Young investigator’s plea: 4 grad students with no research money to carry on…

France Dufresne from UQAR writes:

“I am among the 240 researchers that went from funded to unfunded.

I have been holding NSERC funds for the past 8 years and with the small funds I have been able to maintain a small active lab in molecular ecology. After the initial difficult years of starting a new lab, attracting good students, and getting publications out of their work, I felt that things were rolling and I was confident in this year competition. It was a terrible shock to hear about my NSERC’s results especially since comments from the reviewers were positive about my proposal and my publication record. This leaves my four graduate students with no income and no money to carry on their research. I don’t understand why I was not given funds for one year so that I could provide my students with minimal funds to finish off. NSERC is wasting previous investment in HQP.
I am afraid that these new criteria are going to affect mostly researchers from small universities. I teach four courses a year and I hardly see how I can put more efforts into my research. Perhaps the whole idea is to discourage people like me from applying again and therefore decrease the number of applicants in the system.

If other people are concerned over this matter or in the same situation, please contact me at france_dufresne@uqar.qc.ca ”