Skip to main content
Premium Trial:

Request an Annual Quote

"Everything Is Amazing, Except We Are Broke"

Sometimes your lab just runs out of money. When she established her lab, Dr. Becca easily obtained R21 funding, and she writes at her blog Fumbling Towards Tenure that she thought she was set.

Unfortunately, she's since been unable to secure outside funds, and is a little over a year away from going up for tenure. But, Dr. Becca has come up with a "survival strategy" to help her through — and it involves a lot of writing.

She plans to write two NIH grants per cycle — one new and one revision — while also searching for foundation funds and seeking bridge funding.

At the same time, Dr. Becca says she'll focus on writing up and publishing the data she's generated thus far, and to keep moving forward on her shoestring budget, she adds that she's going to beef up her collaborations as well as try to network more.

"So here we are. I have half as many full-time personnel as I did a year ago, and our animal rooms are eerily quiet," she writes, adding that "[w]e got a really nice paper in a really nice journal out of that R21 (and another on its way), and a beautiful image from that work will be on the journal cover this summer. Everything is amazing, except we are broke."

Filed under

The Scan

Machine Learning Helps ID Molecular Mechanisms of Pancreatic Islet Beta Cell Subtypes in Type 2 Diabetes

The approach helps overcome limitations of previous studies that had investigated the molecular mechanisms of pancreatic islet beta cells, the authors write in their Nature Genetics paper.

Culture-Based Methods, Shotgun Sequencing Reveal Transmission of Bifidobacterium Strains From Mothers to Infants

In a Nature Communications study, culture-based approaches along with shotgun sequencing give a better picture of the microbial strains transmitted from mothers to infants.

Microbial Communities Can Help Trees Adapt to Changing Climates

Tree seedlings that were inoculated with microbes from dry, warm, or cold sites could better survive drought, heat, and cold stress, according to a study in Science.

A Combination of Genetics and Environment Causes Cleft Lip

In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers investigate what combination of genetic and environmental factors come into play to cause cleft lip/palate.