CRC Grant writing basics 060618

Grant writing is a skill Successful grant writing requires training and practice You have to convince reviewers, and ultimately granting agencies, at whatever level, to give you money to test your idea

Grant writing is a skill Format differs between funding agencies, but principles are the same Why should we care? What is the knowledge gap? Do you have a good idea on how to address it? Do you have a good research strategy to implement this idea? Do you have the expertise and the resources to perform the experiments?

Why should we care. This is critical Why should we care? This is critical. Nobody will give you money to work on something with low to no significance Do you have a good idea? This is where your knowledge and expertise should show. NIH Scientific premise Do you have a good research strategy? This can be improved and fixed if necessary. NIH Rigor and reproducibility Do you have the expertise and the resources? This should be the easiest. Look for collaborations.

Scientific writing Clear precise writing Know who you are writing for: CRC reviewers from all divisions of Pathology no jargon, define acronyms and abbreviations Cite references to support your argument https://access.clarivate.com/#/login?app=endnote Read what you are writing aloud. Does it make sense? Use colleagues to read drafts “Write and read something everyday”

Pay attention to details You want reviewers on your side by giving them an application that is easy to read Typos, format, etc… Nothing is missing

Abstract Comes first in the proposal, but should be written last In ½ page, you should cover all aspects of the proposal Significance Novelty What type of experiments you are going to do It should be exciting and make the reviewers want to know more It should match the proposal (copy sentences from it is OK)

Core Hypothesis (or Question) and Specific Aims In 1 page max, give a brief description of the knowledge gap Its significance Your hypothesis or question should be clearly stated What testing this hypothesis or answering this question would mean to the field Specific Aim(s): what you want to accomplish and how. A title and few (1-3) sentences for each

Background, significance, novelty 1-2 pages Should be convincing and informative. Use references and your knowledge of the field Background: the current status of the field Significance: why should we care Novelty: has it been done before? Novelty is not required for CRC, but you still want to address / justify, e.g. to confirm something

Preliminary results Not necessary for CRC application If you have something that is relevant, show it in a clear and brief manner Figure, table. Try to format it to look nice

Experimental plan Rationale Methods of Procedure Experimental Design Interpretation of Results Statistics Potential Problems and Alternative Methods

controls There is no scientific process without appropriate controls The question is what are the appropriate controls

statistics If you have quantitative data, you need stats Understand the concept of statistical power: is the sample size that you propose to use sufficient to be informative? If your sample size is limited, explain why and acknowledge the limitations. It is OK for CRC grants, and it is always better than ignoring the problem

Resources We have this book (in print and in pdf files) https://grants.nih.gov/grants/how-to-apply-application-guide/format-and-write/write-your-application.htm

More resources from Dr. Chamala https://www.grammarly.com   - for grammar, spell check, plagiarism, etc. This is free but with limited features. There is a paid version with full version. https://www.mendeley.com - this is the tool for citation manager that so far I found the best. It is free and everything is stored on the cloud with desktop application for access. This supports lot of journal citation format and has a plugin for MS word.   Usually what I do is go to scholar.google.com and search for required journal articles and  export the citation in *.ris format (refman) to local desktop and then import into Mendeley with its import functionality. Another cool thing about Mendeley is that it also allows to collaborate using its Group functionality.

UF CTSI resources

Pathology resources Discuss needs and plan workshop / discussion / mock study sections accordingly Endnote? Model of EPIG program for Pathology postdocs Suggestions are welcome