Informatics Research Methodologies
Grant Proposal
Here are the links to the materials you will need for this
assessment:
Each student must prepare a grant proposal on some topic in
Informatics. The topic should be chosen to reflect the student's
interests, for instance, it could reflect the student's intended
PhD topic.
The grant proposal is an assessable component of the module
carrying 40% of the total mark. Between 15 and 30 hours are
allocated to it. The mark will be based on a case for support,
which should be submitted electronically by 5pm on Sunday of week
10 (i.e. 14 December 2003, following the convention that
Sunday is the last day of each week) as a postscript file.
submit msc irm 7 <filename>
Note that, to simplify the submission process, all students
should submit coursework as MSc students.
The lecturer will fill in a pro forma giving feedback
and a mark to each student by Monday of week 1, term 2
(i.e. 5 January 2004). Note that the mark awarded is
provisional and must be confirmed by the Board of Examiners.
The grant proposal is designed to help you develop the following
skills:
- Project design. Consider carefully what hypothesis is
being addressed by the proposed project, what evidence will be
needed to confirm or reject it and how this evidence will be
provided. Break the project down into tasks, estimate how much
effort each task will require and partially order them. Construct a
workplan and identify milestones and deliverables. Identify the
major risks of failure and outline contingency plans for dealing
with them.
- Motivating research. Explain why this project is
important and timely. Place it into the context of related previous
and current research and explain why it is original. Who would
benefit from its successful completion and what applications might
arise. Note that applications need not be commercial, but could be
to other areas of science, including Informatics.
- Self assessment. Identify what knowledge and skills
are required to complete this project. Assess which of these you
already possess and which you would need to acquire yourself or
obtain by involving others. Make a realistic estimate as to whether
this project could be completed with the resources you have
allocated to it, including your own time.
- Succinct presentation. The EPSRC format you are
required to follow has a strict limit of 7 pages. It will be a
challenge to say everything you need to say within this page limit.
You will need to learn to express yourself succinctly and clearly.
You will find this skill invaluable, e.g. for writing conference
papers, which also usually have strict page limits.
- Managing your time. 15-30 hours is not a lot of time
and can easily be dissipated. You must structure your activities to
make efficient use of your time. Leave plenty of time for writing
the case for support. Do not leave everything until the week before
the deadline.
The case for support should be no more than 7 pages in length
and follow the required format for EPSRC grant proposals, i.e. it
should cover the following points:
- Background. This should include motivation for the
project, a brief survey of previous research (including your own,
if appropriate), introductions to any relevant technical
material.
- Project Description. State the aims of the project and
outline how they are to be achieved. Describe your workplan,
milestones, deliverables and timetable. Deliverables covers things
like research papers, systems, patents, etc.
- Relevance to Beneficiaries. State who will benefit
from the project, including: your colleagues in this area of
research, other scientists, and manufacturers and users of spin-out
products.
- Dissemination and Exploitation. Say how the results of
the project will be conveyed to the beneficiaries via: research
papers, systems, conferences and research visits, the internet,
spin-out companies, etc.,
- Justification of Resources. Say what resources are
required to successfully complete this project, including: people,
equipment, travel costs, support costs, etc. Don't automatically
limit yourself to one person for 3 years, but estimate what is
realistically required to achieve success.
- Diagrammatic Workplan. Organise your workplan
diagrammatically showing timescales and dependencies between
tasks.
I have provided the Latex source for
the case for support, which you should download, complete,
format to postscript and submit electronically. Note that the
document style is set to 10 point and a4wide. You should not modify
this or use other tricks to squeeze more text into your 7 page
limit.
EPSRC have provided a document giving tips on writing a grant
proposal. A link to this can be found
here. I also have written some guidelines on writing a proposal and some tips on what referees of proposals are looking for.
Below are some links to successful EPSRC grant proposals, kindly
supplied by Informatics staff members as exemplars. Note that they
each start with a section entitle "previous track record", which
you should ignore. I did not think you could supply such a section,
since you will not have a previous track record to record, so this
is omitted from the exercise.
Alan Bundy
