Does missing early funding push researchers out of emerging fields?
Title. For example, if a computational biology professor applied to a major flagship grant for an "emerging area" -- e.g., the NSF 2009 “OMICS Technologies" and 2026 "Synthtic Micobiomes" grants -- but were rejected, would they typically continue working in that area and apply for future grants? Or would the majority of profesors in that position pivot towards other topics (and if so, what are the primary reasons for doing so)? In comp bio, for instance, I could imagine costs of data generation / access & the need for specialized infrastructure being reasons that profesors would not continue pursuing an emerging area without dedicated funding.
I’m asking as a student interested in becoming a professor who would like to work on emerging areas as they first develop, around the time the first major flagship funding programs are launched. Thus, I’m trying to understand whether it’s realistically possible to enter a “hot” field early even if one misses the first major funding round, or whether those initial flagship grants often determine who can meaningfully participate.
Would be especially interested in seeing how this differs between i) wet-lab research, ii) data-intensive dry-lab fields (e.g., computational biology and computational social science), and iii) more theoretical disciplines.