NIH grant expenditures

At least in my SOM-based department, one’s general status is supposedly correlated with the amount of indirect costs they bring in. It looks like I’m currently capped at 4 desks for my personnel, and it’s not clear if it’s worth trying to expand here. Regardless, this is apparently the directs / indirects space I’m operating in with my current setup.

What does this come out to in terms of indirect costs generated per month? Here’s the plot based on my budget reports, below:

So, essentially at my steady state (which I’ll probably be at for at least the next 2.5 years), the lab is generating ~ $20k a month in indirects for the department, amounting to about ~ $5k per desk per month.

Ah, the business of SOM-based academic research. Well, I’m nothing if not transparent.