[MetaSTEM] First MetaSTEM seminar of 2026: Kris Gulati on science funding

[Tyler Marghetis]

Hi MetaSTEM community,

Reminder that our first MetaSTEM talk of the semester is *today at 12:30 in
SSM 235*. Thanks again to Kris Gulati for sharing his work on science
funding disparities.

See you soon!
Tyler

On Tue, Feb 17, 2026 at 1:02 PM Tyler Marghetis <tyler.marghetis at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi scholars of science,
>
> This Thursday we'll have *our first MetaSTEM meeting of 2026*.
>
> Please join us this *Thursday at 12:30pm in SSM 235*. (Please note the
> change in location; SSM 235 is just around the corner from SSM 230.)
>
> Our first speaker is Kris Gulati, who'll present an early paper on gender
> differences in science funding. Abstract below.
>
> Also, our April speaker had to cancel, so we now have one open spot this
> semester. *If you'd like to share your work on April 23rd, please let me
> and Christian know! *We encourage presentations of work at any stage, but
> are especially excited to hear about early-stage and in-progress work.
>
> See you Thursday!
> Tyler and Christian
>
> ---
> Abstract: "Scientific discovery depends not only on what ideas are
> funded, but on how researchers translate ideas into resource requests that
> shape teams, training, and future knowledge production. Using a novel
> dataset covering the full universe of funded and unfunded grant
> applications to two major philanthropic science funders in Europe between
> 2011 and 2022, linked to peer-review scores and investigators’ prior
> research records, we examine whether gender differences arise in the
> funding process. We document that female principal investigators receive
> 6.4–7.4% less funding per application than male investigators. This gap is
> mostly explained by differences at the proposal stage: women request 5-5.4%
> less funding, conditional on proposal quality and researcher
> characteristics. This is despite there being no incentives to request
> smaller grants, a claim we confirm empirically. Using granular budget data,
> we show that this gap manifests itself in team size formation, with female
> investigators systematically proposing smaller PhD student teams. We find
> no significant differences across other budget categories. Exploiting
> heterogeneity across sub-groups to shed light on underlying mechanisms, we
> show that the gender gap in funding requests is concentrated among:
> early-career researchers, lower prior publications, lower prior average
> research impact factor, and converges with experience through repeated
> applications, consistent with learning and information frictions. These
> findings shift attention from evaluators to applicants, highlighting how
> differences in resource construction - rather than evaluation bias - can
> generate durable disparities in scientific capacity. Extrapolating to the
> U.S. context suggests that women may be systematically requesting on the
> order of $0.75 billion less annually from major public funders, with
> implications for training capacity, cumulative knowledge production, and
> the organization of scientific labor."
>
> --
> Tyler Marghetis, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor, Cognitive & Information Sciences
> University of California, Merced
> www.tylermarghetis.com
> tyler.marghetis at gmail.com | +1.619.252.7798
> I use the pronouns: he, him, his
> I have moderate face-blindness
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia>; if you see me out of
> context, I may not recognize you
>
-- 

Sent from a tiny device...

-- 
Tyler Marghetis, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Cognitive & Information Sciences
University of California, Merced
www.tylermarghetis.com
tyler.marghetis at gmail.com | +1.619.252.7798
I use the pronouns: he, him, his
I have moderate face-blindness; if you see me out of context, I may not
recognize you, so please say hello.
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