Showing posts with label science funding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science funding. Show all posts
Monday, August 17, 2009
Old White Men
After a week of frantic proposal writing, that document is done and sent in to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. I am now at a meeting organized by this same agency on this same topic. Why they scheduled the meeting on top of the proposal deadline is truly bizarre, but that’s what they did. I suspect most of the people here did not write proposals, as it was only open to universities, and there are only about 3 of us here from academic institutions. Tomorrow I get to give my pitch, and hope that those here from the military like it. As I have never actually done anything with modeling (or any research) of artificial radiation belts (i.e., from a high altitude nuclear explosion), I call my talk a pitch because I will only show “natural” radiation belt results, and talk about how the model could be used for this specialized source term. There are about 40 of us here, and I’d like to describe this crew. One of the attendees is female. She also looks Native American, and works for the Air Force in LA. There is another guy here from the Naval Research Lab who is Indian born (now a US citizen, as is everyone in the room). Everyone else is a white guy. About half are over 60 years old, a good number of them over 70. I don’t think I am the youngest in the room, but I am pretty darn close...perhaps 2 or 3 are younger than me. Many at this meeting are a crew that began in this field at the dawn of the space age 50 years ago. The field has lost interest over the years, and I am sure there is some decay lifetime for the number of researchers in this field. In the last few years (okay, since 9/11), this field has gotten more attention within DoD. So, that’s why there are the younger people here, but the younger crew is not a particularly diverse population, and the room (and the opening speaker list) is certainly dominated by old white men.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Whoring
I’m going after the DOD money.
My field of space physics is related to national security because the things that humans do and the technology we rely on is influenced by the “weather” of outer space. Specifically, we are influenced by the electric currents that flow through near-Earth space and by relativistic particles that get close to Earth. Up until now, I have only used this connection as a “relevance” argument in proposals to science-oriented funding agencies like NASA and NSF. This helps to get me funding to do research on the natural space environment.
Occasionally, however, there is a military agency that solicits proposals from academics to study something about the space environment that is related to national security. The Department of Defense is different than NASA in that most of their funding agencies ask for short white papers first, and they make the big down-select at this stage. The proposers are told yes or no on submitting a full proposal (usually without much feedback), and those lucky enough to hear “yes” usually then have a better than 50% chance of getting selected for funding. I have made it past the white paper stage once. No funding from DOD yet.
In May I submitted another white paper to a DOD agency, and I just heard that it was selected for full proposal submission. I now get to spend the next month learning about high-altitude nuclear explosions and how they create artificial radiation belts in near-Earth outer space. I know a bit about the natural radiation belt environment, but this will be a new direction for me.
I am still trying to convince myself that I want to do this work. The proposal solicitation is written from a counterterrorism standpoint, and in fact it comes from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. However, I could easily see how it could be used from an offensive standpoint. If the US has accurate simulation tools describing the resulting radiation belts from a high-altitude nuclear explosion (and therefore the threat to space-based assets), then we can perhaps plan how to use such explosions to our strategic advantage. It is nowhere near the dilemma that scientists faced in the 1940s during the development of nuclear weapons, but it is an indirect usage of peaceful scientific advancements for potential destruction. I tell myself that writing this proposal and going after this money is patriotic and good for America. Something keeps nagging me in the back of my mind, though, that I am whoring my expertise for a few extra dollars of research funding, and there will be unintended negative consequences down the line.
My field of space physics is related to national security because the things that humans do and the technology we rely on is influenced by the “weather” of outer space. Specifically, we are influenced by the electric currents that flow through near-Earth space and by relativistic particles that get close to Earth. Up until now, I have only used this connection as a “relevance” argument in proposals to science-oriented funding agencies like NASA and NSF. This helps to get me funding to do research on the natural space environment.
Occasionally, however, there is a military agency that solicits proposals from academics to study something about the space environment that is related to national security. The Department of Defense is different than NASA in that most of their funding agencies ask for short white papers first, and they make the big down-select at this stage. The proposers are told yes or no on submitting a full proposal (usually without much feedback), and those lucky enough to hear “yes” usually then have a better than 50% chance of getting selected for funding. I have made it past the white paper stage once. No funding from DOD yet.
In May I submitted another white paper to a DOD agency, and I just heard that it was selected for full proposal submission. I now get to spend the next month learning about high-altitude nuclear explosions and how they create artificial radiation belts in near-Earth outer space. I know a bit about the natural radiation belt environment, but this will be a new direction for me.
I am still trying to convince myself that I want to do this work. The proposal solicitation is written from a counterterrorism standpoint, and in fact it comes from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. However, I could easily see how it could be used from an offensive standpoint. If the US has accurate simulation tools describing the resulting radiation belts from a high-altitude nuclear explosion (and therefore the threat to space-based assets), then we can perhaps plan how to use such explosions to our strategic advantage. It is nowhere near the dilemma that scientists faced in the 1940s during the development of nuclear weapons, but it is an indirect usage of peaceful scientific advancements for potential destruction. I tell myself that writing this proposal and going after this money is patriotic and good for America. Something keeps nagging me in the back of my mind, though, that I am whoring my expertise for a few extra dollars of research funding, and there will be unintended negative consequences down the line.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Manager Mode
I just submitted a proposal to NASA, as did one of the research scientists that I support. They will be reviewed by the same subpanel of the same program, and will be ranked relative to each other when the final funding decisions are made by the NASA HQ discipline scientist. It’s kind of weird directly competing with another proposal not only from the same department but also from the same group.
This brings me to the concept of “manager mode.” Three years ago, when I was research faculty instead of instructional faculty, I had time to write my own code, do my own simulations, analyze my own data, compare my own model results with the data, and write my own papers. I cannot do this now. The teaching and service loads of an instructional faculty (now tenured, as of 2 months ago!) greatly limit the time I have to do any of those things. Plus, I am expected to maintain a research group. I think I have done pretty well creating one. Three years ago it was me and 2 grad students. Now it is me, 2 assistant research scientists, 4 grad students, and 1-3 undergrad students (2 this summer). Funding all of these people is a major priority in my life and so writing proposals is a constant activity. Proposals usually have hard deadlines, so these often take precedence over everything else for a week or two when such a deadline comes up. Meeting with all of these people is a major time commitment as well. The undergrads need a few minutes (perhaps an hour) every day, the grad students and research scientists a few hours once or twice a week. Between proposals and managing the people in my group, most of my time allocation for research activities is spent. Another chunk of time is spent in peer review. Whereas I used to say yes to every request, I often say no to paper reviews not, not doing more than one every month or two. Proposal reviews I do every time, though, and this takes some effort to do it right. Another chunk of my research time allocation is spent at conferences, which takes away a whole week every now and then.
All of this leaves very little time for me to do my own research. That’s especially true during the school year, when the constant deadline of the next lecture or homework set posting is usually just a day away (and the various departmental committees are active). During the summer months, I now look forward to getting something done. Last summer I wrote 2 first-author papers. The summer before...2 papers. This summer...nothing so far. It’s July 9th; I have less than 2 months to get stuff done. Luckily, this week and next are now fairly open, and I hope to spend a lot of time making plots and writing text.
Do I like “manager mode”? Yes. I like teaching, and that is essentially what I am doing with both my students and my research scientists. My publication rate is actually higher now than before, counting all of the coauthorships on manuscripts. But, that said, yesterday afternoon was very satisfying: I spent it writing code, running the model, and making plots. Today...compare those results with data. Life is good.
This brings me to the concept of “manager mode.” Three years ago, when I was research faculty instead of instructional faculty, I had time to write my own code, do my own simulations, analyze my own data, compare my own model results with the data, and write my own papers. I cannot do this now. The teaching and service loads of an instructional faculty (now tenured, as of 2 months ago!) greatly limit the time I have to do any of those things. Plus, I am expected to maintain a research group. I think I have done pretty well creating one. Three years ago it was me and 2 grad students. Now it is me, 2 assistant research scientists, 4 grad students, and 1-3 undergrad students (2 this summer). Funding all of these people is a major priority in my life and so writing proposals is a constant activity. Proposals usually have hard deadlines, so these often take precedence over everything else for a week or two when such a deadline comes up. Meeting with all of these people is a major time commitment as well. The undergrads need a few minutes (perhaps an hour) every day, the grad students and research scientists a few hours once or twice a week. Between proposals and managing the people in my group, most of my time allocation for research activities is spent. Another chunk of time is spent in peer review. Whereas I used to say yes to every request, I often say no to paper reviews not, not doing more than one every month or two. Proposal reviews I do every time, though, and this takes some effort to do it right. Another chunk of my research time allocation is spent at conferences, which takes away a whole week every now and then.
All of this leaves very little time for me to do my own research. That’s especially true during the school year, when the constant deadline of the next lecture or homework set posting is usually just a day away (and the various departmental committees are active). During the summer months, I now look forward to getting something done. Last summer I wrote 2 first-author papers. The summer before...2 papers. This summer...nothing so far. It’s July 9th; I have less than 2 months to get stuff done. Luckily, this week and next are now fairly open, and I hope to spend a lot of time making plots and writing text.
Do I like “manager mode”? Yes. I like teaching, and that is essentially what I am doing with both my students and my research scientists. My publication rate is actually higher now than before, counting all of the coauthorships on manuscripts. But, that said, yesterday afternoon was very satisfying: I spent it writing code, running the model, and making plots. Today...compare those results with data. Life is good.
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