BBSRC funding

So here's what stage we're at, apparently.

We wont hear anything until about 16th December! 

This all seems to be because of the BBSRC's LoLa system. That is Longer and Larger grants.

The BBSRC are encouraging even more collaboration between groups all over the country, so these LoLa grants are for £2 to £3 million and involve being able to buy fancy equipment as well as having many postdocs etc working in the collaboration.

Of course in any one round of funding there is only a finite amount of money, so, if a couple of these LoLa grants are funded in one round, there is less money to be awarded to individual grants, like our own proposal. Because of the large amounts of money involved, these LoLa grants must be approved by a higher level than the normal committee, which takes longer. I guess they have to see if there is any money left in the pot to fund the individual projects like ours, hence the delay in us hearing.

Previously I had seen 3 of the 5 referees reports that we are allowed to respond to, and they all seemed to be very positive. The other 2 were less positive so I was told today. They didn't have anything negative to say, they just didn't rate the project quite as highly as the other three had. Which is a shame.

The boss seems to have heard on the grapevine, that out of 51 grants that were discussed, ours was between positions 5 and 7! Which seems to me to be pretty good, but of course it all depends how much money is left in the pot after however many LoLa grants are successful.

So I am still waiting to here if I get to work in this lab for the next 3 years or not. I really would like to, I'm still really enjoying working here.

Enough for now, I've probably got all this a bit mixed up, I just thought it would be useful to have written this down while it is still fresh in my head, before I try to explain it again to other people.