Research Funding: Secrets Revealed

For the AAAI Fall symposia, I was invited to participate in a 1 day symposium on funding, where I related my ideas about getting research funding. I thought it would be useful to present some of the same material here, both for the edification of graduate students and junior faculty, and to get ideas (and corrections) from other senior faculty.

Topics I will cover include:
o why attempting to get funding isn’t all bad
(although it is the worst part of being a faculty member)
o research philosophy and its impact on pursuing funding
o the major funding agencies and types of funding for AI researchers
o recommendations for what to do during the six major phases of funding.

I will also include insightful and intriguing suggestions to guarantee your success in obtaining funding such as: “read the instructions” , “don’t be a jerk.” and my personal favorite: “do great research.”

Professor Laird has been pursuing funding for over 20 years and has received external funding from ONR, NASA, NSF, NRL, ICT/USC, DARPA, Microsoft, and SAIC.