Category Archives: Funding applications

Failing in Getting Funding

I have written so many funding applications this year. But so far very few have been funded, and none of the ones where I can recruit a PhD student or a Post Doc.

Most of the time you don’t even get feedback on your application that you spent weeks and week writing. The only thing you know is that someone else’s project was seen as more interesting , more doable or in some way better.

No feedback makes it difficult to really improve and I need to find other strategies to get better at this. Some of my strategies so far are:

  • I know that so far I have learned a lot from more senior colleagues and their way of thinking.
  • I have also learned from reading other’s applications in detail.
  • Finally getting feedback from colleagues before submitting, when there is time for that, is always a good idea.

I will have a look at these strategies again and start writing again. I know that when I get going I often enjoy it very much!

Hoping for an “innovative training school” about digital and health literacy among healthcare professionals and the public

I am a part of an international consortium that will submit an application to an “Innovative Training School” in the area of health literacy among health care professionals and the public. This is the official description of an Innovative Training School  copied from the website:

“The Innovative Training Networks (ITN) aim to train a new generation of creative, entrepreneurial and innovative early-stage researchers, able to face current and future challenges and to convert knowledge and ideas into products and services for economic and social benefit.

ITN will raise excellence and structure research and doctoral training in Europe, extending the traditional academic research training setting, incorporating elements of Open Science and equipping researchers with the right combination of research-related and transferable competences. It will provide enhanced career perspectives in both the academic and non-academic sectors through international, interdisciplinary and intersectoral mobility combined with an innovation-oriented mind-set.”

The consortium members will be meeting in Brussels to discuss the application, and to work on it  in a couple of weeks. Before the meeting we will prepare different parts of the application, and I have already had a meeting with our EU coordinators to get some help. As usual this kind of application will take a couple of weeks’ work, and you don’t know if you are funded  and the likelihood of getting accepted is probably around 10-20%. However, if the application is funded we will have a joint research school with PhD students coming from different universities. This would be super nice!!

 

Several Rejects This Week – again :-(

Working in academia is not always fun, and there are lots of opportunities where you are valued in a competition about getting published, or getting funded. Often you have put down lots of time on the thing that you are submitting. Often the submission is the result of many discussions, and creative ideas to present what you want to say. The writing process can really be inspiring and fun!

However, when submitting to the top conferences the reject rate is often around 85% and with funding organisations it is around the same. This means that it is very likely that you are not accepted, and that you are not successful in getting funded even though you did you best.

I know that grit and perseverance are the two most important success factors for anyone in computer science. And most probably in academia also. I even wrote a paper on that with Roger McDermott and Mats Daniels, you find the paper here: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2742625.

I know that you need to keep fighting and not fall into imposter syndrome if you fail, but it is still tough. Even in teaching I run into this feeling of being a failure. I work a lot with teaching development, and that is not always a success either. Student centred learning is for example not at all valued by all students. I wrote a paper about one of our more recent failures there where we tried an idea with a presentation for a real client in a course based on a gaming idea. You can read the paper here if you are interested: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8190466.

I remember thinking that I will leave academia around five years ago when it was fail, fail, fail and fail all the time and I didn’t get any funders to believe in any of my ideas. My feeling was that obviously I am not the right person for this job, and it is not worth it! I also had quite a stressful situation at work generally with lots of conflicts and lack of support from important people.

We need to be better at supporting each other in academia, and to find ways where positive feedback is at the core of our work and not the negative and critical feedback. I am lucky to have a few of those very supportive people in my live, and I really appreciate them being there. I know some of them are reading this blog and they give me good and positive feedback:

  • Thank you for being such a support for me and always believing in me even when I fail, fail and fail!

Participating in the Panel of Experts for Academy of Finland

I must say that participating in the panel of experts for the Academy of Finland has been a very positive experience. First the call for funding was super interesting, and so relevant for my research area.  The call that we were reviewing drafts for was in the Strategic Research area and addressed culture and technology. Also, the discussions have been very inspiring and such a learning experience for me. The people on the panel came from industry and different sections in academia which gave many different perspectives and experiences to base the discussions on.

If you are ever asked to be on panels – grab the opportunity to participate! 

Finding Projects Ideas and Writing Applications for Funding

A couple of my research projects are ending, and it’s time to write applications for funding again. This is not something I find especially easy or quickly done. On the contrary it takes me hours, hours and hours. It also takes lots of sighing and thinking “this is just too difficult”.

The main thing with my kind of applied research is to find a project that fits all of the following criteria:

  1. A project area that the organisations that I collaborate with are interested in working on. This means a lot of meeting to understand what things are on their agenda. 
  2. Something that I want to do, and that the people I write the application together with want to work with. There are many crazy ideas out there related to digitalization 😮 
  3. An research area where I have the competence to do the research in. For me that means for example digital work environments, computer science education or eHealth implementations.  
  4. An area where there is research missing – and where we can fill that hole as in the picture for this blog post. This means quite an extensive literature review to be able to describe the current state of the art and how the research project fits. This also means that you need plenty of time. 
  5. Something that is possible to do within the framing of the call that you send the proposal to. Often the project is three years, and not all things can be done within this time frame
  6. An idea that fits with the current calls for research projects available. And an understanding of what kind of research they are funding. This is knowledge that I have gained gradually, but I am far from knowledgeable yet. 

 

 

Writing Full EU Project Proposal Instead of Having a Vacation

My vacation is a bit postponed this year. Our pre-proposal for a co-funded project with Gender-Net Plus was accepted!!! :-))  And now I am writing a full proposal instead of having a vacation.

The team onboard writing the proposal is indeed excellent, and we span all research areas relevant for the idea of the proposal. I will not write the details here in the blog as I’m not sure that that would be ok given the review process of the proposals.

Last week we all met at Arlanda airport to discuss the project details, and to agree on the set up of the project. It was indeed a productive day with lots of ideas. It was also a day full of great Swedish fika and nice food.

If we are funded we will be working together in this project in eHealth for the coming three years. I will be the coordinator of the project, but I have very experienced help in my team and I think that I will do fine.

Submitted Programme Application

This week I submitted an application for funding of a research programme related to equal communiation using ICT for foreign-born people. The programme will include three complementary research areas and addresses an urgent societal problem. The three areas are caring sciences, computer science and health economics.

The writing process was really very much fun this time. I collaborated with a full professor of Caring Science, and we had a great time even though we don’t know each other that much. The full professor of Caring Science is the Principal Investigator of the application.

In the programme we will work with the exploration of communiation needs of foreign-bron people with chronical diseases, and then continue with implementation of ICT related support to improve communication. The programme will run for six years, if funded, and will include three PhD students and two post doc positions some of which are in caring sciences and others in computer science.

When writing applications for funding, chances are quite low that you get funded. However, if you don’t submit any applications there will for sure be no money….

I really hope that we get funding for this programme and that I can get the possibility to explore this area!!

Writing an Application for the South Africa – Sweden University Forum

Last year I had a great visit at the University of Pretoria, where I met Helene Gelderblom and her UX in South Africa team. I was very impressed by their work, and since then we have been looking for opportunities to continue our collaboration. Many of my research projects are in the same area as theirs, and it would be so interesting to do research together on how to improve the quality of IT system.

Now one opportunity for funding has appeared! Uppsala University and 27 other universities in Sweden has a newly started collaboration with South Africa, and they have a call for applications to join a research and innovation week at the University of Pretoria. You find information about their initiative here. Several of the challenges they are addressing in the South-Africa Sweden University forum are related to my research, and it would be great to discuss them with other researchers and look for collaborations. The week will also include some research and innovation activities, and there will be a delegation from Uppsala University going to Unversity of Pretoria.

We’ll see if the application is granted or not. There might be many researchers who are interested in joining this Please hold your thumbs! And please join me and write an application to this call for joining a research and innovation week.

Applications for Funding from an Equal Opportunites Perspective

Doing evaluations for EU applications has so far been quite a learning experience. I have been asked to do evaluations of very large applications in the ICT area, and I will be doing applications 5-6 time a year for the coming years. The competence that I am especially contributing to for the group of evaluators is the equal opportunities perspective, apart from me being a researcher in ICT.

Many in the ICT business think it is very difficult to think of ICT projects from an equal opportunities perspective. They see ICT as neutral, and hence it is not possible too talk about from a any perspective. ICT is transparent, in their view, and simply a value free tool that people can use. It is as value free as a hammer. Anyone can use a hammer. (Smile). Firsts of all, ICT technology are male coded, and it is a completely male dominated area. A hammer also has all kinds of connotations to male professions, and men who are unable to use a hammer are not seen as real men….. Doing masculinity without being good at hammering is of course possible, but you rarely find men who are proud of not being able to use a hammer. ICT has the same kind of connotations. Also, not everyone can use a hammer due to not having the physical ability, not being able to see or having hands that are unable to hold a hammer.

ICT is not neutral, and there are a few large areas to look at when thinking about it in relation to ICT projects


1) The development work. Who are on the team? What are the roles of women and men on the team? What are their salaries in the project? Who will be talking to customers? Will all men be back-end programmers? What management principles will be used? How will management make sure that every competence is seen and heard? Is the management style inclusive? Is the manager and the people on the team aware of equal opportunities and have competence in the area?


2) Users Represented in the Project. How are the users present in the development? Do the project test with users? How are users recruited? Are all kinds of users represented? How do you make sure that you listen to all comments from users without being biased?

3) Assumptions about Users. What assumptions are made about the users of the technology? Have you though of people from all discrimination grounds? We have a tendency to design technology for men, and forget about diversity in all its forms. We need to do something about that.

4) Knowledge about inclusive design, design for all etc. I think that many software developers etc need better knowledge about design for all and inclusive design. What are the recommendations for inclusive design of web applications, of user interfaces etc? How do you make sure that your system is usable for everyone? My colleague Lars Oestreicher is an expert in this area and one of our best teachers at the department. If you want to learn more read his upcoming book or take his courses.
 The above are just some of the things that are relevant when writing an application and adding the equal opportunities perspective. I really hope to see fewer of the applications saying that ICT is neutral, and that there is nothing to say about the project application from an equal opportunities perspective.