Grant Mechanisms Research Projects

1. Grant MechanismsResearch Projects

2. Grant MechanismsFellowship & Research Career Programs

3. Review of your proposal • There are hundreds of study sections • 60-100 grant / study section • Study section rosters (about 20 people) can be found at: http://www.csr.nih.gov/Roster_proto/sectionI.asp • Each grant has about 3 reviewers • All study section members score the grant 100-500 • Choose a study section that has goals consistent with your proposal http://www.csr.nih.gov/Roster_proto/sectionI.asp http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/award/award.htm • You can lose on the abstract and first page

4. Grant Writing What makes a good grant proposal? What makes a great grant proposal? Good idea Good science Good application

5. A good proposal • Well performed study • Appropriate and up-to date technology • Carefully analyzed data that is accurately reported • Ethical considerations dealt with appropriately Is this enough?

6. Benchmarks of an “Outstanding” Application • New or original ideas • Focused, incisive research plan • Knowledge of published relevant work • Experience in essential methodology • Future directions and contingency plans

7. More Benchmarks of an outstanding proposal • Published in respected journals • Recognized and cited by peers • Presented at high-quality meetings • Fundable on competitive grant review

8. What makes an outstanding proposal? • Asks important questions • Has potential to yield “seminal” observations

9. Does the project have the potential to yield a “seminal” observation? • Create truly new knowledge? • Lead to new ways of thinking? • Lay the foundation for further research in the field?

10. Writing a Grant Proposal • Good idea • Good science • Good application

11. Pursue original science • Pursue original science • Consider your perspective: • Novel vs. derivative • Hypothesis-driven vs. “fishing expedition” • Mechanistic vs. descriptive

12. Picking a Research Project • Ten steps to picking a Research Project C. Ronald Kahn New England Journal of Medicine. 1994

13. Steps to picking a Research Project • Anticipate Results you might obtain Is the most successful outcome interesting? What would be the next step if you are successful? Are you prepared to follow up?

14. Steps to picking a Research Project • Is the area of interest to a large fraction of the scientific community? • If only of interest to a limited number of people in the field, results may be difficult to publish and hard to fund

15. Steps to picking a Research Project • Is the field overpopulated? • Look for an under-occupied niche that has potential

16. Steps to picking a Research Project • The best ideas come from listening to talks and reading papers outside your area of interest. • Talks and papers outside your area of interest may point you in truly new directions and allow you to anticipate the evolution of the field.

17. Steps to picking a Research Project • Find a balance between low-risk and high-risk projects • Include a high-interest project because this will be an opportunity to make a truly seminal observation

18. Steps to picking a Research Project • Be prepared to pursue the work to the next important level. • To be recognized for important research accomplishments may require a willingness to pursue a project to any depth necessary

19. Steps to picking a Research Project • Differentiate yourself from your mentor • This is especially true of you stay at the same institution. • Independence is an important criteria for promotion and tenure • You need to be more expert than your mentor in some area even if you choose to collaborate.

20. However, collaboration can be a good strategy especially if you are not technically prepared to carry out a particular aspect of the project • List an expert in this area as a collaborator on your grant. • Once you have established some expertise in an area, you can become more independent. Picking a Research Problem

21. Steps to picking a Research Project • Focus rather than trying to make an impact in three or four different areas at once. • At first focus on one or at most two projects and define very limited goals.

22. Writing a Grant Proposal • Good idea • Good science • Good application

23. Good Science • Logical and organized Research Plan • Rationale for the Methods chosen • Include Experimental Pitfalls • Include Alternative Approaches • Sufficient Experimental Detail

24. GoodScience • Use appropriate controls • Avoid “shotgun” approaches and “fishing expeditions” • Do not assume reviewers with know what you mean: SPELL IT OUT

25. Good ScienceThe Hypothesis • A meaningful hypothesis and a means to test it • Rationale for the hypothesis • A set of related aims • Aims that are focused and not diffuse

26. Formulate Sound Hypotheses What’s the hypothesis here?

27. Writing a Grant Proposal • Good idea • Good science • Good application

28. Good Application • Read and Follow all instructions • Make sure your Institute offers the type of grant you plan to prepare. For instance, not all Institutes offer R21 grants • Use clear and grammatically correct English • Write short, clear sentences. Minimize the use of overly technical jargon • Avoid Reviewer fatigue

29. Selling Your Ideas • It’s your responsibility to make it effortless for the reviewers to understand… Your ideas Why they are important Why your approach is reasonable and feasible • Present an organized, lucid write-up! • Write for the skeptic: how would you convince your harshest critic? • Do not write the application for the “specialist:” assume the reviewers won’t know your system as well as you do

30. Keep your focus on your big picture • Focus: do not let your ideas wander from your main theme • Show how this project fits into your “big picture” research objectives, describe future directions

31. Presentation & Formatting • Prepare a reviewer-friendly application! • Organize with headings & subheadings, but avoid too many levels • Include well-designed tables and figures with appropriate legends • Stay within the page limitations • Use a readable typeface and font size (Ariel 11pt) • Minimize grammatical & typographical errors

32. Components of a Grant Application • Abstract • Specific Aims • Background and Significance • Preliminary Results • Research design

33. Keys for a Successful Grant ApplicationAbstract • Pretend reviewer has only this page to read • Abstract should be a mini outline for the proposal.

34. Keys for a Successful Grant ApplicationAbstract • Include a general statement of the problem being addressed including gaps in our knowledge • Include your hypothesis and why your experiments will fill the gaps in our knowledge (and why this is important) • Include an outline of the specific aims and methods to be used, expected outcomes and the long-range significance.

35. Keys for a Successful Grant ApplicationAbstract

36. Specific Aims • The Specific Aims are the first part of the proposal that the reviewer reads. Include a short description of problem and background summary (one paragraph) • The Specific Aims should address an hypothesis and the hypothesis should be clearly stated • They should be bulleted and clearly and succinctly outline the proposed research.

37. Important TipSpecfic Aims • The specific aims should be interrelated but should not depend on the success of one aim to perform the others. • Example: • Aim 1 proposes to identify and clone the cellular receptor that restricts HXV infection to humans. In Aim 2, there are plans to construct transgenic mice expressing the receptor to develop an animal model for HXV to study pathogenesis. • What if there is more than one receptor? Or you are not successful in identifying putative receptors? Or infection is also blocked at a stage past entry?

38. Keys for a Successful Grant ApplicationSpecific Aims • Identify hole in our knowledge • Explain why this hole is important • State your hypothesis and long term goals • Identify a series of logical steps to test your hypothesis

39. Keys for a Successful Grant ApplicationSpecific Aims • List the aims as a bulleted list with a brief description of the approaches to be used after each aim • Be specific. Avoid generalities. • Avoid saying you will characterize or describe a phenomenon or determine the relationship between two processes

40. Keys for a Successful Grant ApplicationSpecific Aims • Think about “aim” as a verb. • Your aims should suggest a particular outcome rather than being descriptive. • Do not merely “characterize” or “describe” something! It’s boring and it doesn’t convey the importance or excitement of what you hope to accomplish

41. Keys for a Successful Grant ApplicationSpecific Aims • A specific aim that collects data with out describing the rationale for the hypothesis sounds like a fishing expedition. • Each aim should include a hypothesis if possible.

42. Keys for a Successful Grant ApplicationSpecific Aims • Is the scope of the problem achievable? • Avoid proposing 10 years of work in a 3 or 4 year proposal

43. Keys for a Successful Grant ApplicationSpecific Aims • Combine low risk aims with one or two that are innovative and original • An innovative aim will include novel concepts or approaches • An innovative aim should advance the field • The specific aims should be interrelated but one aim should not depend on the success of another

44. Brief summary of background Long term goal Hypothesis Rationale Specific Aims

45. Keys for a Successful Grant ApplicationBackround and Significance Rationale Rationale Rationale

46. Keys for a Successful Grant ApplicationBackround and Significance • Set the stage • Show how existing work lays the ground work but does not go far enough • Bring together ideas and results (yours and others) • Identify gaps that your proposal will fill • Lay out still unanswered questions you will answer

47. Keys for a Successful Grant ApplicationBackround and Significance • Compare and contrast work of others. Evaluate and critique it, but do so respectfully • Cite literature judiciously. You can’t cite every finding, but try to be fair.

48. One more Tip… • After describing the background that relates to a particular aim, end that section with: • This problem will be addressed in Aim _. Remind the reviewer that you are going to save the day and solve that problem in this grant by filling in that particular gap in our knowledge

49. Keys for a Successful Grant ApplicationPreliminary Results In God we Trust All others must bring Data

50. Keys for a Successful Grant ApplicationPreliminary Results • Demonstrate expertise in the techniques you are going to use. • Show your hypotheses are supported by your initial studies • Include only pertinent data • Advance your data clearly and professionally (don’t be sloppy) • Include well-designed tables and figures