1. CRC Grant writing basics
060618

2. 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

3. 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?

4. 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.

5. 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
Read what you are writing aloud. Does it make sense?
Use colleagues to read drafts
“Write and read something everyday”

6. 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

7. 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)

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

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

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

13. 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

14. Resources We have this book (in print and in pdf files)

15. More resources from Dr. Chamala
 - for grammar, spell check, plagiarism, etc. This is free but with limited features. There is a paid version with full version.
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.

16. UF CTSI resources

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