4 ms·

When I was in grad school I think most people were aware of how tough it is to get a tenure track faculty position. Many students had no aspiration of going int

When I was in grad school I think most people were aware of how tough it is to get a tenure track faculty position. Many students had no aspiration of going into academia and planned to go directly to industry. This was in mechanical engineering, an inherently practical subject, so maybe the field makes a difference. Kudos on trying to make it as an independent researcher though. That's a really cool idea. How has it been applying for grants without a university affiliation? What's the breakdown of your time spent on funded research, unfunded research, and consulting?

cossatot 11y ago
I've registered with SAM (System of Award Management) so I can get grants directly. I still collaborate sometimes with academics, writing papers and grants, and minor consulting for them. I'm also still an affiliate of my post-doc school so I have an email address and journal access, but I think you can basically buy library access from a school for a decent price. I spend about half my time or a little less on consulting, but it's been very research-oriented consulting so far, with few restrictions on publishing results. There are and will be ups and downs (most of my consulting is in energy) but I bill a lot more than I pay myself so that smooths it out a bit. So far most of the non-consulting research has been unpaid but I try as much as is practical to get funding for it at some point--make a minimum viable product to write a grant upon and if it doesn't work out then make it publishable and iterate or move on. I like strategy, it combines well with dreaming. I have some moonshot ideas too, but most things can be broken down into units digestible for peer /grant review. I'm finding that there are a lot of theoretical problems that are also practical problems. I also feel like I am doing research all the time, but a lot of time is spent building tools and skills to do new things, and less of my time is spent actually learning new things about the earth than I would like. But I guess that's research...

cossatot 11y ago

I've registered with SAM (System of Award Management) so I can get grants directly. I still collaborate sometimes with academics, writing papers and grants, and minor consulting for them. I'm also still an affiliate of my post-doc school so I have an email address and journal access, but I think you can basically buy library access from a school for a decent price. I spend about half my time or a little less on consulting, but it's been very research-oriented consulting so far, with few restrictions on publishing results. There are and will be ups and downs (most of my consulting is in energy) but I bill a lot more than I pay myself so that smooths it out a bit. So far most of the non-consulting research has been unpaid but I try as much as is practical to get funding for it at some point--make a minimum viable product to write a grant upon and if it doesn't work out then make it publishable and iterate or move on. I like strategy, it combines well with dreaming. I have some moonshot ideas too, but most things can be broken down into units digestible for peer /grant review. I'm finding that there are a lot of theoretical problems that are also practical problems. I also feel like I am doing research all the time, but a lot of time is spent building tools and skills to do new things, and less of my time is spent actually learning new things about the earth than I would like. But I guess that's research...