<p>Hi! Recently was admitted into a program in Molec. Bio + Genetics, and I’m looking at potential advisors. Are there any resources outside of the dept. website that can provide details on a particular lab’s funding? If not, should I assume that a high number of recent publication is a strong indication of adequate funding? Any ideas would really help me out. Thank you so much!</p>
<p>Some PIs list grants in their CVs. You may want to have a look at these. Otherwise, I think publications are a good indicator. Depending of what you plan to do, you may also check the publication content. A costly large scale analysis probably indicates better funding than sole reanalysis of previously published data sets.</p>
<p>You can look up funding from NIH by searching for ‘NIH reporter.’ Otherwise, it is kind of tough to tell. As jixani said, many faculty list current and past grants on their CVs, but sometimes either CVs are out of date by a number of years or are not even available online.</p>
<p>The size of the lab is a pretty good indication.</p>
<p>CRISP used to be the tool to view NIH grants. I think they changed it to RePort [NIH</a> Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORT)](<a href=“http://report.nih.gov/]NIH”>http://report.nih.gov/) Some fields have grants from other agencies like NSF, DOD or whatever and wouldn’t be represented in the NIH system. I don’t know what people in those fields look at.</p>
<p>You can also search NSF awards: [NSF</a> - Award Search - Awardee Information](<a href=“http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/]NSF”>NSF Award Search: Simple Search.)</p>
<p>The size of the lab isn’t really important, because what you are looking for is a well funded lab per person (you want to have enough money to do your own project!). Small labs will tend to have less money than large labs, although that is not always true, but the large labs could actually be more strapped for cash. A lot of it also depends on the PIs philosophy re spending money.</p>
<p>Your best bet would probably be to ask current students in the lab. I imagine the more money a PI has, the more freedom their students have in choosing research topics, as well.</p>
<p>Crystal beakers and gilded bunsen burners.</p>
<p>just ask your potential mentor how much TAing is expected of the graduate students.
The answer is most telling!</p>
<p>^^that’s not true because at the top programs, the same amount of TAing is required of everyone, but funding levels definitely vary. Granted, you are usually not talking about labs that might run out of funding and not be able to pay you, but funding levels, even at the top tier, can affect the types of projects that you can do.</p>
<p>It also depends on how many and what kind of classes the professor teaches. If they only get grad students to TA their own class, then they’re pretty set. In the case of my advisor, we tend to TA about half the classes in the department for any given quarter since we’ve been low on funds for the last few years.</p>
<p>Of course, I should note that lots of people I know actually ask to TA extra classes since they want to learn the material well enough to teach it.</p>