Biophysical Society Newsletter - July 2015

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BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER

2015

JULY

Top Ten Tips for Grant Writing 1. Months, not weeks. Give yourself time to prepare your best grant application. 2. Align your proposal with the mission of the funding agency. 3. Identify and consult with the appropriate program officers. 4. Familiarize yourself with criteria used to assess proposals. Study examples of suc- cessful proposals. 5. Devise specific aims that can be expressed as testable hypotheses (in most cases). 6. Keep specific aims sufficiently independent but still interrelated. 7. Make text easy to read. Use simple, persuasive writing with minimal jargon. 8. Use graphics to your advantage. 9. Have your proposal reviewed internally in your institution before you submit. 10. Resubmit if necessary. Can you apply for an NSF grant if you are at a medical institution? Yes. NSF funds projects, not institutions. Pay at- tention to the mission of the agency. You cannot just take an NIH-focused proposal and send it to NSF instead. Q&A

As research faculty in between postdoc and PI, what are my grant opportunities? You can apply for anything, but you are at a disad- vantage for R01 grants because you are competing with people who are already well-established. How are R15 grants (for states or institutions with low NIH funding levels) reviewed, relative to R01s? R15 grants may be easier to get if you are eligible. They have a lower budget cap and are three year grants, but are renewable. A New Investigator is someone who has never been successful with an R01 grant application in the past. An Early Stage Investigator is New and is no more than 10 years from the terminal degree (PhD or MD). You can only qualify as an Early Stage Investigator for one successful grant applica- tion. NIH is encouraging ESI applications to close the age gap between postdoc and first successful R01 grant. Is resubmitting after triage a waste of time? Decisions about resubmitting can be tricky. If you are planning to resubmit, talk to your program officer about how to improve the application. It is only recommended that you resubmit if there was enthusiasm for the idea but your application was rejected based on a lack of preliminary data, for example. What is the difference between “Early Stage Investigator” and “New Investigator?”