About

Hello! thank you for coming to my blog. My name is Natalio Krasnogor (Nat for short); let me tell you a little bit about me:

I am fortunate to work as a Professor of Computing Science and Synthetic Biology at the University of Newcastle (UK) where I have the privilege to interact with talented colleagues and wonderful doctoral students and postdocs.

I also have a keen interest in entrepreneurship and I avidly read whatever I can on the subject. I founded a fledging startup, Workli – the deep work company, to bring productivity and deep work coaching to every professional and to simplify collaborations between busy team members. I believe there are strong similarities in the methods that scientists and entrepreneurs use and hence, I believe there is much to be learnt from each other. I am always looking at how to do things differently, better, or -at least- not to repeat the same mistakes twice.

This blog collects my thoughts on the lessons I learnt over the years as I struggled, regularly failed, and sometimes succeeded getting grants.

My goal is to demystify the process of grant writing and -by doing so- help you become more productive and more successful. Above all, if by any chance I manage to help you enjoy more what many consider the pain of writing grants, then I would be happier still.

This list , albeit non-exhaustive, will give you an idea of my successes as Principal or Co-Investigator. The list does not cover EU grants, Charities (e.g. Leverhulme, ESF, etc) neither it cover learned societies (e.g. Royal Academy of Engineering, etc) from which I also obtained funding. Of course, I learnt much more from the far larger number of failures (~ 5 to 1) I had over the years.

In the blog I will post -from time to time- ideas, information, musings, suggestions, tricks, tips, tools and techniques that I have found useful for securing external funding. I believe that, if you regularly seek funding as part of what you do, whether in academia, a research institute, a start-up, an NGO, a government department, etc, then the Grant Hackers Club is the club to join.

I hope you find it useful!

PS: I’ll be delighted to hear your thoughts, comments, feedback, queries, ideas, etc. either directly here in the blog or by email to nat@mg.granthackers.club, twitter (@NKrasnogor), LinkedInd (nataliokrasnogor) or Workli (Natalio Krasnogor).

PS2: The content provided here does not represent the view of my employer.


Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay