In August 2017, faced with the increasing probability of drastic budget cuts under the Trump administration, the NSF Directorate of Biological Sciences announced it would no longer be funding its long-praised Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grants (DDIGs). This decision marked a turning point in funding opportunities for graduate students, who are particularly vulnerable to a lack of grant options. As a graduate student at the time, I wrote about the decision and its ramifications for myself and my peers, citing the NSF's choice to slash the program as a brand of "trickle-down" academics. I noted that the decision to cut DDIGs was worrisome for early-career researchers, heralding a further consolidation of academic power at the very top levels of the hierarchy and diminishing agency for already-vulnerable trainees.
Just under four years later, the world and I have both moved on – I passed my dissertation defense and began a new chapter in my academic training. The US handed the reins of power over to a markedly different administration, one constantly challenged by the lingering watermarks of its inherently anti-science predecessors. With this country-wide transition and the eyes of the world increasingly on academic research during a global pandemic, we sit at the cusp of an incredible opportunity to push funding opportunities for early-career researchers further than ever before.
Funding for Early Career Researchers
Most graduate students in STEM are funded through a combination of research and teaching assistantships, the money for which comes from grant and institutional funding, respectively...... Read more at Bolded Science
