ERC Starting Grantee Dr Stephen Jones: "Applying for grants takes time and effort, but it's worth it"

Although different grant cycles vary, in general, the process of applying for grants takes time. According to 2022 European Research Council (ERC) Starting grant winner Dr Stephen Knox Jones Jr, a biochemist at Vilnius University (VU) Life Sciences Center (LSC), it was six months before the application deadline when he started putting words on paper. However, the intellectual work began much earlier. Apart from timing, the researcher shares what other factors are essential in applying for grants.

Receiving a grant as outside validation

"If you want to make a big impact, you need the money to do it. That means applying for grants, which is not an easy process. It takes time. It takes effort. It takes a lot of planning. Getting this grant affirms that these efforts were worthwhile," – says Dr Jones, last year receiving the ERC Starting grant of 1.2 million Euros.

It is not the first grant of this size that he applied for in his life. Before leaving his home country, the USA, Dr Jones applied for another grant he barely missed: “Many people would have said it was a huge waste of my time. However, everything I learnt in that process, I applied here. So indirectly, not getting the first grant helped me achieve another this time around. That is why I suggest thinking with a ‘long-term’ perspective.”
Dr Stephen Jones earned his PhD degree from Brown University (Providence, RI, USA) and later joined Ilya Finkelstein's lab as a postdoc at the University of Texas (Austin, TX, USA). In 2021 he came to VU LSC’s new EMBL Partnership Institute to establish The Jones Laboratory; his team researches and develops novel genome editing tools. For the leader of the Jones!Lab, this was his last and only opportunity to apply for the ERC Starting grant, which is explicitly directed towards new research team leaders with less than seven years since receiving their PhD.

"When you are still quite a young researcher and new to leading a team, it's helpful to have outside validation. You feel a lot of doubt in general, so having other people say you are doing it right is beneficial. Getting the grant is reassuring and motivating. The idea of funding put a lot of pressure on me, but I can breathe a little now," – says the ERC grantee.

Getting as much criticism as possible

Concerning the application timeline, the most important date is the submission deadline. Yet, there are several steps before the applicant gets a final answer almost a year later.
"I started working on it in the summer of 2021, basically six months before submitting. However, that doesn't mean I hadn't been intellectually working on it before. But this was when I started first putting words on paper," – claims the leader of the Jones!lab.

According to him, if you want to succeed with these things, you best get as much criticism as you can, as early as you can: "After writing the application, you need feedback from your peers. It’s tough if you haven't learned how to handle criticism. However, it is better to receive feedback from your colleagues when you can still make changes, than from the ERC committee when you can’t do a thing about it. So if an expert you trust says that your idea needs work or isn’t good enough, it is good to know – you can prepare another one instead."

He suggests that sharing ideas with other people can get you an outside perspective and assure that you are communicating your ideas effectively, helping you develop your ideas further. Of course, it takes time. That is why Dr Jones planned time to build his concept twice. This is a good strategy, as one gets valuable feedback the first time around, enabling a better product the next time. The main goal is to get that information.

"The minimum you need in this process is two people: yourself and a representative from a European university committed to hosting you. But the more people involved, the better. I had everyone from my institute and other close colleagues viewing my work, even people doing similar work in other parts of the world. And, of course, I lined up a team of experts tangential to my project. I asked if they could provide support if needed. So, a more realistic number would be 10 to 20 people," – tells the researcher.

Convincing different audiences

"After submitting the application in January, I didn't hear anything until the summer. Only then I received the first answer. In my case, they sent a positive letter, but I still had to wait for the interview in the fall."

During the interview in September, Dr S. Jones had to present his project in just ten minutes, before answering his panel’s questions: "Here you have all these questions and comments from experts, and from other reviewers who are not experts in your field. It's worth realizing – this is a very broad audience. So, before the interview, I presented my work to people from all different levels of expertise to get feedback: from the top people in my field, those who are experts in other fields, students that just joined my lab, to people who have never heard of CRISPR".

According to him, if you can explain your project to anyone, you truly know your thing. Finally, only in November did the researcher discover he had succeeded.

Convince yourself and use the previous examples

"The crucial thing during the process is trusting that you can do it. But you can't always get that from yourself, so you need a support structure telling you you’re worth it. It gives you the energy you need because it will be difficult," – assures the researcher.

Since there is also a lot of planning and thinking involved, your support team – family, friends, colleagues – will help you make it through the whole process. Even so, one has to believe in himself (herself) too, because if you haven't convinced yourself, you are going to have a hard time convincing anybody else.

"From a more practical perspective, I would advise: don't reinvent the wheel. Many others have made it through this process, so you need to get information from someone like me who has received the grant, or maybe from another colleague who has reviewed that type of application. The people from the research project division also help by sharing examples of prior ERC grants that have been funded and the information on everything you should know," – says Dr S. Jones.

Last but not least, the applicant has to be ambitious: "You want to make sure that whatever you are proposing has a lot of potential for the community. If it can make a big impact, it opens you up to bring in some risk. People should see that the stuff that I do is worth doing".

In 2022 Dr S. Jones and his team received a €1.2 million grant from the ERC. Spanning the next five years, the researcher will lead a project which aims to improve gene editing techniques.