Being Able to Retool Posted on January 20, 2009 Creativity in the funding search is vital, asserts Dr. Patricia Molina.

Getting funding currently is the number one hurdle, I think, in everybody's career. It's not affecting just the early-career scientist, it is affecting senior, mid-level; everybody is being affected by the funding.

But one of the things that I feel one has to be ready for is being able to retool or being able to be creative, not only with your science, but also with where you look for funding. So traditionally we are all, everybody's encouraged to go to NIH. And we should go to NIH, and you should write, these are the types of grants that you should write. But you're not always going to be successful. And you're not always going to be able to start with an NIH grant.

There are several foundations, there are several other organizations. There's Department of Defense, the Office of Naval Research, CDC, the National Cancer Institute. There's many different venues that might provide that initial funding to basically get your laboratory up and going.

I can see where some people have relied incredibly in one particular technique to get them through, yet, their project or their science has veered towards an area where there are new tools that are needed or there are new approaches that are needed to be able to make a case, to be able to grow it to that point.

And, so, I think that now more than ever, we need to be flexible. And we need to be nimble. And it's not being scattered. It's a survival approach. How do you make sure that you have enough funds to keep your project going? And staying stuck in one particular area where you were not being successful, to me, that's just not the best approach.