Feeling left out

[mleok]

Indeed, I've never heard of an internal grant for $1 million, particularly at a land grant university.

[research_prof]

I have heard stories about senior profs in my college who are terrible researchers and they have gotten millions of dollars by submitting proposals of a few paragraphs each because they have political connections (or they are good friends with the Dean). So yes people with connections can easily get such amounts of money with no competition (it's essentially an allocation of the money coming to the college/department/central administration).

The rest of us can go to NSF and compete with the rest of the US for a fraction of this money and with ultra low funding rates.

[fizzycist]

I've never heard of a $2M internal grant, let alone two of them given out to the same person in a short timespan. And that person has zero federal grants--what field is this supposed to be anyway?

And I'm in disbelief any university would voluntarily give its own internal research money to another uni.

If these details are correct the VPR will be fired soon.

[research_prof]

I've never heard of a $2M internal grant, let alone two of them given out to the same person in a short timespan. And that person has zero federal grants--what field is this supposed to be anyway?

And I'm in disbelief any university would voluntarily give its own internal research money to another uni.

If these details are correct the VPR will be fired soon.

I do not think anyone will get fired, since these people typically cover their ass quite well. Is it for sure an internal grant? Was there internal competition for it? Could it be a direct allocation of funds?

[Vid]

All,

Thank you. It's in an Engineering field. I am not sure about any internal competition or any internal RFP or maybe it's a direct allocation of money given to this prof. But he 's given a portion of the grant to another university to develop a model. I have at least 12 high quality publications on this model! I developed this model in my lab (and modified the source code and made it more user friendly) when I was a faculty in another institution prior joining this university. 

Anyway, I sent my papers to the team (they are 6 faculty in the team and this senior prof is the lead PI) and said I would be happy to give you the source code if you need it (I already published the results, so no worries!).

I am part of a cluster hire and we are three (cluster hired) faculty, he included two other faculty but not me....this's the reason I did not feel good about this....anyway, I am trying to stay away from politics, guys! Not worth it!

[Ruralguy]

I can see how there might be something like a foundation pot that usually grants out money to your university or dept.. There probably is a competitive process, but if the foundation is local, and the university has huge influence, they can corner the market and get the appropriate amount of grant money from the foundation. Anyway the pot can exist for local hospitals and universities to develop better oxygen generation equipment, or whatever.  Or it can be much much broader (like a Templeton grant, but not with Templeton). Once the Dean gets the money he "allocates" this to buddies who he deems worthy of it.  Anyway, it still seems like a very large amount of money even for an allocation from a foundation (if that is indeed the source).

Anyway, don't sweat this too much. Now that you have communicated with them, just leave it alone and work on your work.