I had the opportunity to attend a talk on the keys to write a F grant at the Translational Science 2014 meeting in DC. I’m transcribing my notes here to put them in a place that will be more lasting for me. i.e. instead of the folder with all the other meeting notes that’s going to get buried under other papers.
The talk was by PJ. Simpson-Haidaris, Ph.D & Stephen C. Ekker, Ph.D. Dr. Simpson-Haidaris kindly uploaded the slide deck to slide share (link to slide deck on slideshare). Dr. Simpson-Haidaris is an expert on this subject and has has served on over 80+ grant review panels (qualifications on slide 4 of her deck).
My notes:
- F grants require exceptional mentoring teams
- If you don’t have a research and career development plan (IDP) you should work on getting one together. Templates vary between universities in terms of usefulness. Dr. Simpson-Haidaris recommends the Vanderbilt template (link) .
- Dr. Ekker stated that a retrospective study of failed applications showed that half of them failed because they didn’t follow the rules.
- Now can use 200 character title in unicode for longer more descriptive project titles. You may get dinged if your title comes through the system truncated or with misinformed characters.
- Use the SF424 as a checklist.
- Dr. Simpson-Haidaris finds biosketches most important. Makes sure they are correct and up to date for allowed participants. Make sure biosketches includes PMCID#s.
- A F award must go above and beyond the PhD and post doc training the applicant would otherwise participate in or receive.
- There was some disagreement between Drs. Ekker & Simpson-Haidaris on the definition of “key personal” vs. “senior personal”. Dr. Ekker asserted it is a administrative term and only those that will be administrating the grant should be named. He used the criteria of if this person gets hit by a bus will this grant need to end. He pointed out this definition is for protection you if your PI leaves your institution or has medical issues you don’t lose your funding too. He stated that all others are “senior” rather than “key” personal. Dr. Simpson-Haidaris took the view of these peoples roles on the project in the scientific sense. Still not sure what right answer is here.
- Typical grant consists of sponsor + co-sponsor + 2 more mentors specific to the project.
- Check eRA commons account before applying. Status needs to be PI instead of trainee before submission.
- Can go down to 8 pt font size for figures.
- Explain any gaps in productivity.
- Make sure to include PMCID#s in all work cited if they exist. Failure to do this can cause the grant to be thrown out.