The National Institutes of Health (NIH) are streamlining methods for announcing specific research interests. They will be phasing out the use of program announcements (PAs), which often come with multiple flavors (e.g., Clinical Trial Allowed/Not Allowed, R01, R03, R21), replacing them with Notices of Special Interest (wait for it, NOSI). Requests for Applications (RFAs), program announcements with special receipt/referral/review considerations (PARs) and program announcements with set-aside funds (PASs) will continue to be used. NOSIs will highlight specific research topics of interest, and then typically direct applicants to one or more parent announcements. When applying through a NOSI (I'm loving this acronym), it is critical that the notice number be included in the Agency Routing Identifier field to allow NIH to assign and track these applications appropriately.
This welcome news from the NIH creates a much simpler and intuitive for accessing and applying to the appropriate mechanism at the NIH.
Resources:
NIH Notices of Special Interest
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
The NSF Merit Review Process
In May, the NSF released their 2017 Report on their Merit Review Process. Below I highlight some of the key elements of that report.
Overall, the NSF shows in this report that they've maintained a funding rate of what is currently 23% overall. This varies by directorate with the Geosciences holding the highest rate at 32% and the Engineering Directorate holding the lowest at 19%.
Monthly salary funding for PIs has continued to decline, sitting at an average of .7 months funded for single PIs and .63 months for multiple PIs. To put this in perspective, a decade ago in 2007, the NSF funded on average 1.37 and 1.27 months for single and multiple PIs, respectively.
At the NSF, the vast amount of proposals are reviewed by external reviewers with the exception being EAGER, RAPID, and RAISE proposals that the Program Directors use their discretion in funding. Otherwise, in FY 2017, 68% of proposals were reviewed by a panel only, 24% were reviewed ad hoc and a panel, and 4% were reviewed ad hoc only. A panel refers to a gathering of a small group of external researchers that discuss the merits of multiple proposals at a time. Ad hoc refers to when proposals are sent to external researchers, individually, where the reviewers never get together to discuss the proposals.
The core review criteria for every NSF proposal include intellectual merit understood as the contributions the research will make to its scientific field and broader impact, understood as the larger difference the research will make outside of its direct scientific field.
In terms of the overarching life cycle of grant proposals, along with the timeline, the NSF offers this image:
If you are looking at applying or re-applying to the NSF and want to get a better sense of the agency, I encourage you to review the 2017 report. Also, NSF offers grants conferences that can give you a leg up on applying to the NSF. The next conference is November 18-19 in Boston.
Resources:
Report on the National Science Foundation's Merit Review Process 2017
NSF Grants Conference Website
Overall, the NSF shows in this report that they've maintained a funding rate of what is currently 23% overall. This varies by directorate with the Geosciences holding the highest rate at 32% and the Engineering Directorate holding the lowest at 19%.
Monthly salary funding for PIs has continued to decline, sitting at an average of .7 months funded for single PIs and .63 months for multiple PIs. To put this in perspective, a decade ago in 2007, the NSF funded on average 1.37 and 1.27 months for single and multiple PIs, respectively.
At the NSF, the vast amount of proposals are reviewed by external reviewers with the exception being EAGER, RAPID, and RAISE proposals that the Program Directors use their discretion in funding. Otherwise, in FY 2017, 68% of proposals were reviewed by a panel only, 24% were reviewed ad hoc and a panel, and 4% were reviewed ad hoc only. A panel refers to a gathering of a small group of external researchers that discuss the merits of multiple proposals at a time. Ad hoc refers to when proposals are sent to external researchers, individually, where the reviewers never get together to discuss the proposals.
The core review criteria for every NSF proposal include intellectual merit understood as the contributions the research will make to its scientific field and broader impact, understood as the larger difference the research will make outside of its direct scientific field.
In terms of the overarching life cycle of grant proposals, along with the timeline, the NSF offers this image:
If you are looking at applying or re-applying to the NSF and want to get a better sense of the agency, I encourage you to review the 2017 report. Also, NSF offers grants conferences that can give you a leg up on applying to the NSF. The next conference is November 18-19 in Boston.
Resources:
Report on the National Science Foundation's Merit Review Process 2017
NSF Grants Conference Website
Friday, June 14, 2019
Crafting an Argument in Your Grant Proposal
Making a case in your grant proposal sounds easier than it is. And that's because the research you want to do is not based on one simple argument. Your next project stems from a whole complex background of knowledge and research and there are likely many arguments you could make for your research and all are sound!
So, how do you decide? First thing's first, get to know the agency you're applying to. What are their goals and how does your research help them achieve those goals? Secondly, take a look at who the reviewers are. Are they other researchers, community members, or other types of stakeholders? In understanding the agency and the type of person reading your proposal, you will be able to choose and craft the best argument for your proposal.
Once you know what argument you're focusing on and who you're writing for, you're ready to structure your argument, and here's a recommendation for structure:
Problem with hook:
First, give them a sense of how terrible the problem is that you're addressing. Use statistics to show how dire the situation is.
Cutting edge research:
Give them some context. What research has been done to address this problem so far?
Gap:
Describe what holes remain in the research that keep us from solving the urgent problem you've described.
Critical need:
Explain why the gap you've identified is so important for you to address. Why is it so important?
Project description:
Explain your project and how it is going to address the gap and meet the critical need you've identified.
Vision:
End by reminding reviewers what is possible and/or the great impact your research in this project and future projects will have on the field and in addressing major challenges.
This formula for building your argument not only includes the most crucial points that drive it home, but also follow a logical progression that is easy for reviewers to follow and digest. In writing your grant proposal, you want to guide your reviewer through your argument. Don't leave them stranded or headed down the wrong path. Lead them to your end destination of being confident that your project should be funded!
Resources:
Grant Proposals (or Give me the money!) - UNC Chapel Hill
So, how do you decide? First thing's first, get to know the agency you're applying to. What are their goals and how does your research help them achieve those goals? Secondly, take a look at who the reviewers are. Are they other researchers, community members, or other types of stakeholders? In understanding the agency and the type of person reading your proposal, you will be able to choose and craft the best argument for your proposal.
Once you know what argument you're focusing on and who you're writing for, you're ready to structure your argument, and here's a recommendation for structure:
Problem with hook:
First, give them a sense of how terrible the problem is that you're addressing. Use statistics to show how dire the situation is.
Cutting edge research:
Give them some context. What research has been done to address this problem so far?
Gap:
Describe what holes remain in the research that keep us from solving the urgent problem you've described.
Critical need:
Explain why the gap you've identified is so important for you to address. Why is it so important?
Project description:
Explain your project and how it is going to address the gap and meet the critical need you've identified.
Vision:
End by reminding reviewers what is possible and/or the great impact your research in this project and future projects will have on the field and in addressing major challenges.
This formula for building your argument not only includes the most crucial points that drive it home, but also follow a logical progression that is easy for reviewers to follow and digest. In writing your grant proposal, you want to guide your reviewer through your argument. Don't leave them stranded or headed down the wrong path. Lead them to your end destination of being confident that your project should be funded!
Resources:
Grant Proposals (or Give me the money!) - UNC Chapel Hill
Thursday, June 6, 2019
Videos on NSF and P01/Center Grants
I'm happy to announce that we've now edited and uploaded all of our seminar videos from the Spring 2019 semester. See the last two seminars on the National Science Foundation and on Planning a P01 or Center Grant Proposal on our Vimeo site. Also, browse our other videos to see any you've missed!
National Science Foundation
Faculty Experts: Martin Dunn,
Dean, College of Engineering and Applied Science; Doris Kimbrough, Professor,
Chemistry
The National Science
Foundation (NSF) is the premier federal funding agency for the Sciences. Join
us for this seminar to learn about the NSF and their grants program. Seasoned
experts will discuss the mission and organization of the NSF, their overarching
grants criteria, their proposal structure, and tips for applying to the NSF.
How to plan for a P01 or Center Grant
Faculty Experts: Cathy
Bradley, Professor and Associate Dean of Research, Colorado School of Public
Health; John Hokanson, Professor, Colorado School of Public Health; Jennifer
Kemp, Director, Department of Medicine Research Office; Jon Samet, Dean,
Colorado School of Public Health
P01 and Center grants are
highly competitive and unique. It takes seasoned PIs, multiple great projects,
integration, collaboration, and sustainability. This seminar is targeted for
faculty interested in leading or being part of competitive P01 or center grant
applications. You will hear from faculty experts on the demands of the
P01/center grant proposal as well as from those who have successfully competed
for such a grant. The seminar will also focus on the institutional and
professional benefits of submitting P01 and center grants.
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Project Overviews and Specific Aims
This spring, we offered a seminar on Writing Your Project Overview and one on Writing Your Specific Aims with Chris Phiel, Associate Professor of Integrative Biology and Sonia Flores, Professor in the School of Medicine (respectively). We now have the videos from those seminars edited and up on our vimeo site. Please check them out!
Denver: Writing a
Project Overview
Faculty Expert: Chris Phiel,
Associate Professor, Integrative Biology
Description:
Reviewers tend to make up
their minds as to whether they like or don’t like a grant proposal upon reading
the first page. This makes your project overview, whether it be Specific Aims
or a Project Summary, essential in terms of hooking your reviewer and getting
them excited about your work. Join us for this seminar where you will learn how
to craft your project overview to be clear and compelling.
Video: https://vimeo.com/338961503
AMC: Writing Your Specific Aims
Faculty Expert: Sonia Flores,
Professor, School of Medicine
Description:
The Specific Aims is the most
crucial component of your NIH grant proposal. It is the first thing the
reviewers assigned to your proposal look at, and for those reviewers not
assigned to your proposal, it is often the only thing they see of your proposal
before scoring it. In this seminar, you will learn how to craft your Specific
Aims and you will hear from a seasoned PI on their experience with Specific
Aims from a PI and Reviewer perspective.
Video: https://vimeo.com/338929668
Thursday, May 16, 2019
Saving space in your proposal
Life is a trade-off. If you're like me, you spend the first part of your schooling thinking how am I going to fill five pages, 10, 20, 30? And once you're writing grant proposals, you ask, how am I supposed to keep this proposal to 15 pages? Well, there are plenty of bad ways to save space in your proposal, like moving the margins or shrinking the type-face. But below I offer you some good space-saving strategies:
Use active, first-person voice:
Scholars and researchers are often trained to use the passive, third-person in their academic writing.
Here's the difference:
Passive, third-person: The experiment will be conducted by the researcher.
Active, first-person: I will do the experiment.
Why do academics want to use the passive, third person? A couple of reasons: first, it alludes to the objectivity of the research and removes the researcher from the written proposal. Second, it sounds more formal, more appropriate for the expert reviewers. But, I argue that the benefits of the active, first-person outweigh those of the former. First off, it's shorter. I cheated a little bit in my example and changed the verb, but either way, it's going to end up shorter. And when you make these changes to all of your sentences, you'll save a lot of space! Second, active, first-person is easier to read. Any good technical writer worth her word processor will tell you that!
Remove hyperbole:
I recently reviewed a grant proposal where the PI described something as "very, very important." Now, I get that it's hard in a grant proposal to really make things stand out, but this is not the way! Firstly, my loyal blog readers have heard me say this before, but I once had a Technical Writing Professor who said that there is never a good reason to use the word "very," and she had long since banned it from her writing. Her point was that it didn't add anything to the sentence. If something is important, say "it's important." Adding "very," let alone, two of them doesn't articulate anything significantly different. Now, I'll take this a step further even and suggest that not only should our PI cut out the "verys," but I would ask, is there a way you can show that this is important instead of just saying it? Is there a way to structure the description to make it clear to the reader that this is important, so that you don't have to tell them? Now, I've made this argument and lost several times before and I acquiesce that sometimes using this hyperbole cues the reader to pay close attention. So, if you must, say something is important or great or incredible, but please don't say it's very, very incredible.
Cut sentences that don't have a clear purpose:
When you're running out of space in your grant proposal, you need to be brutal. This means going through the proposal line by line, and cutting sentences or phrases that aren't really making a difference. They may be eloquent, they may be poetic, but if they're not doing the work of making your case to reviewers, they have to go!
Phone a friend:
So, after you've changed everything to active, first-person, cut out hyperbole, and brutally curtailed your proposal and you still can't find enough room for your amazing diagram (that you're keeping at a size that reviewers can see), it's time to call for reinforcements. You need to find a colleague to go through and tell you what's still in your proposal that isn't necessary and where you can condense.
These tips can help you cull a mostly-written proposal, but another thing to do is create a well-organized plan of attack before you start writing your grant proposal. If you can outline and identify what you want to do in each section first, it'll help you stay out of the weeds in your first draft. That way there will be less you need to cut later on!
Resources:
Top three things to cut from your writing - Kyra Thomsen
Use active, first-person voice:
Scholars and researchers are often trained to use the passive, third-person in their academic writing.
Here's the difference:
Passive, third-person: The experiment will be conducted by the researcher.
Active, first-person: I will do the experiment.
Why do academics want to use the passive, third person? A couple of reasons: first, it alludes to the objectivity of the research and removes the researcher from the written proposal. Second, it sounds more formal, more appropriate for the expert reviewers. But, I argue that the benefits of the active, first-person outweigh those of the former. First off, it's shorter. I cheated a little bit in my example and changed the verb, but either way, it's going to end up shorter. And when you make these changes to all of your sentences, you'll save a lot of space! Second, active, first-person is easier to read. Any good technical writer worth her word processor will tell you that!
Remove hyperbole:
I recently reviewed a grant proposal where the PI described something as "very, very important." Now, I get that it's hard in a grant proposal to really make things stand out, but this is not the way! Firstly, my loyal blog readers have heard me say this before, but I once had a Technical Writing Professor who said that there is never a good reason to use the word "very," and she had long since banned it from her writing. Her point was that it didn't add anything to the sentence. If something is important, say "it's important." Adding "very," let alone, two of them doesn't articulate anything significantly different. Now, I'll take this a step further even and suggest that not only should our PI cut out the "verys," but I would ask, is there a way you can show that this is important instead of just saying it? Is there a way to structure the description to make it clear to the reader that this is important, so that you don't have to tell them? Now, I've made this argument and lost several times before and I acquiesce that sometimes using this hyperbole cues the reader to pay close attention. So, if you must, say something is important or great or incredible, but please don't say it's very, very incredible.
Cut sentences that don't have a clear purpose:
When you're running out of space in your grant proposal, you need to be brutal. This means going through the proposal line by line, and cutting sentences or phrases that aren't really making a difference. They may be eloquent, they may be poetic, but if they're not doing the work of making your case to reviewers, they have to go!
Phone a friend:
So, after you've changed everything to active, first-person, cut out hyperbole, and brutally curtailed your proposal and you still can't find enough room for your amazing diagram (that you're keeping at a size that reviewers can see), it's time to call for reinforcements. You need to find a colleague to go through and tell you what's still in your proposal that isn't necessary and where you can condense.
These tips can help you cull a mostly-written proposal, but another thing to do is create a well-organized plan of attack before you start writing your grant proposal. If you can outline and identify what you want to do in each section first, it'll help you stay out of the weeds in your first draft. That way there will be less you need to cut later on!
Resources:
Top three things to cut from your writing - Kyra Thomsen
Wednesday, May 8, 2019
PO1 and Center Grants
Last week, we held a panel on putting together PO1 and Center grants, or Large Team Grants (LTGs). Panelists included researchers who had successfully competed for LTGs and those who had facilitated putting those grant proposals together. Panelists agreed that putting an LTG together takes about 3-5 years and endeavors like these must be led by senior investigators with a substantial record of past funding. Some participants asked why it was worth the work that LTGs require when getting funded with an R01 is much easier for established investigators. Dr. John Hokanson, Professor in the Colorado School of Public Health, explained that LTGs allow you to do more innovative and collaborative science than you can do as an independent investigator. His enthusiasm was apparent as he described the cutting-edge research he'd been able to lead through developing LTG projects and proposals.
Furthermore, we're seeing funding agencies and the science community at large call for proposals that engage big questions that often call for multiple PIs from various fields coming together to offer substantial solutions and steps forward. LTGs are exciting and next level, but they are a lot of work and a lot of planning. Below are tips the panelists offered in working toward an LTG.
PO1 Guide for Reviewers - NIH
Furthermore, we're seeing funding agencies and the science community at large call for proposals that engage big questions that often call for multiple PIs from various fields coming together to offer substantial solutions and steps forward. LTGs are exciting and next level, but they are a lot of work and a lot of planning. Below are tips the panelists offered in working toward an LTG.
- Give yourself time: As mentioned, panelists agreed that it takes 3-5 years to build your team, develop your projects, and put together your grant proposal.
- Contact your Program Officer early and often to discuss your ideas and begin to build their understanding and buy-in for your LTG.
- Focus on integration: It's not enough to just have a series of great projects, you need to show how the sum of the whole is greater than its parts.
- Develop your story: You need to become a story-teller to convey the necessity and excitement of your program.
- Establish clear communication upfront: As you develop your team, make sure you're all clear on expectations and commitments so the wheels don't come off as you build momentum.
- Offer a diagram: When you're at the point of proposal writing, show your reviewers visually how all the parts of your program/center work together.
- Consider submitting R01s at the same time: If you're submitting a P01, you can also submit individual projects to the NIH as R01s at the same time. This way if your P01 is not funded, but some R01s are, your project can get going and you can look to revise the P01 for the next cycle building on what's been done with the R01s.
- Work with people who have had LTGs. Even for the most seasoned investigator, an LTG is a challenge. Be sure to reach out to those PIs who have developed an LTG successfully to get their insight, tips, and mentorship.
LTGs can sometimes seem insurmountable, but the opportunities that lie in large team science are worth the work and there is potential in receiving funding for your large endeavor for 10+ years. Think of the possibilities within that time!
Resources:
PO1 Guide for Reviewers - NIH
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