Panel #3: The Evolution of Research Funding and Projects (Symposium Summary)

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Panel Members:

David Bell, Retired, Co-author Bell-La Padula Security Model
Joe Pekny, Purdue University
Kenneth Brancik, Northrop Grumman
Petros Mouchtaris, Telcordia

Summary by Utsav Mittal

The panel was started by Petros Mouchtaris. He said that applying for funding is not that bad although the researcher gets a lot of rejections, but then also once the funding comes through it gives the researcher a lot of control about the areas he wants to work in. He said in the last 10 years most of their funding came from DARPA, initially the funding was for long-term small projects. He said that a smaller, long-term project gives more time to foster basic research about abstract ideas.

Joe Pekny, who has worked in Discovery park for about 10 years, said that the fundamental principle about generating funding is about that “Research follows impact.” He said that difference between getting and not getting funding is between the ability of the researcher to relate his potential and ability to provide impact. He also talked about the research opportunities in electronic medical records and about privacy issues in videos surveillance that is widely used.

He mentioned some tactics that help in order to monetize the research impact:

Leverage: He mentioned that everyone wants a big grant which runs long, but that is not always possible, so the researcher should leverage whatever opportunities that he has to have (continue reading...)