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That’s amazing. Do you have a home lab with an atomic microscope where you do your research?

And what’s the reason for going solo vs a research university, where I assume this type of research could be significantly sped up?

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No lab — the work is computational. All calculations run on a Dell Precision workstation with ORCA (quantum chemistry) software. An experimental collaborator is now preparing the C-AFM validation. The solo approach is a consequence of the work spanning multiple fields that don't share a single department.

Couldn't you potentially get some smaller grants from each of the fields? Or is that too much paperwork. It always seems so much work to get those grants.

Getting a grant from a single field is already a full-time job; the research typically gets done as overtime.

It's a near full-time job in and of itself, and the nature of them means that you really want to get a grant for something you've already done and use the scraps from it to fund the new stuff.

I knew it was a pain getting grants but not that its well that much of a pain.

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