Welcome!

Welcome to our e-learning course providing you with tips & tricks to start writing your first grant application.

We know from experience that starting to write a grant is very challenging. Procrastination is always around the corner during this process.

With this course we want to provide you with some easy ‘handles’ and ‘basic principles’ you need to consider when developing your grant application. For most of these topics we have provided some easy-to-capture tips and tricks.  We asked some of the researchers in the different VIB labs to provide us with some Top Tips, and… to make sure you capture what you learned, you can test your knowledge gained in the exercises provided in each chapter.

Please be aware that this is a basic course – developed for junior (PhD) researchers writing their first grant application – as well as for the people assisting these junior researchers during the writing process. The course is envisaged as a general grant writing course. There is no focus on a specific type of grant such as FWO PhD applications. However – where relevant –  we make reference to the FWO PhD application template.

Moreover, the course is focused on grant writing and not on the interview part. However, when you are invited to an interview for your grant application, we do have several options available to coach you at this stage of the process.

I was a PhD student in VIB who finished in 2022. While I was at the VIB I took the ‘How to write a winning grant training’. I just wanted to write to tell you thanks for the training, it has worked fantastically for me. I received the news a few days ago that my project was selected for funding which is very exciting. During the writing of the application, I referred to your training a lot of times 😊

Who to contact?

• At headquarters:
  

  • Elien Vandermarliere – elien.vandermarliere@vib.be
  • Lieve Ongena – lieve.ongena@vib.be
  • grantsoffice@vib.be

• Center for Plant Systems Biology
  

  • Christine Tiré – christine.tire@ugent.vib.be

• Center for Medical Biotechnology
  

  • Nele Vervaet – nele.vervaet@ugent.vib.be

• Center for Brain & Disease Research
  

  • Hilde Govaert – hilde.govaert@kuleuven.vib.be
  • Patrick Vandormael – patrick.vandormael@kuleuven.vib.be

• Center for Cancer Biology
  

  • Michael Dewaele – michael.dewaele@kuleuven.be
  • Katie Van Geyte – katie.vangeyte@kuleuven.be

• Center for Microbiology
  

  • Karin Voordeckers – karin.voordeckers@kuleuven.vib.be

• Center for Structural Biology
  

  • Kris Pauwels – kris.pauwels@vub.be

• Center for Molecular Neurology
  

  • Pieter Van de Walle – pieter.vandewalle@uantwerpen.vib.be

• NERF
  

  • Antonella Puglisi – antonella.puglisi@nerf.be

• VIB.AI
  

• Irina Matetovici – irina.matetovici@vib.be

Of course, a cool scientific idea and enthusiasm are key ingredients to be able to start writing a grant application. 

BUT

There are some things you need to know and look into before you start writing, things that are equally important. These are discussed in the sections below.