Some time ago I described my first steps in setting up a research group at a UK university. After one year it is time to evaluate some of the developments made so far. In general, I am quite happy with the progress. Certainly it has not been a very high-flying year scientifically. However, when you can forget for a moment the pressure to deliver, running your own little research group is actually very much fun. I will point out some aspects which have been particularly important this year.

Bringing in money
The first thing is to break the negative spiral resulting from insufficient research budgets. Without ‘seedcorn’ money, it will be difficult to do research and therefore to attract more funding. There are some opportunities for getting this kind of funding especially for new academics. This year I have been successful in getting money from the Royal Society (£15,000, Research Grant) and from the EPSRC (£125,000, First Grant), mainly for equipment. To give an impression of the success rate, 2 out of 7 First Grant proposals were funded in this panel. So even in this special round for starting academics, 72% did not get the money needed to start up their first research project. It cannot be underestimated how crucial these small amounts of money are for taking off during the first years. Also not unimportant is the fact that bringing in money turns out to be one of your most important deliverables which will be highly evaluated by your university, most of times above publications or teaching.

Getting students
To my surprise, getting students was not as difficult as expected. As a lecturer in the South East Physics Network (SEPnet) , I won a joint PhD studentship with the University of Surrey through an open competition between SEPnet consortium members. An advertisement in Nature Jobs resulted – next to a large number of uneligible candidates – in a bright student from Germany who started in July. Over the summer holidays, two undergraduate students worked in the lab through generous bursaries from the EPSRC and the university. This is an excellent idea which provides the students with hands-on experience, enthusiasm for doing research, and a very good summer job with £2,000 salary! With this workforce we managed to get the lab up and running as well as start up fabrication efforts in the clean room. Since October, the group has further expanded with a second PhD student and four undergraduate research students. At this size, it is important to introduce elements of a group structure, such as weekly group meetings, individual work discussions, centralized data-server, Google calendars and lab schedule.

(Re)defining research activities
I have always liked too many different things and perhaps most of all I am not particularly good at one topic. So I am not afraid to change my direction of research by 180 degrees. Changing your research topic however poses challenges as you will need a track record in a certain area to get accepted by the community and receive funding. But this is where teaming up in multidisciplinary partnerships with chemists, biologists, and medical scientists can make the difference. In defining research directions, it is further good to connect to strategic developments, such as in my case our £120 million Mountbatten clean room and the newly established Institute for Life Sciences. By redefining our research activities and moving from being a core specialist to working in a more interdisciplinary environment it will be possible for my group to actively partipate in these new developments.

Networking
Being part of large network is crucial these days as funding agencies are increasingly supporting big consortia combining academics and industry. One can become part of a consortium either by being invited or by setting one up yourself. So together with a colleague we decided to coordinate a large-scale European FP7 proposal. The topic of the project, nanotechnology for fighting cancer, lies far beyond my comfort zone but it will be an exciting direction to move into. In the last 6 months we have brought together a team of 18 partners, of which 6 companies and 12 academic institutes, with a total requested EU budget of €6.9 million. Although we have been told crazy for doing things far above our head, I think it is a good learning experience and it has certainly lowered my threshold for applying for European funding. European funding will be an increasingly important source of research income over the coming years as the budgets are gradually increased. Experiences about organizing a EU proposal will be posted another time.

Teaching
This year I was on a reduced teaching load. I did the regular first and third year undergraduate labs, which was actually quite good as it allows identifying keen students with an interest in experimental research. Next year I will get the full teaching load of around 650 hours, which will strongly reduce time for doing research. Luckily, PhD students and undergraduate projects also count as teaching load, so expanding the group will help.

Toward the second year
The above may give you an impression of the kind of activities one can expect during the first year of setting up a research group. Of course there is much more, like writing down the publications from a previous position (mostly done at evenings and weekends). One big missing item on my list this year has been visiting conferences, which is difficult if you don’t have money or results to show. This part will certainly be important for next year, when hopefully exciting new science will start appearing from the lab.

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