How to Write a VR Lab Grant Proposal: What to Include + Tips & Tricks to Secure Funding
MACE conducted a Q&A with one of our awesome clients, Kent State University. MACE helped the Kent State sociology department launch a VR lab. In this article, we picked their brain on how other universities can secure funding for their own VR lab. It all begins with the all important grant, and Kent State had plenty to share on grant writing strategies for success.
How does a university find partner organizations who’d be interested in giving them grants for virtual reality labs?
In the case of the lab at Kent State, we heard that a colleague at another university had received a grant from the Army Research Office to build a VR lab. We pursued the same opportunity and were successful. A number of funding agencies besides the ARO have infrastructure programs, including the National Science Foundation (NSF). If you are in higher education, I would recommend asking for help from your sponsored programs staff to help track down appropriate infrastructure funding opportunities. And there’s always Google :)
How should they nurture those relationships prior to making the ask?
In our case we had already established a relationship with the Army Research Office for our program of research (i.e., through previous successful grants) and testing our ideas in virtual environments was a logical next step. A successful record of funding will help, and in some cases, it helps to have that record with the agency from which you are requesting additional funds for VR technology.
How do they approach the conversations about forming those partnerships, (or is it the organizations who approach the universities)?
In some cases I have been contacted by program officers who wanted to notify me about a new request for proposals (RFP) that was relevant to my area. More often than not, though, we’ve had to do the legwork ourselves. Again, if you’re in higher ed, your sponsored programs staff can be invaluable when it comes to hunting down relevant funding opportunities. After you have identified one or more that seem relevant to the projects you’re planning, most program officers at funding agencies welcome inquiries from those who are considering submitting grants. You can save yourself a lot of time by pitching an idea to a program officer to see if they think it would be appropriate for the funding opportunity you are eyeing.
For example, how did Kent State begin their relationship and eventual partnership with the DOD?
We started by submitting a grant to them for a research project examining how social status is processed in the brain. Status is a powerful organizing force in military contexts, as it is in many social contexts, so the Army was interested in gaining a better understanding of how it works in small group settings, especially since military operations increasingly rely on small special teams to accomplish objectives. Anyway, our first project ended up producing some very interesting results that were eventually published, which helped solidify an ongoing working relationship with the ARO. Not all funding agencies are like that. The ARO is one of the best funding agencies I have ever worked with. The way they do things makes complete sense. Proposal evaluation proceeds in steps so you don’t waste time off the bat completing a massive proposal that has no chance of going anywhere. Also, in my experience, the reviewers are absolutely outstanding, and you sometimes have the opportunity to respond to feedback as you go. Investigators also sometimes have the opportunity to present their work to audiences of researchers from many different disciplines. The Army conferences are among the most energizing I’ve ever been to. You’re talking about some of the brightest, yet most humble, minds across the sciences sharing ideas for cutting edge projects in an exciting, constructive context.
What is the ‘recipe’ for a successful VR lab grant proposal?
What to include: Always make sure you know what the funding agency is looking for by reading the request for proposals carefully. When in doubt, email the program officer. In general, though, perhaps one of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen people make in the social sciences is to fail to tie the need for technology to a clear plan for research. These are the dreaded “trust me” proposals. An investigator asks for thousands of dollars for equipment--or sometimes hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars--but then has no clear plan for how to use it. That is, something of a promise is made that the new VR equipment will be used to carry out some mind blowing research, but the program officer(s) and reviewers never get a clear idea of what the project (or projects) are actually going to be. Generally speaking, to maximize your chances of success, perhaps the best thing you can do is explain how adding VR technology to your lab will enhance an existing and previously successfully funded line of research by allowing you conduct a clearly defined project, or set of projects, that will advance your line of research in ways that you can clearly articulate. In our case, we had been looking at how small teams function in high stress environments. For ethical and practical reasons, that sort of thing is very difficult to study in the context of a conventional laboratory experiment. However, using VR, we can create maximally immersive experiences that replicate “real” high-threat encounters (for example, a small team trying to defuse a bomb under time pressure) without exposing participants to actual dangers. This is why VR has become a popular tool for training people in high-stress occupations, such as law enforcement and emergency medicine. So, in our case, we justified our need for VR by articulating how it could be used to provide more valid tests of the ideas we had been testing using less impactful methodologies. We proposed a series of experiments that would test our theories using VR technology, and the proposal was successful.
Do you any writing style suggestions?
Here I would give the same advice I give to anyone writing any sort of grant proposal: avoid jargon! Unless you know for a fact that the people reviewing your proposal will be top experts in your area of research--which is almost never the case--then you have to avoid inundating the reviewers with technical jargon. You need to develop a style that communicates complex, technical ideas in a way that any scientist can understand without dumbing things down too much. Finding that balance takes effort and practice. Also, remember, reviewers on grant panels are usually not just reviewing one proposal. They often have many, many reviews to complete in a relatively short period of time. If reviewers can’t understand what you’re saying, you probably won’t get funding even if your idea has merit. In my opinion, one of the best books on scientific writing, including for grants, is Joshua Schimel’s Writing Science. While most of the examples in the book relate to the biological sciences, social scientists will find the book very helpful as well.
Other tips & tricks?
Don’t give up! Getting grants is not easy. You might need to submit your proposal multiple times before you achieve success.
What mistakes might someone make when writing a grant proposal that would hinder their chances of success?
I think most of these I’ve already touched on: make sure your idea is relevant to the request for proposals; make sure you have a clear plan for research that justifies an unequivocal need for the technology you are requesting funds to purchase; make sure you don’t bury reviewers in technical jargon; and also it can really help--and in some cases may be necessary depending on the agency (e.g., the NSF)--to point out the “broader impacts” of your research beyond its scientific value. What potential benefits could your VR research have for society, for education, etc., and what are you going to do to maximize the probability that you’ll deliver these benefits? For example, you might say that in addition to VR technology facilitating your research agenda, you will train a diverse team of students in the use of this technology (which will help them get jobs in related fields), and maybe you plan to develop some simulations that you plan to incorporate in a relevant class you teach that will help students better understand X, Y, or Z. Thinking about the positive impact your work can have on society. Think broadly. Get creative! And don’t just say that your work is going to have some positive broader impacts. What are you going to do to facilitate the realization of those benefits? By way of another example, maybe you can get a letter of support from some institute or group on campus that wants you to come talk about your VR research and demonstrate how it can be used to address some “social problem” (e.g., reducing discrimination in the workplace). See what I did? I didn’t just say that the technology would help reduce workplace discrimination in the workplace; I explained how I’d try to make that happen (i.e., by getting a letter of support from a group on campus that is going to have me come over and show how to implement my ideas and technology to improve the workplace).
How do you evaluate a prospective VR partner with whom you’ll collaborate on a grant proposal? Is choosing a partner always a precursor to drafting a prop?
I’m sure people do things in different ways, but for me, I always identify the team before we get started. I want to make sure I’ve got the relevant experts lined up to successfully execute the research. For example, if you propose to test your research ideas in a virtual environment but do not have any solid VR developers on your team, good luck getting funding. I wouldn’t want to spend months developing a proposal only to find out that I can’t get the experts I need onboard. And if you somehow manage to get the funding, then what? Also, think carefully about who you invite as collaborators. People don’t always work well together. I have a small set of people with whom I regularly collaborate, and there’s a good reason for that. You don’t want a nice proposal to end up in the drawer because you have a dispute with an uncooperative co-PI that you can’t resolve.
What is the usual timeline for writing and iterating on a grant proposal like this?
It depends, but it usually takes me the better part of a semester to develop a really solid proposal that I feel good about.
What factors might make someone go back to the drawing board of their proposal?
Rejection. If you’ve submitted a proposal five or six times, and it isn’t getting funded anywhere, take a more careful look at all the reviews you’ve received and do some soul-searching. Are you submitting the grant to the right places? Is the idea fundamentally flawed, or can you reformulate it in some way to increase your chances of success? You can usually avoid ending up in this position by having multiple colleagues provide feedback on your proposal before you submit it, assuming they are willing to help you out with that. And sure, if you’ve been working with a proposal for a while and have submitted it to multiple places without success (yet), you might need to update the literature if new studies have come out or if newer versions of the technology you are requesting have hit the market.
Should universities proposition multiple organizations to potentially fund the lab? If so, any tips on how to tailor the proposal to each recipient?
You have to be very careful with that. Some agencies allow simultaneous, overlapping submissions to multiple potential funding sources or to different funding opportunities within the same agency, while others do not. Make sure you know the rules. When in doubt, ask! Unless a funding agency explicitly makes it clear that overlapping proposals are allowed and how specifically they are allowed, don’t do it.
Beyond the grant writing process, what else should universities know about the process of launching a VR lab at their university?
For example, are there others who will need to give permission/approval etc? Sure. Numerous individuals are going to need to sign off on your proposal before it is finally submitted to the funding agency, but that’s usually an automated process and creates no headaches for the investigator. With equipment grants, the bigger issues are space, operation, and maintenance. If you’re applying for a grant to fund technology that you don’t know how to use, what are you going to do when you get it? If you get a fancy VR system with multiple 360-degree treadmills and big-screen monitors, where are you going to put it? Can you afford the maintenance costs of the equipment? Do you know what those costs are? These are all things to figure out before you submit a proposal. If you don’t know how to use the equipment you are planning to get, is there a colleague on campus or at another university who does know how to use it who you can bring on as a co-PI? If you don’t have space for the technology, will your department chair or dean help you find space for it if you get the grant? At KSU, my chair and the administration have been very accommodating. Money talks. If you’re bringing money into the university, in most cases the powers that be are going to want to help you. Anyway, space, operation, and maintenance. These are all things you’ll need to give some thought to as part of the process of applying for grants.