Communicating Research (Workshop 5)

This workshop focused mainly on securing of funds and grants for research projects. There are several important things that we as the researchers have to be cautious of. The following sections highlight some of the learning points from the workshop.

About title of the proposal:

Clearer, bigger picture, easily understood

Structure of proposal:

• summary
• introduction
• literature review
• approach

Proposal omits results and discussion. Some planning and capacity such as budget, track record are needed. A discussion using the analogy of wheels was given as follows:

• big picture (need for efficient locomotion)
• the question (can the wheel provide efficient locomotion)
• paradigm (proof of concept, experiments, metrics, benchmarks)
• specific goals
• approach

Sometimes it is useful to get the best structure from question to answer:

Step 1: interpret the question

Step 2: subgoals

Step 3: choose methodology

Formula to writing summaries:

• Background (why is it significant)
• Question (what are you doing)
• Approach (how are you doing it)
• Outcome (where the result will lead to / where will it get us)

After all, it is the funding organizations that will be the main readers at the point of the fund application. Hence, it is the prime concern to make sure they (which could normally be non-expert in our field) are presented with easily understood contents.