Funding decisions

This spring has been confusing what comes to the feedback of my research proposals and gained/rejected funding. From all the applications that I sent after last August (2019) to the national foundations and organizations, and which have been decided to date, I received only 17% of the applied funding. So I was lucky to gain the grans from Magnus Ehnroth's Foundation as well as from Sigrid Juselius Foundation. I and my group are really thankful for this support! This will keep us going and our research not falling down. 

The biggest disappointment for me was my failure in the Academy of Finland's Project Funding. I know that I had a tough task to down-grade my proposal that I have been advanced twice to be interviewed in the European Research Council (ERC) as a Starting Grant candidate (but not received the funding). So, it wasn't surprising to me that the feedback from the Academy of Finland from the same but down-graded proposal was that it was too ambitious. But still, it left me thinking that is it really actually a fault not to be funded? How can we ever achieve anything new in science if we don't even try? And according to the feedback, it wasn't about the feasibility of my proposal, I've got a feeling that it was, like it is most of the time for so many of us, not fully understood and the reviewer just simply didn't believe in the concept, as it wasn't familiar to her/him beforehand. At least I think at this time I didn't get really constructive feedback by which I could actually improve my application. So after all, I thought to continue to believe in me and my visions and keep on going. After all, I was able to convince 29% of the national foundations to which I have sent my proposals. Of course, next September I need to clarify my proposal and convince the reviewers in the next Academy of Finland's call. The trickiest part, I guess, is to adjust the proposal to the level of the possible reviewers, and this year I clearly failed, I forgot that ERC-reviewer is quite far away from an Academy of Finland's reviewer. A lesson that I learned in a hard way. But hey, no worries, I've still got an ERC-consolidator grant under evaluation in the first step. Let's see what is the feedback this time when I'm competing at the next level. And all my wonderful Ph.D. students are applying personal funds too. 

Congratulates Juulia and Katy, for the grants of Finnish Pharmaceutical Society!