Category: Grant Writing

I had the opportunity to attend a talk on the keys to write a F grant at the Translational Science 2014 meeting in DC. I’m transcribing my notes here to put them in a place that will be more lasting for me. i.e. instead of the folder with all the other meeting notes that’s going to get buried under other papers.

The talk was by PJ. Simpson-Haidaris, Ph.D &  Stephen C. Ekker, Ph.D.  Dr. Simpson-Haidaris kindly uploaded the slide deck to slide share (link to slide deck on slideshare). Dr. Simpson-Haidaris is an expert on this subject and has has served on over 80+ grant review panels (qualifications on slide 4 of her deck).

My notes:

• F grants require exceptional mentoring teams
• If you don’t have a research and career development plan (IDP) you should work on getting one together. Templates vary between universities in terms of usefulness. Dr. Simpson-Haidaris recommends the Vanderbilt template (link) .
• Dr. Ekker stated that a retrospective study of failed applications showed that half of them failed because they didn’t follow the rules.
• Now can use 200 character title in unicode for longer more descriptive project titles. You may get dinged if your title comes through the system truncated or with misinformed characters.
• Use the SF424 as a checklist.
• Dr. Simpson-Haidaris finds biosketches most important. Makes sure they are correct and up to date for allowed participants. Make sure biosketches includes PMCID#s.
• A F award must go above and beyond the PhD and post doc training the applicant would otherwise participate in or receive.
• There was some disagreement between Drs. Ekker & Simpson-Haidaris on the definition of “key personal” vs. “senior personal”. Dr. Ekker asserted it is a administrative term and only those that will be administrating the grant should be named. He used the criteria of if this person gets hit by a bus will this grant need to end. He pointed out this definition is for protection you if your PI leaves your institution or has medical issues you don’t lose your funding too. He stated that all others are “senior” rather than “key” personal. Dr. Simpson-Haidaris took the view of these peoples roles on the project in the scientific sense. Still not sure what right answer is here.
• Typical grant consists of sponsor + co-sponsor + 2 more mentors specific to the project.
• Check eRA commons account before applying. Status needs to be PI instead of trainee before submission.
• Can go down to 8 pt font size for figures.
• Explain any gaps in productivity.
• Make sure to include PMCID#s in all work cited if they exist. Failure to do this can cause the grant to be thrown out.

Here are some notes I took down Friday April 17, 2015 from Robert J. Freishtat talk on how to write an RO1 at Translational Science 2015 in DC. The it was a good talk that lasted 1.5 hours.

• Average Age for R01 is 42 years old for those with PhD 45, for those with MD-PhD.
• Subscribe to the NIH Guide List Serve. Comes out every Friday and tells about new funding opportunities. (My Note: You can also follow @NIHFunding on twitter)
• Know what PAS, PAR, RFA mean and how they are different.
  • PAS – Program Announcement with set aside funding.
  • PAR – Program with dedicated review committee
• Read the program announcement 5 times.
  • NIH may change instructions without notice so check close to submission to make sure nothing has changed
• Collaborators & Co-Investigators are more important for new investigator
• Check eRA commons to make sure you have “new investigator” at the bottom of your login if you in fact are one. Work with your university to adjust if incorrect.
• Early Investigator is 10 year from terminal degree.
• When applying with Multi-PI R01 oldest investigator trumps new investigator title. Be careful if you are looking to use the new investigator mechanism.
• Support Structure & Resources as consultants on teams with “street cred.” speaks volumes
• For 1st R01, due to lack of record, potential is important. Want to see learning and improving

Reach out to program officer early in process. They can and often want to help you.

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Components of a “Good Grant”:

1. Sections

• Brief introduction
• Background to establish solid foundation
• The goal of the app.
• The central hypothesis
• Rationale for project
• Specific Aims
• Anticipated Results

2. General ideas

• Don’t let the reviewers think. If one sentence leads the reader to think of something the next sentence must answer that.
• Make it easy to fill in the review document.  R01 Review Template 2015.04.22
• Make the team strong. What about the team makes it better than one with an identical application on the same topic.
• You only need one area to drive the impact score.
• Convince the reviewer (hopefully 1st reviewer) to be champion of grant
• know what NIH funds. Use projectreporter.nih.gov
• Get assigned to multiple institutes
• Use a cover letter and specify desired institute and study section there.
• Capture imagination in 1st page
• 2/3 – 1 pg about significance. (Can do bullets here)
• Cite articles of reviewers expected to be on study section if possible.
• Every sentence counts.
• Approach structured like aims.
• Sell yourself & the team in the 1st paragraph of the approach section.
• Any point you want to reviewer to remember needs to be repeated 3 times in the grant. It’s a rule from marketing.
• Preliminary studies don’t have be “studies”
• Talk about data collection: instruments and assays
• Do a sample size/power calculation (common place for criticism)
• Close with timeline at end.
• Talk about limitations
• Turn off the thesaurus and reuse words.
• Keep the scope small… Junior investigators especially tend to over shoot.
• Last paragraph like a manuscript abstract. Think of it like a book. The parts of a book that get read with the most attention are first and last pages.

It’s clear to me this was a very informative talk so I spent the few minutes to transcribe my notes to some place more durable i.e. here.