Successful NIH Grant Applications (with a hint or two for DoD) Stephen B. Pruett, Ph.D. Department Head, Department of Basic Sciences College of Veterinary Medicine

Be a Reviewer The best way to learn to write an outstanding grant application is to serve as a grant reviewer. NIH has a program to give junior faculty members experience reviewing grants: ecomeAReviewer/ECR/Pages/default.aspx Please take a look and do this ASAP. ecomeAReviewer/ECR/Pages/default.aspx

NIH Scoring Sheet Template

NIH Scoring Sheet Template Continued ADDITIONAL REVIEW CRITERIA As applicable for the project proposed, reviewers will consider the following additional items in the determination of scientific and technical merit, but will not give separate scores for these items. Responses for Protections for Human Subjects, Vertebrate Animals, and Biohazards are required for all applications. A response for Inclusion of Women, Minorities and Children is required for applications proposing Human Subjects Research.

Relative importance of review criteria Although each reviewer may decide on the relative importance of each criterion, NIH has been consistently emphasizing “Overall Impact” and “Significance”. “Investigator” has become more important recently, and not only are publications critical, but publications in high impact journals are getting more attention.

Buzzwords for NIH Incremental research is bad; transformational research is good Hypothesis driven, mechanism-based Translational (or at least translational implications)

Keys for Success Know your reviewers-both professionally and personally (NIH lists review group members, so take the trouble to present at the meetings at which they present and to get to know them personally). There is a slight “Mississippi Bias”: your application must be better than everyone else’s. There can be no grammatical errors, unreadable figures, or anything else that will make your application “suspect”. The “Mississippi Bias” is not huge or insurmountable. An MSU faculty member recently received a PERFECT score (1 percentile) on an R01 application!!!! However, this score was received on the 3 rd submission and after the P.I. had published 14 papers the year before the application.

People You Need to Know for Success with NIH Program Officer. This person is identified in your grant review. This is the scientist who helps determine NIH priorities for research. I received 2 R01 grants that I would not have otherwise received had not the Program Officers pleaded my case. They did so because I went to visit them. Call your Program officer early and often. Offer to help them by modifying your application to best meet their program priorities! Your Scientific Review Administrator is also identified in your review report. This is the person who decides who will review your application. Get to know this person. Try to help this person. Explain the type of reviewer your application needs.

DoD Personal relationships are key. There are some programs that are really easy to obtain funding from: heet.asp?id=9380 Air Force Summer Faculty Research Program. Requires travel, and a summer away from home and provides the potential for long-term DoD funding for biological scientists. In general, relationships are critical and once you have satisfied DoD that you will produce, you can have funding for more extended periods of time.