Detective work pays big rewards

Finding research funding requires detective skills. This may come as a surprise to you. Many PIs assume there is a directory that contains the information they are looking for. Yes, agency websites and government sites like grants.gov are a good place to start. Also, there’s software to help you search for funding, and your institution may subscribe to one or more of these tools.

The above resources are a must for your toolkit. But, if you want to improve the odds of getting funded, you need to do a lot more than type your keywords and hit ‘enter’.

The good news is that you are already skilled in detective work: When you run into challenges with your research, you just have to figure it out. You’re working at the cutting edge, so you can go to the literature or ask colleagues for ideas to get unstuck, but there is no ‘higher authority’ you can turn to for the answer. Your research is the process of finding the answer.

The same goes for finding funding. The federal government has ~2 million civilian employees. At any one worksite, like a laboratory or a science-related agency, there will be a few thousand scientists and engineers.

When I was an Army program manager, I visited many such sites, but there were still many laboratories that I never got to visit. The travel just didn’t fit into my schedule. These site visits were important because I need to learn what was going on within the Army, Department of Defense and the government more broadly, related to geoscience. Then, I used this information to inform the strategy for the program I managed. I also served as a matchmaker between university PIs and Army scientists and engineers doing related work.

My point is that, even for those within the government, detective work is needed to figure out what is going on. That is, who is doing what, where, with whom, and what are the specific challenges they are facing.

Here’s the opportunity: If you are willing to do the legwork required to connect the dots, you will play an important role in moving science forward. To get started with this detective work, here’s what you should do beyond searching grants.gov:

• Connect with government scientists and engineers as well as funders on LinkedIn. Check where someone worked before their current position. It may be another government agency and, if so, they probably know a lot about what goes on there as well as where they currently work.

• Ask people ‘Do you know anyone working on X within such-and-such organization?’ If you get a name, actually reach out to that person and ask for a short call to learn about what they do.

• Subscribe to the social media feeds for government organizations so you can learn what’s going on there now. Agency websites often are not updated regularly with the most current information.

• Ask for people’s business cards, take those, and connect with them on LinkedIn or send an email after the meeting or event. While academics generally don’t have business cards, people in government and the private sector do.

• Keep notes on the information you gather and the connections you make. Don’t assume you will remember.

And most importantly, be proactive in sharing all this great information. Just like everyone else, folks at funding organizations are trying to wrap their arms around vast amounts of information. If you can help them connect the dots, you’ll become a valued colleague. People will turn to you for help making connections, and you’ll be in a super strong position in terms of access to information and people who can help you.

The point is not to keep all of this information for yourself but rather to become a resource to others, which will result in their sharing even more information with you, and so on. This is very low-tech work, which can make it slow, but it’s an investment well worth making.

How to find what research DOD has funded

As part of your detective work, you can use two tools on the Defense Technical Information Network (DTIC) to find what research DOD has funded. In this video, I walk you through how to get started with this.

When you are ready, here’s how we can help

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