learning the outcome of your proposals later in the year. Meanwhile, IEL’s Director and senior editor Dr. Neil McCarthy has put together a three-part blog on “How to write winning grant applications”.

About Neil

Before finding out what Neil has to say in part one of his blog, let’s find out why he is ideally placed to provide IEL clients with some useful hints and tips on successful grant writing!

Many of you will know Neil as a senior editor with Insight Editing London (IEL), but he is also a Lecturer in Immunology / MRC Career Development Fellow in the Faculty of Medicine at Queen Mary University of London. Neil is Research Lead in The Blizard Institute’s Centre for Immunobiology, as well as Infection and Inflammation Lead in the cross-faculty Centre for Predictive in vitro Models. He has secured more than £1M in personal research funding to date, including research council grants, via charitable sources, and through various commercial projects. Let’s hear what Neil has to say, in part two of his blog, “Time – Team – Tools“.

Time – Team – Tools

“A key component of biomedical grant writing is clearly outlining the important scientific or clinical problem that you are ultimately trying to ‘fix’. In your proposal, you will need to convince a reviewer that this is the best possible time, team, and tools you could need to tackle this issue. For conventional project grants, this involves identifying a major current challenge in biomedicine, breaking this down into competent parts, and then securing the best possible collaborative partners and research tools to address each separate element.

If your own research team lacks a key skill, it is important to forge links with other labs that have the required track record to cover that need. In an ideal situation, each project aim will also be linked but not dependent on the others, so that if any one aspect of the study fails there will still be useful outputs from other areas. At the same time, a compelling grant proposal will also have a clear ‘narrative arc’ that ties the individual pieces together, thereby appearing to build towards your ultimate goal of ‘curing disease x’ (or at least making some progress in this direction).”

Stay tuned for part two that discusses the importance of the “Person, Project, and Place”!