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To: Little Joe who wrote (100496)	8/6/2009 11:32:26 PM
From: Casaubon	Respond to of 116555

grants are a very diverse topic. The way I can best describe the grant process is through analogy. If you envision the accumulated body of human scientific knowledge as a path through the woods, then most grants would be a short jaunt off the main path. Learning many lab techniques is largely experiential and thus the process affords the opportunity to develop skills, as you state. However, there needs to be an endeavor to expand the breadth of the path, at least. And of course, occasionally you get some observation either through the process of doing, or through brilliant intuition, that leads to a whole new path. In other words, the body of scientific knowledge is accumulated through many minute additions, which occasionally leads to an entirely novel thought process. Ideally, you want to at least develop a new tool for the scientific community to use and apply in novel ways. For example, you might develop an entirely new chemical transformation that has broad application. Medicinal chemists might then be able to use this new reaction in a synthetic path needed to synthesize a novel therapeutic agent. This is a common contribution these days, which has greatly facilitated the rapid synthesis of novel chemical entities of interest. There are many examples of new bond forming reactions that allow us to greatly reduce the number of steps in a synthetic sequence. Of tremendous value has been the advent of chiral chemistry, often via catalytic processes. Catalysis is a huge and broad field that is transforming the industry, and the world.