Page by: Wesley R. Elsberry
Scientists do research. Graduate students, I was finding, write grant proposals. Mostly grant proposals that reviewers don't understand (my WWW marine mammal site proposal is a case in point), or that otherwise fail to get funded in this age of ever-shrinking budgets.
Diane Blackwood and I had come to a particularly sticky point in our graduate careers. Having completed almost all our coursework, we had agreed to spend a year putting in effort on writing proposals to fund our particular research interests. We had each applied for funding from Sea Grant and been turned down. Bill Evans, our graduate advisor, pointed out a promising source of funding: the Texas Advanced Research Projects/Advanced Technology Projects initiative. These programs were aimed at providing funds for two-year projects in basic (ARP) and applied (ATP) research.
Diane and I decided to write up our plans for an instrument for use in bioacoustic research as an ATP proposal. We had already written most of this proposal in an earlier grant application, but still worked on refining touches. This occupied most of our time coming up to the deadline.
About two weeks before the deadline for submission of ARP/ATP proposals, both Diane and I happened to be at a Sea Camp pool party where we bumped into Andy Schiro. Diane and Andy were discussing the process by which photo-identification of dolphins is accomplished. As the discussion progressed, both Diane and I were making comments on how one or more of the tedious jobs involving much hand labor could, with some effort, be shifted off to a computer. Andy thought this might be a Very Bood Thing, and sought out Dave Weller for confirmation that our thinking was along the right track. We continued the discussion with Dave, who also thought computer assisted matching was a very valuable opportunity. Dave and Bernd Wursig had, in fact, previously attempted to get funding for similar research, but without success.
About this time, the group decided that a proposal should be written and submitted to the ARP program. This was going to require a bit of effort, since the deadline loomed near. Diane undertook writing a first draft of the proposal, which she accomplished in just a couple of days. Wesley wrote a budget and a schedule for the proposal, and helped rewrite the other sections of the draft.
Some of the constraints of the ARP/ATP proposal process became worrisome. A person listed as principal investigator could submit only one proposal to each of the ARP and ATP programs. Bill Evans was already signed off on an ARP proposal and our ATP proposal. Bernd Wursig, the obvious candidate for a faculty PI, already had another ARP proposal submission. Both were willing to be listed as non-funded collaborators, but couldn't help us with the PI requirement. We managed to correspond with Phil Levin, who was in the field in North Carolina at the time. Phil agreed to become our PI for the project, which put us past another hurdle. Phil's prior experience in image analysis was a definite plus, as was his well-equipped laboratory.
With the final submission deadline fast approaching, I got an appointment with Bernd Wursig for a review of the draft proposal. Making apologies in advance for the background/literature review sections, I presented the draft proposal to Bernd. Bernd spent about twenty minutes going over the proposal, then gave his comments. Certainly the background and literature review needed to be rewritten, and he called Dave Weller over. Dave agreed to write revised abstract, background, and literature review sections for the proposal.
When there remained only a couple of days before the deadline, Diane and I put together the complete proposal with the new and improved sections from Dave, and revisions to the budget as advised by both Dave and Phil. In a flurry of email and faxes, the final forms were shuttled back and forth between Texas and North Carolina. Diane and I walked the proposal through just before 5PM on the last day for submission to our TAMUG research office.
After that, there was just the waiting game to be played. I can say
that I was immensely satisfied that the Texas ARP did decide to fund our
little project, and that I was quite happy when I received word of the
announcement while doing research on San Clemente Island.