Research Funding
IDENTIFYING FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
NIH
Funding Opportunities and Notices: This page is a gateway to many
useful pages for research funding. It includes a funding search engine and links
for postings of
announcements and notices, organized by types of announcements, or chronologically
by release date. New announcements are posted once a week. Links for instructions
and application forms can also be found here.
NIH
ListServer: Sign up for weekly
e-mail postings of new releases of notices, Requests For Applications (RFAs),
and Program Announcements (PAs).
NIH R01 Examples: The
National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases has provided PDFs of
full R01s that serve as examples proposals in the shortened 12 page format.
Click here to download one or all of the proposals: R01-1, R01-2, R01-3, and
R01-4.
NIH
RePORTER (database for currently funded grants): You can search
for currently funded NIH grants by subject area, key words, or principle
investigator, etc. This database contains abstracts of all funded grants.
This is very useful for finding out the types of proposals that have been
successful in your area of research, and might give you an idea whether
the idea you have is already saturated.
Funding
Priorities of Individual Institutes at the NIH: This page links
to all of the individual institutes at the NIH. Each institute has its own
set of priorities for the types of ongoing research it funds. Familiarize yourself
with research goals of the different institutes. The most typical NIH grant
is an "investigator-initiated" R01 application. These applications
must be related to the stated program interests of one or more of the NIH Institutes
and Centers. Investigator-initiated proposals opportunities are separate
from RFAs and other calls for very specific types of research. Each institute
maintains its own web pages, detailing the types of on-going research it funds,
as well as open RFAs and PAs. When you have found an institute that matches
your research interests, you should contact the program officer to confirm
their interest and/or to obtain advice about how to mold your proposal to better
suit the institute's research priorities.
Proposals are submitted at
standard deadlines (check each institute for details, as some institutes do
not use all the deadlines).
Definitions
and Requirements of Types of NIH Funding Programs: NIH has a wide
range of programs or mechanisms used to fund research and training.
NIH uses acronyms, such as R01, R21, PO1, T32, etc., which designate the different
types of funding. The standard NIH grant is an R01, but NIH also funds short
term exploratory programs, large multi-PI program project grants, equipment
acquisition, etc. Each "mechanism" has different grant requirements, policies,
and eligibility rules. This site will help you sort out these differences.
Standard
Due Dates: This
provides a list of standard due dates for grant programs in all standard series
of grants.
National Science
Foundation (NSF)
NSF
Funding Home: This site includes a search engine for
funding opportunities, links to program areas that NSF funds,
lists of recently
released funding announcements, and links for special
funding programs for students, postdoctoral fellows, K-12 teachers,
small businesses, etc. It also has links for instructions, forms,
etc. See the writing tips section below for more detail.
NSF
Active Funding Opportunities (and email-subscriptions): This page
has links at the top so that you can sign up for weekly email
notifications of releases of opportunities
and/or upcoming deadlines. It also
has a sortable list of active funding opportunities.
NSF
Award Search (database for currently funded grants): You can search
for research grants that are currently funded by NSF here. Again, such information
is helpful for knowing more detail about the types of programs NSF is supporting,
or whether the idea you have is already significantly covered.
Grants.gov
E-mail
postings of all federal funding opportunities: Subscribe
here for email postings of all federal funding opportunities.
You can receive all new announcements or filter them by agency, funding types,
or subject area.
Find
Grant Opportunities: Grants.gov's
search engine for all federal funding opportunities.
California Institute for Regenerative
Medicine (CIRM)
CIRM's
current requests for applications (RFAs) : This page provides a
list open requests for applications. Links for downloading application forms
are found on the page of each RFA. CIRM also produces a provisional schedule
for the release of future
RFAs.
Private
Foundations, International Agencies, and other Funders
Community
of Science (COS) Funder Database: COS provides
a comprehensive funding database for private foundations and federal, state,
and international funding organizations. It is the most useful database for
finding private funding opportunities, but also excellent for finding
programs that support foreign postdocs, sabbaticals to
other countries, etc. It will also list federal and state opportunities. You
can do searches by keywords, type of applicant, deadlines, agency, etc., or
do a simple click to get alphabetical lists of funders or opportunities with
upcoming deadlines. You have to be a member to use this site and cannot access
it directly through a private server without paying to join. However, if you
open your browser using a University server, you can access the COS database.
COS
E-mail Funding Alert: COS also
offers email postings of new or upcoming funding opportunities
GRANT
WRITING INSTRUCTIONS AND TIPS
Grants.Gov
Grants.gov
Home Page: Most federal agencies now require electronic submission
of grants through the Grants.gov system. You can get information here about
how to register, etc. Click here for a set of Grants.gov
instructions.
Typically, the University's Office of Sponsored Projects handles input of these
applications. Contact your OSP officer or, if you are student or postdoc, ask
your PI about this.
NIH-Specific
NIH
Funding Strategies Website: NIAID has created a grantsmanship tutorial
called the Strategy for NIH Funding. Topics include Qualifying for NIH Funding,
Picking and Designing a Project, Writig Your Application, Submitting Your
Application, Assignment and Review, If Not Funded, Funding and Staying Funded.
NIH
Application Forms and Instructions:
NIH typically utilizes the Standard Form 424 and submissions are almost always
electronic via Grants.gov. NIH requires applicants (including postdoctoral
participants) to acquire
an eRA Commons ID to submit electronically. Please read and follow these
instructions.
National
Institutes of Health Grant Application Writer's Workbook: This
is a very comprehensive and practical guide to grant writing. It specifically
addresses 2010 changes to NIH's application formats and review criteria. It
is expensive ($75), but it is full of solid practical advice, and addresses
very specific points regarding NIH applications, its review criteria, etc. While
the advice is broadly applicable to all grant writing, the publication
group (Grant Writers' Seminars and Workshops, LLC) also produces similar NSF-specific
and general grant writing workbooks.
NIH
Grant Writing Tutorials: This web page has a series of links for
grant writing tutorials, tips, etc. The site was updated on February
11, 2010. I prefer the workbook found at link above, but the NIH site tutorials
are free.
NIH
Reviewer Guidelines: The information on this page provides insight
into how NIH instructs the reviewers of your proposals. It includes
PDF downloads for multiple topics, such as "Review
Criteria at a Glance," "Overall
Impact versus Significance," and "Scoring System and Procedure."
Mock
NIH Study Section Video: :
Stream or download a video entitled "Inside the NIH Grants Review Process." You
can also down-load a PDF document concerning what takes place during a review
(PDF).
What
NIH Looks For? NIH's
Grant Application Basics page has a quick summary of what NIH is
looking for in research proposals.
New
and Early Stage Investigator Policies: Information and advice regarding
special policies involving new investigators (e.g., new assistant professors
and those with limited previous funding).
NSF-Specific
NSF
Grant Proposal Guide (general instructions): This page has html
and PDF links to the NSF instructions for all proposals. In my experience, NSF
doesn't offer much in the way of practical advice. Carnegie Mellon University
produces a quick 8 page summary
of advice for NSF proposals.
National
Science Foundation Grant Application Writer's Workbook: Produced
by the same group as the NIH workbook above, this publication addresses NSF
requirements, formatting, and nuances (2010). However, both books offer solid
advice for any kind of grant proposal. The Grant Writers' Seminars and Workshops,
LLC, also produce general grant writing workbooks.
NSF
Merit Review: Description of NSF's proposal reviewing process.
The information on this page can provide insight into what and how NIH instructs
the reviewers of your proposals.
Other Grant Writing Tips
Grantsmanship
Downloads: This web site provides links to download a wide range
of grant writing advice and tips. This is
largely focused on biomedical grant writing. It also contains an archive of
related newsletter material.
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