• Demographics Committee member: Angela Olinto (UChicago)
• Contacts: Jim Whitmore (NSF-PHYS-PA)

• Who is writing the proposals?

PI position: e.g. postdoc, assist. Prof, assoc. Prof, tenured faculty, research faculty, Gender, race/ethnicity, geographical location, size of institution

Could get it but probably take some time to collect from each proposal

• How many proposals submitted by same PI - broken down by PI category

Mostly one, a few PIs may submit 2, not counting supplemental request

• Number of senior researchers on proposal per year, per category of PI, per funding requested

Could get it but probably take some time to collect from each proposal

• Compare success rates of different sorts of proposals per PI category, per number of senior researchers, per number of proposals submitted in the last 5 years, per funding requested

Huge amount of work

• Years between proposals cross correlate to success rate, PI category, no. of senior researcher

Will be mostly every 3 years since most of our awards are 3-year awards

• Do younger researchers rise through the ranks (are researcher on proposal and then become PI later)? Find the Number of years between first appearance as senior researcher on a proposal to PI

Could get it but probably take some time to collect from each proposal

• What number or fraction of the community is supported by soft money?

Need to define community

• What number or fraction of the community is supported by research projects/missions?
• What number or fraction of the community is support by institutions?
• What number or fraction of the community can or does serve as PI?
• What number or fraction of the community is part of a smaller groups (1-3) vs larger groups?
• Are there other sources of scientific support for the community?
• How much of the science support for the community comes through missions or other stable sources relative to competed 3-year proposals?
• What fraction of the money for competed research is distributed to various types of institution (labs, universities, centers, industry)?

Essentially all goes to Universities – there may be some subawards to labs, industry

• Individual support questions
• How many grants of typical size are required to support an individual investigator?
• How many sources of support does the typical investigator (PI, CoI, student) rely upon?

Don’t know how to answer these two

• How many investigators/students participate in the average proposal?

I could answer this for the awards we make – not too hard

• Career questions
  • How many awards have gone to first-time PIs?
  • How much of the typical award supports the PI? CoIs? Students?
  • What is the age (in career) distribution of PIs? Proposers?
  • What is the age (in career) distribution of the relevant community?

Could get it but probably take some time to collect from each proposal

• Competition Questions
  • What is the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable success rates?
  • What factors determine what the acceptable boundary is? (program staff, reviewers, community, fairness, etc.)

Don’t know how to answer these three

• Does the success rate/number of proposals make any difference in program allocations by agencies?

Question for Program Managers

• How many proposals have been reviewed annually for the last 10 years?
• How many proposals have been selected annually for the last 10 year?
• How much money has been awarded annually in the last 10 years for competed research grants?
• What fraction of the total program budget each year has gone to support competed grants?

I could answer these questions for the awards we make – not too hard

• Questions about Impact on People
  • What anecdotal evidence do we have about the impact of funding rates?
  • What quantitative information can we find about people entering or leaving the field?
  • What are the off-ramps (retirement, leaving the field, working part time, etc.) for each discipline and how many are using them?
  • What are the on-ramps (students, from other fields, shifting research focus, etc.) for each discipline and how many are using them?

Don’t know how to answer these

• Click on Resources