We need to justify a potential candidate's start-up cost to a committee, so testimonials or suggestions from cell biologists would be helpful. Accurate rather than wishful thinking answers, if possible!
For a large University in Canada, I would expect $100-150K(ish) plus a guarantee of $250-350k ish for CFI. The assumption is that they will get NSERC/CIHR funding in the first year or so, so they won't be funding a lot of operating costs. NSERC newbies (and oldies!) can seldom afford techs or postdocs, but that might be possible with NIH or CIHR funding, and I always recommend 3 months of tech in the budget, just to open the boxes! Of course, expectations (and capacity) vary among institutions, so this is probably the best case scenario for Canada. Note that it is a very different funding environment to the USA, so the mega-startup to fund many years of operating costs until the big grant comes through is not so necessary.
That would be sufficient to buy an CO2 incubator and some pipettes. Not likely enough to buy a laminar flow hood, not to mention outfitting the rest of the lab.
What a good question? It depends on how much you expect from the budding young scientist? I do not want to describe my personal bad experience but "no egg no chicken". Most of my colleague claimed to have 25,000 USD/year as start-up but I know some of them got nothing whereas some of them got 35,000.
I think a lot depends on what will be "inherited". If it is equipping a new cell biology lab, then it will be a lot more expensive than if they can get used equipment. As far as running expenses are concerned, I would suggest full salary for an experienced tech, 20-30k/year in supplies, travel for one meeting and salary support for the jr faculty for at least 2 years. As an added incentive, if they get grants before then, they get to "keep" the monies saved within their own group
Yes, I was referring to a virtually new lab. Little to be inherited from others. Full disclosure, I am not a cell biologist, and this is not for me. This is to assist in justifying a potential faculty position. I know at some large Canadian Universities, it is typical to expect >$100k in start-up. Maybe this is not the average expectation everywhere though!
Indeed >$100K would be a very good startup package !!! As others have said it is a bit situation dependent - if you have to set up the lab it will cost more but that may be considered departmental infrastructure rather than a 'start-up' for the candidate. I think around $50,000 is still on the high side but more common - I would suggest that some of that goes in the form of support for techs and grad students to get the young (presumably at the assistant level) investigator going by giving them time to start the grant writing grind.
Thanks Paul. With the advent of the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, I suspect start-up grants might vary quite a bit from institution to institution.
Money is not the only issue. $50,000/yr without any tech support will still be very hard for a junior faculty. If there is a strong group support then $15,000/yr can still make some progress.
For a large University in Canada, I would expect $100-150K(ish) plus a guarantee of $250-350k ish for CFI. The assumption is that they will get NSERC/CIHR funding in the first year or so, so they won't be funding a lot of operating costs. NSERC newbies (and oldies!) can seldom afford techs or postdocs, but that might be possible with NIH or CIHR funding, and I always recommend 3 months of tech in the budget, just to open the boxes! Of course, expectations (and capacity) vary among institutions, so this is probably the best case scenario for Canada. Note that it is a very different funding environment to the USA, so the mega-startup to fund many years of operating costs until the big grant comes through is not so necessary.
For a smaller school... $50K + commitment of CFI of ~$100-150k (total) would be reasonable, methinks. Depends if you can get the institution to commit to the latter, and if there is suitable access to *big* facilities like imaging.
I would think that ~120k (able to be partitioned as determined by the PI between eqpt and tech) should be sufficient and reasonably attractive.
In health science in Quebec, a small university will provide $50,000, a mid size $100,000 to $150,000 and the big universities up to $300,000. All will also give a commitment for CFI of approx $200,000 to $300,000.
How do you write a statement of start up funding? Any help will be appreciated.
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