The search for outside funding gives young scientists intimate acquaintance with the Catch-22 of scientific funding: In order to get a grant, you need results; but to get results, you need money.
"Even if you do get a grant, it's never enough," says Ann Hochschild of Harvard Medical School, who studies the regulation of gene expression. Although Hochschild has received a grant from the National Institutes of Health, she says that most of that money is used up in paying salaries.
Hochschild, however, is one of the lucky ones. She is one of 18 biologists to be named a 1991 Searle Scholar. The 11-year-old, Chicago-based Searle Scholars Program provides three-year, $180,000 grants to assistant professors in the first or second year of their first job. Hochschild says that her Searle award, combined with her NIH grant and other funding she has received, will enable her to do experiments she might ...
