16. Grantsmanship

Grants are the lifeblood of any scientific investigator at a university. It is almost impossible for an Assistant Professor with a research appointment in Food-Science to be promoted and tenured without obtaining grants. Grants are needed to purchase new equipment, fund graduate students, and grind out publications. The politics of obtaining funds from industry and government are somewhat different, but both require justification and written reports to obtain the necessary monetary support to run a lab. In industry, funding tends to be directed at reducing operating expenses or generating profit for the company although some companies still retain a basic research component that serves as a long-range incubator of product ideas and a status symbol. Government tends to operate more like universities but with a more rigid structure of project proposals, periodic reporting, and performance review. The rest of the chapter will be devoted to grant writing by university researchers, but both business entities and governmental researchers may be involved in pursuing federal grants. Industry scientists may never write a formal grant proposal, but they may be required to serve as liaison to a university project being funded by their company. Likewise, a governmental scientist may be asked to review grant proposals by various agencies.