• Question: Do you find your job easy ? If not then what makes it hard ?

    Asked by Angie to Lucy, Huma, Jack, Miranda, Peter on 10 Nov 2016. This question was also asked by Amy.
    • Photo: Peter Boorman

      Peter Boorman answered on 10 Nov 2016:

      Hi Angie,

      I would never say that being a scientist is easy, but the challenges we encounter are one of things I love about it. I really enjoy all the different puzzles we get to try and solve!

      Peter

    • Photo: Huma Shah

      Huma Shah answered on 10 Nov 2016:

      Hello Angie,

      It depends on what you mean by easy – I love what I do so for me it is easy. There are difficulties though, for example, when you work hard on a grant proposal and it is not successful. Last year I wrote a big EU Horizon2020 grant proposal, for a project that would have cost just under 7 million Euros. I recruited 19 partners (universities and companies from across Europe, including IBM Research-Switzerland), but was not successful. My proposal earned 9/15 points. You have to gain 15/15 to be in with a chance of gaining funding.

      However, this just makes you work harder to write an even stronger proposal. Getting grant funding to do your experiments is part of the job, it is an exciting activity because you get to meet and collaborate with new and interesting people.

      Huma

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