Astronomy Grants Panel Chairman's report 2009-2010

A personal view

The Astronomy Grant’s Panel (AGP) has had a very testing year in the face of the financial problems besetting STFC. I record below my views of the process and outcomes that have recently been made public.

There were 84 standard grants and 20 rolling grants submitted and it was expected that the number of posts to be awarded would be similar if not slightly more than in 2008/09. It should be remembered that the previous review of most of this set of rolling grants took place in the first year of Full Economic Costing and these grants were awarded significant PDRA (Postdoctoral Research Assistant) numbers in years 4 (2010-2011) and 5 (2011-2012) of their award.

The processes and guidelines for the grant reviews remained essentially unchanged from the year before and the timetable was constructed to complete the year’s business in time for the grants to be announced before Christmas. The panel met during September and October to carry out the peer review and then assembled in plenary session on Nov 12^th to take an overall view of the outcomes. Although at this stage not every financial detail in the successful grants had been resolved, it was clear that the panel was very close to the target spend profile in its recommendations. The outcome of the STFC prioritisation review was known to be imminent and the AGP discussed possible responses to various scenarios and set a date in January in case an additional meeting was necessary. Before the prioritisation review was implemented, the AGP was recommending 21 out of 84 standard grants with a total of 14 PDRA’s and 75 PDRA’s and technical posts in 18 rolling grants.

Download the full report below.

Mike Cruise

|AGP Chairman's report 2009-2010 (PDF - 30Kb)(opens in a new window)