On Tue, 17 Sep 2002, David Eppstein wrote:
> In article <am7mcl$p45$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> "Arthur E. Sowers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > And, usually, the PI has to get _permission_ to spend money on
> > certain things, thus the PI is often not very _principal_ but quite
> > subordinate in terms of authority to expend money off his own grant.
> >
> > One exception is SBIR grants which, instead of to large institutions, can
> > go to a small company (as long as it can be legitamated) with a little as
> > one employee. Hint, hint, hint.
>
> If you're hinting that institutional employees form small companies on
> the side in order to get freer access to their grant money, my
> institution at least looks very skeptically at such arrangements.
Years ago I was on several ad hoc NIH panels to evaluate SBIR grants.
Quite a few of the "staff" of these proposals were faculty that had their
appointments altered so they came in under the radar of the SBIR
requirements. Some tool leaves of absences. Some set up special deals: one
guy even set up his own wife as president of the small company so she
could get on the grant as PI and we reviewed it. I questioned the deal in
front of the committee and the exec sec said it was permissible.
Also, some proposals came from groups within companies and corporations
that "spun off" the groups so they could go for grant money, then use the
grant money to pay for space and salaries and expenses that the
corporation then "rented" to their (former) employees while the employees
incorporated themselves as a separate business entity (I didn't see the
details, but I'm betting that the original corporation had set up, some of
its own employees as members of the board of directors on the new entity).
Many of these small companies have "revolving door" relationships with a
parent company. All finagled to get money out of the system.
Arthur E. Sowers, PhD
-----------------------------------------
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> --
> David Eppstein UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/
>
.
.
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