Research Funding

So as an academic researcher I'm dependent on outside sources of funding to pay for my research; thankfully not for my salary, just for the tools/chemicals I use. Fortunately what I do most of the time isn't all that expensive. Now that I have the main instruments for my research lab the chemicals I use are needed in very small quantities and typically don't cost much; though some can easily top $1,000 per gram. Now not being chemists/scientists some of you may not be able to relate to how expensive this is, let's just say that if a Mars bar was made from one of these chemicals it would be about $60,000; and it would not have any caramel filling :(

So to pay for the work I need to write grants to a number of funds/foundations/agencies that have been established to provide the money for research. Typically the most substantial of these are government agencies, such as NIH in the US and NSERC in Canada, so yes your tax dollars go to pay for my research. The reason the governments back these research funds is to facilitate scientific discoveries that will benefit the country and the world; you know, things like DNA sequencing, weather forecasting, drug development and the whole internet thing just to name a few.

Anyway, a few days ago I got back the reviews on my latest grant submission, and like all the rest it was not funded. Of course this is typical of most grants, the funding rate for this particular agency was only 28% this year. So despite getting very good evaluations by the three reviewers (5/5, 4/5 and 5/5) I didn't get any money. At least I can take some solace in the fact that the score of the grant improved greatly over the previous version that was submitted. In fact last year I learned that I had not been accepted for funding in late December, this time I found out at the end of January; likely in the last round of cuts. So at least I'm on the right track, hopefully the next few grants will be more successful.

The most positive news of late on the granting front is the fact that the US government is no longer being run by a moron. Under Obama's leadership it appears that there has been a renewed commitment to scientific research; with a desire to double research funding over the next ten years. Let me just say one other thing about this: woo hoo! Unfortunately, things seem to be going in the opposite direction for Canadian research. The latest version of the Harper budget doesn't include any funding for Genome Canada, a primary source of funding for large scale genetic research in Canada. But hey, who needs to do genetic research, it's only useful in fields of medicine, agriculture, archeology, biology... what good would that be to Canadians? I'm seriously doubt that the Harper government has a much better plan for the (comparably small sum of) $140 million that Genome Canada would have needed.

Little changes do a lot

Now I'm not sure how many people are aware of this, I know that I certainly wasn't before I began teaching; but the act of teaching a class really does seem to be similar to a theatrical performance or acting. Of course, having done nothing like acting other than distantly remembering being Joseph in some church Sunday school Christmas thing, which obviously doesn't count for much. After all, is there any more useless character in the whole nativity story? He doesn't father the child, he doesn't even succeed in finding lodging and then there are the "Wise Men" and shepherd show up and they get all the attention. Seriously, does Joseph even have any lines other than begging for a place to stay? Why didn't he just make a reservation in the first place? Clearly I've digressed... what I was trying to get to is that despite the fact that lecturing doesn't necessarily appear to be such it really is an acting job.

The reason I bring this up is that for the past year and a half I have taught all my lectures in the same classroom. This adds up to something like 150 hours of lecturing. This semester I found out, right at the last minute, that I was in a new classroom. Now this room is just across the hall from the old room, but it is also the mirror image of the old room. I was stunned how much this threw me off. I can only imagine it would be the same as performing a play for years then suddenly having the set reversed on you. Hopefully I'll get used to the classroom shortly, at least I don't have two different classrooms in the same semester, my poor little brain might not be able to handle that.

On another note I received a package of chemicals this past week. It's always fun to get things for the lab, unpacking them is like Christmas all over, just even geeky! Anyway, the three chemicals I ordered weighed a total of 10.5 grams, below are the photos of how they were shipped:






It really kind of makes me feel bad to know that a tree probably dies for every few grams of chemicals I order. I really do wish that they would use more reasonable packaging to send items.

Here we go again.

Well, it was nice while it lasted, but we all knew that it was coming to an end. The glorious time between semesters when a prof doesn't have to follow any real schedule; work that you feel is important gets done rather than needing to prepare lectures or grade assignments. But of course it must always come to end at some point, such is the life.

I was surprised at how much time off I had between semesters this year, almost a full month. I can't complain though, it gave me time to relax and then get work in the lab rolling once again, something that hopefully will be kept up this semester. Though with about 8 students working in my lab even I may find it difficult to get time on any of the instruments.

Fortunately this semester I will be teaching the same course I have taught for the past two years. This does of course bring with it some disadvantages that one might not anticipate. Sure I don't need to make new slides and the lecture is almost memorized at this point, but it's also getting boring. I mean how many times can I teach them how to calculate the pH of a solution before I just start spraying the room with acid? I guess that's part of the challenge in teaching, keeping the material fresh; otherwise I can easily see myself having no enthusiasm for the class.

So this semester, along with the intended grant writing, conference going and lab working I suppose I will try to polish up the lectures I've been giving. Chemistry is after all a fun and very easily demonstrated science... unless you teach analytical chemistry, in which case the material is so dry and boring it more like teaching math. But who knows, I may find some round-about way to validate a small explosion as part of a lecture. I'll certainly let you know if I do.

The things you learn

As I've said in prior posts, lately I've been spending more time in my lab. I've also said that I'm enjoying the process quite a bit. What I haven't mentioned are some of the things that I have seen my students doing in the lab that make me wonder what on earth goes on when I'm not around.

Some of the more interesting and head scratching things that I have noticed in the past week are below. And please don't assume that this has any bearing on my ability to teach, I can only instruct them on the things that I can predict, I can't imagine all the crazy things that students can (and do) do.

- Using a multi-hundred dollar calibrated micropipette to fill a vial non-quantitatively. Most people just use disposable glass Pasteur pipettes to fill the vials by eye. This student was using the most expensive pipette we have and they weren't even using it properly, they were still filling the vial by eye.

- Making a 500 mL buffer solution, which incidentally was almost too low in concentration, when really only about one tenth that volume was necessary. Ok, this one isn't so bad, but seriously, if you've been working with these systems for six months and have never run out of any solution that was only 100 mL to start with, why make five times that much for a one quick test?

- Telling me that they are doing a procedure in one way, but in actuality the procedure they are doing is very very different. And not realizing that there was anything wrong with this, even though this was making the procedure about five times too long.

- Believing that methanol will dissociate in water to produce hydroxide. Ok, most people don't know what the hell I'm talking about here, the chemists however are wondering why I let an art student into my lab. The sad part is that this student wants to get a Ph.D. in chemistry!

- Tracking me through two different buildings to ask me if they need to calibrate the pH meter; since they thought they saw me use it earlier in the day. Ok, so lets forget for a moment that there are these really neat things called PHONES! But the calibration of a pH meter is pretty fucking simple. In fact, all the solutions are sitting right next to the damn thing, along with the typed instructions! It should only take you two minutes to calibrate, and even if I did calibrate it hours earlier there is nothing wrong with calibrating it again, it's actually the smart thing to do. On the other hand, searching me out to ask me if you have to do it effectively demonstrate your laziness and make me wonder if you have ever been able to calibrate the pH meter properly previously.

So I can now say that being back in the lab is a mixed blessing. On one hand, I am getting back to what I truly enjoy about the science, the experimentation. On the other, I'm now scared for the equipment in the lab and I desperately wonder if I need to install web cams to supervise them even when I'm not in the lab. Though I would also need to add in some kind of sound system to tell them to stop what they are doing and actually think first.

That was surprisingly fun!

Today was a good day, for the first time in far too long I got back into the lab and actually did some of my own work. At the same time I was able to observe some of my students doing their work as well... let's just say that I should be doing my own work much more often. Sadly it seems that what I need to teach my students most is common sense, of all things, why that?

Anyway, let's not focus on the facepalm worthy moments caused by others; instead let us focus on my triumphs. As it is more fun, and makes me look better. Of course now that I bring it up I realize that my success was in chemistry, which is about as exciting to hear about as the play-by-play of a staring contest. But seeing as I already have you hear I may as well say something.

So to spare you the details, and to avoid possibly being scooped by other chemists, let me just say that most of the predictions that I had for my results today were wrong; and it's damn exciting! For people not involved in research, and in particular analytical chemistry, finding out that your predictions were wrong doesn't sound like much cause for celebration, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact the same thing was said by physicists before the Large Hadron Collider failed; essentially, if the experiments came out the way they expected they would be pleased, but if things were different than expected things would be really exciting, as it means that the science would have to change to account for the difference.

Now, I haven't done anything as revolutionary as disprove the standard model of physics, but I did see things that certainly didn't do what I expected. Which was particularly interesting since the first time that I worked on this project, back in August, I saw something that was very cool and unexpected. Yet even with the expectations changed from the first experiments things were unexpected today. All in all it was pretty damn cool... in a very very geeky way, but that's what they pay me for.

Anyway, I just thought I would share the renewed enthusiasm I have for working in my lab. Even though I only have about a week left until the lab in flooded with 4 or 5 new undergrads, I really can't remember how many will be working for me this semester, that's probably not a good sign is it. Oh well, I'll just have whatever fun I can until then; because I'll be doing lots of writing once the kids are in the lab.

Time Machine Saved My Ass Again

So a couple of days ago I had a bit of a problem with my laptop. I'd just finished reading some emails at my desk at home and decided to move to the couch to continue. Now there's nothing special about this, except that when I opened the lid again nothing happened. The screen was black. It took me a couple of hard restarts to realize that the computer was working fine at the CPU level; the problem was a blown video card, I learned that a bit later, first I paniced a bit and got really pissy.

So being a MacBook Pro and still under the extended warenty (yay!) I haulled ass to the nearest Apple store where I could get an appointment at the "Genius Bar". After waiting longer than expected I was helped, and the problem was quickly diagnosed as the video card. But they can repair it in-house within 3-5 days (they don't have the card in stock).

So that's all good, the repair should be relatively fast and it is covered by the warenty, but what the hell am I going to do without my laptop for that long? After all I was in the middle of revising the lab manual ahead of the start of the semester. Fortunately I'm not all that screwed, I know a few of you were worried, it's ok to admit it.

It turns out my obsessive devotion to Apple's Time Machine program is paying off yet again. Time Machine will automatically back up your computer for you every hour, so if you delete the wrong files (say every scientific paper you ever felt was important to your research) you can restore them with a couple of clicks, even if it's been months since you deleted them. Well I'm so obsessed with the system that I'll even force it to backup before I leave work, even if the previous backup was 15 minutes prior. So when I went to work the following day without my laptop I just plugged the Time Machine hard drive into another Mac and pulled out the files that I needed, no muss, no headaches.

I have to admit that I feel that the Time Machine application is on it's own one of the best programs that you'll find on a Mac. It's unobtrusive, simple and highly effective. Sure 99% of the time you'll never use it, but the times it comes into play it'll be invaluable. Which is why I bought a 1TB Time Capsule for my lab. It's a wi-fi router with a hard drive for use with Time Machine. As it is the five Macs in my lab are all wirelessly backing up to it and I even use it to store data from the few PCs I have, too bad I can't use Time Machine on them.

Sorry for the quassi "advertorial" nature of this post, it wasn't the initial intention of post, but that's what you got.

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Time to return

Well, it's done with, tomorrow I head back to work. I really probably should have gone back in sooner but I felt I needed to take some time off to recover from last semester. As I'm sure I mentioned on here, I was put in a position to teach a grad level course only three weeks before the start of the semester; so I was playing catchup with that course the whole semester. On top of that I was teaching a low level undergrad course for the third time; which was good because that course is becoming routine now. So I'm really quite happy to be teaching it for a fourth time this semester, and teaching no other course in the process. So I should have time to focus on research and developing a strong research group; which I neglected all last semester.

Of course the start of the semester isn't without some panic, I need to get things ready for the lab component for the undergrad course. This includes preparing something on the order of 450 samples for them to analyze; and the stocks for a few of those samples have run out so I need to prepare them from scratch... and I may be out of the chemicals needed. Oh, and I need to revise the lab manual once again and have it sent off to the printers. This doesn't look so good any more, if I don't go to work tomorrow will it all go away?

It's not all that bad though, the start of the semester isn't actually until January 22nd, it's odd but you don't hear me complaining about it. This hopefully will give me time to get some of the new students in the lab up to speed. Better still I might even be able to run the experiments I need to have an ok talk ready for a conference in early March. Nothing like a deadline to get me working.

But at least I'm well rested and far more relaxed than I was prior to the break. I spent a little over a week at the in-laws around Christmas; which despite what television would have you believe, was a very nice time. Since being back in the warm south, were I now officially belong (I detest the cold now) I've just been relaxing, I've taken a couple of nice bike rides, and spent far too much time playing Spore (a Christmas gift from D). I know people have mixed feelings about this game but I can say that I truly enjoy it and it serves as a nice way to de-stress. Now as long as I can kick the addiction to it before I need to write any grants things should be good.