Question: How do you get funding?

Keith Siew answered on 17 Jun 2013:

Hi Mengwenli54,

Well first of all we have to have a research question. So in my case… what are the proteins that regulate the salt transporters in the kidney and how do they work.

Once you have your question you need to come up with a plan of action and design your study. Work out how long its going to take, what equipment you’ll need, what model you’re using to test your hypothesis and then ultimately work out how much its all going to cost.

When you have all of that done you need to write it up into a Grant Proposal to explain your idea, why you think its important, how it will improve our knowledge of the subject and how this will help mankind, detail your experiments and how much it will cost. You then submit this to a research funding body like the MRC (medical research council) or a charity like the BHF (British Heart Foundation), who fund me. If they’re convinced your idea is worth exploring they award you a grant for a certain amount of money to be spent over a specified number of years.

It’s a tough game to be in cause its very competitive… lots of people with ideas and not enough money! So you have to have a very good idea and convince people its worth funding!