Part 3a: Rubicon Grant Writing Training (A)

The third course in our three-part series on grant writing for PhD students. All parts can be taken separately as well.

Rubicon Grant Writing Training is a one-day workshop that logically follows the first two grant writing classes:

• Part 1: Beginner’s guide to grant writing, and
• Part 2: From chaos to focus: how to develop your own research plan in academia

The Rubicon training targets PhD students and postdocs who aim to submit a Rubicon grant proposal in the upcoming NWO round (or any other grant proposal that is similar to Rubicon and represents your first personal career grant as a PhD) and provides them with information on important aspects of the grant proposal: the summary, the host section, scientific and/or societal impact of the results of the proposed project, and the CV section (academic profile and key output). It furthermore informs participants about how the assessment of the proposals is being executed and the consequences for writing your proposal. There will also be plenty of time to ask questions about issues encountered while writing a first draft of the proposal. Trainers do not provide feedback on individual proposals during the actual course.

You can find information and the template for the Rubicon grant submission HERE

• Obligatory homework to bring to the course:
• Update your CV and list of publications/output
• Outline of your research project
• Scientific summary of your project (200 words)
• Short description of contact(s) established with host
• Description of possible impact of Rubicon on your personal career

7 October 2025 09:00-15:00

€ 200*

*PhD Scholarship students who cannot cover the costs with their PhD training budget can request a reduction in course costs. Please indicate if this applies to you in the registration form and we will contact you with more information.

• Participants will learn how a grant review process works and how that influences the way a grant proposal needs to be written.
• Participants will learn how to write a scientific summary for a committee of experts and non-experts – the do’s and don’ts.
• Participants will become knowledgeable about how content and format of writing a grant proposal are crucial in convincing panel members to judge their grant as fundable.
• Participants will become knowledgeable about the different parts of their academic CV that are important to obtain a positive judgement by panel members.
• Participants will learn what elements can contribute to a convincing Knowledge Utilisation paragraph.

Keywords: Grant review process, grant proposal, scientific summary, proposal content and format, Narrative CV, Key Output, Knowledge Utilisation

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