[BNC-all] BNC Progress Report

[Timothy Sands]

Dear Birck Nanotechnology Center Member:

There was one statistic in the report I distributed on February 20th that
caught nearly everyone¹s attention: the 52% proposal success rate.  It seems
so high as to be questionable.  I have looked into this metric, and a
detailed analysis follows if you are interested.  The bottom line is that
our hit rate is indeed about 50%, but one must use care in defining the ³hit
rate.²

As you can see below, the 52% success rate came from 100 awards (as recorded
by SPS) on 192 submitted proposals.  There are two problems with this
metric, and their effects almost cancel out.  First, of these 192 proposals,
77 were pending as of January 31st, 2007.  If you don¹t count pending
proposals, the hit rate jumps up.  Counteracting this effect is the fact
that the 100 awards include many awards generated from the same proposal.
In fact, there were 58 successful proposals that generated 100 awards.

A more reasonable measure of the ³hit rate² is the number of funded
proposals divided by the number of proposals funded + the number denied.
The result is 50%.

To get really (and almost ridiculously) technical, the pending proposals
likely include a higher fraction of denied proposals due to a time lag in
recording the denied proposals from some agencies, so 50% is probably an
upper bound.  If we count all pending proposals as denied (much too
conservative) the hit rate is still 30%.  If you only count proposals
submitted prior to the end of FY 04-05, there are no pending proposals and
the hit rate is (13/35) or 37%.  Any way you slice it, the number looks
good.  

Regards-

Tim 

-- 
Timothy D. Sands
Director, Birck Nanotechnology Center
Discovery Park, Purdue University
www.nano.purdue.edu
&
Basil S. Turner Professor of Engineering
School of Materials Engineering & School of Electrical and Computer
Engineering
https://engineering.purdue.edu/MSE/Turner

Birck Nanotechnology Center
1205 West State Street
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2057
phone: (765) 496-6105
fax: (765) 496-8383
e-mail: tsands at purdue.edu

     

On 2/20/07 9:26 PM, "Timothy Sands" <tsands at exchange.purdue.edu> wrote:

> Dear Birck Nanotechnology Center Member:
> 
> You probably know from walking through the building lately that the activity
> level in the BNC is ramping up quickly.  I'd like to share with you some
> tangible evidence of the growing momentum in the form of some notable numbers:
> 
> 421 researchers have been trained to use the BNC facilities
> 
> 103 refereed papers (listed in the ISI Web of Science database) have been
> published with the Birck Nanotechnology Center as an author affiliation
> ("Address = Birck Nano*"); 63 in FY2005-06 alone.
> 
> 192 proposals have been submitted through the BNC business office, and 100 of
> those have resulted in awards thus far, a 52% success rate (will be higher
> when the results from pending proposals are known).  Of the 192 proposals, 78
> were submitted in the first 7 months of FY2006-07.
> 
> Research expenditures, including direct costs and facilities & administration
> (indirect costs) from external sources (i.e., not including cost sharing),
> total $31M to date.
> 
> If you would like more detail, please see the attached pdf file.
> 
> Congratulations to each of you for your part in this early success!
> 
> Regards-
> 
> Tim
> 


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