Fingers Crossed

So regarding this grant proposal, an NSF program officer let me know that I won't know anything official for quite a while -- it could be a couple of months.

But...

Here is the way the process works. First, the proposal goes through an external review. Academics and other experts from around the country are flown into DC and they form an external panel, and that panel reviews a batch of grants. Individual members of the panel who are the primary reviewers for each particular grant write up detailed reviews, and the panel discusses the grant as a group and rates it in terms of its competitiveness.

The most competitively-rated grants make it to the next level of review. This is the cross-divisional NSF review, and this process is mysterious to me, but I imagine they go through a similar procedure. If it makes it through that level of review, it then goes to the program officers for a particular division, and the program officers have to review it to see if they want to fund it and have the money to fund it.

If the grant makes it this far and the program officers review it positively and decide that they want to fund it, then they develop a set of questions for the PI (that's me, the person applying for the award) to answer. Receiving questions is a very, very, very good sign -- it means the grant reviewed well and the NSF wants to fund it. It's not a guarantee of anything, because after the PI answers the questions, the program officer has to write up a report, a number of different people have to sign off on it, and ultimately the division director has to approve the funding of the grant. So, it's not a guarantee of anything, and it's premature to advertise the news or celebrate or anything like that. Everything still has to progress through the official channels. That said, I've never heard of somebody getting to the questions stage and not getting funded. (Not saying it doesn't happen, though. It might.)

So at the risk of jinxing everything, I am going to share here in whispered tones that I got questions last week. I then had a very encouraging phone call with my program officer. Let's just say, I'm not opening the bottle of champagne yet, and I'm not sharing the news with my colleagues yet, but I'm secretly doing a little happy dance. Today I finally turned in my responses to the questions, and now I get to sit and wait with bated breath. Fingers are crossed...