June 17, 2009
News Articles
Opportunities and Resources
Advice Corner
New Funding Opportunities
News Articles
Staying on Top of ARRA
While some of the frenzy has died down on our end, we still have some American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) news to report.
Tell It Like It Is
Showcase your lab's work and successes to your colleagues, Congress, the administration, and the American taxpayer.
If you benefited from ARRA funds, this Web site is for you! Go to How Have ARRA Funds Helped You? to share your stories about ARRA's impact on your lab and your research.
Show how you put ARRA funds to good use—no benefit is too trivial to report. Did the money help keep your lab intact? Did ARRA funds let you hire help or buy equipment? Were you able to expand your research? Could you keep employed someone whose job was in jeopardy?
Here's your chance to showcase your lab's work and successes to your colleagues, Congress, the administration, and the American taxpayer.
Win-Win for a Lab and a Summer Student
As an ARRA success story, this one stands out. Thanks to ARRA funding, fifth-year pharmacy student Eric Carrillo is now a summer intern in the lab of Sunil A. David, M.D. Ph.D., Department of Medicinal Chemistry, University of Kansas.
As a result of the experience, Mr. Carrillo decided on a career in research. Dr. David was "delighted when Eric expressed his interest in pursuing an M.D. or M.D. Ph.D. program. This is unusual because in a year or so, he would be a full-fledged pharmacist with a promising career and financial stability."
When teaching his medicinal chemistry course last semester, Dr. David was impressed by Mr. Carrillo's academic excellence and work ethic. ARRA funds enabled him to bring the intern into his lab to work on the semi-synthesis and characterization of novel antimicrobial and antifungal agents.
After Challenge Grants
You've seen the numbers: more than 20,000 applications, 200 awards. That's not the whole picture since institutes are funding an unspecified number of additional Challenge Grant applications.
Still, if yours isn't funded, you'll have lots of company. Here is a strategy for your next move.
- Under NIH policy, you can submit your Challenge Grant application again if you follow procedures for a new application:
- Check the "New" box on the face page.
- Do not include a progress report or introduction.
- Do not highlight reviewer comments in the research plan.
- Pick a new funding opportunity announcement (you cannot use the Challenge Grant announcement) and modify the application to meet its requirements.
- Revise your research plan to suit a four- to five-year award, rather than the two-year grant you originally applied for.
- Use the reviewers' feedback to improve the application (but do not note them in the text since you are submitting a new application).
- Do not apply until you receive your summary statement.
Normally you cannot resubmit the same unfunded application. However, NIH allows you do this in two situations, according to the May 15, 2009, Guide notice:
- Submitting the application as another grant type, for example, changing from RC1 to R01 or R21.
- Submitting an investigator-initiated application after responding unsuccessfully to a request for applications (and vice versa) regardless of grant type.
Not sure about the difference between an investigator-initiated application and applying through a request for applications? Read Choose Approach and Find FOAs in the Strategy for NIH Funding
You can read more about when NIH allows you to resubmit the same application at Which types of unfunded applications may I reuse, and how do I proceed? in the General Application Information questions and answers.
Mixing Funds
NIH has decided that we cannot fund applications responding to ARRA funding announcements, including administrative supplements, with money from our regular appropriation due to differences in reporting requirements, peer review, and technical issues.
While we also cannot mingle ARRA and non-ARRA funds in the same grant, we can pay grants with ARRA funds initially and use money from our regular appropriation for later years. See Two Types of Funding in Don't Confuse Stimulus Money With Our FY 2009 Budget on our NIAID and the Economic Recovery Act site.
Future Reporting Update
We still don't know much about how grantees will report their use of ARRA funds online as required by the Recovery Act. But by the end of August, the administration expects to post detailed reporting instructions on a new reporting site.
We'll let you know as soon as we have more information.
Submit FCOI Reports in the Commons
In case you missed our last article, here's another reminder that starting July 1, 2009, you must use the Financial Conflict of Interest Module in the eRA Commons.
Go to the Commons to do the following:
- Initiate and prepare financial conflict of interest reports.
- Electronically submit reports and supporting documents.
- Search and view financial conflict of interest reports you previously submitted through the Commons.
- Edit or rescind submitted reports with NIH involvement.
- See a history of your actions.
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Go to NIH's Financial Conflict of Interest (FCOI) for more information. Ignore the part of the page that states the module is in pilot mode—anybody can use it now.
We wrote about this previously in our April 17, 2009, Funding Newsletter, article "Commons New Conflict of Interest Module—It's Not a Choice." Read more in our Financial Conflict of Interest for Awardees SOP.
New RePORTER Is a Crisper CRISP
Accessing information on federally funded research projects just got better with NIH's RePORT Expenditures and Results, a newcomer to the Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tool site.
And if you need to change the scope of your research project, see Changing Scope? New Process Helps Accuracy below.
Check Out RePORTER
Think of RePORTER as a "crisper" CRISP—Computer Retrieval of Information on Scientific Projects. RePORTER will eventually replace CRISP altogether. Stay tuned.
Here are some of the upgrades you will see on RePORTER:
- New ways to search.
- Access to publications and patents of both intramural and extramural projects.
- Links to related information in other databases such as the National Library of Medicine's PubMed.
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If RePORT is news to you, read our report in the June 4, 2008, article "NIH's RePORT Tool, New Home for CRISP."
Changing Scope? New Process Improves Accuracy
If you're changing the scope of your research project, follow NIH's new process for submitting revised Specific Aims, Project Summary/Abstract, or Public Health Relevance. By doing so, you'll help ensure the accuracy of reports generated by Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization (RCDC), another part of the RePORT site.
When modifying information, follow instructions in the May 5, 2009, Guide notice and use the NIH Template. Though all investigators should pay attention, those applying for grants under the ARRA should take special note, especially about sending new aims. Read Before You Can Get Stimulus Money and the May 20, 2009, article "In the Throes of ARRA."
Go to Reporting Considerations When Writing Your Application for tips on including terminology in key parts of your application so your research falls into the proper RCDC category.
To learn more about RCDC, read our January 21, 2009, article "RCDC Debut—a Fresh View of NIH Funding."
May Concepts—Worth a Look
You can start scrutinizing possible funding opportunities and gain insight into Institute priorities by scanning our concepts at Concepts: Potential Opportunities.
After each Council meeting, savvy readers get a glimpse of future initiatives and ideas for investigator-initiated applications.
Concepts are a hit with savvy readers. After each Council meeting, they view the latest concepts for a glimpse of future initiatives—for example, requests for applications—and ideas for topics for investigator-initiated applications.
How many of your colleagues do this? After we posted the January Council concepts on Research Funding in February, the concept page ranked seventh for numbers of unique visitors (just after the perennial faves NIAID Paylines and Funding Opportunities, which ranked fifth and sixth respectively).
We just posted the concepts Council approved at its May meeting, so now is an opportune time to take a peek.
If you would like notification for our posting new concepts, Subscribe to Email Alerts, and select the concepts interest category.
To learn more about using topics to your advantage, read "Concepts for New Initiatives—Should You Tune In?" and Concepts May Turn Into Initiatives in the NIAID Funding Opportunity Planning and the Budget Cycle.
Opportunities and Resources
Coming Up for Training Grants: Important Date, Don't Be Late
(New on June 18, 2010: NIAID now accepts training grant applications on September 25 for non-AIDS and January 7 for AIDS-related applications).
Be sure to circle September 25 on your calendar. It's NIAID's only annual submission date for NRSA Institutional Research Training Grants (T32) and Short-Term Institutional Research Training Grants (T35).
September 25 is NIAID's only annual submission date.
To apply, use the paper PHS 398. Training grants will not move to electronic submission this September as previously announced in the May 23, 2008, Guide notice. Rather, NIH is planning to make the transition in January 2010, which means NIAID applicants would submit electronically for the September 25, 2010, due date.
We'll keep you posted on this front here and on our Latest Funding Updates. You can also check the NIH Guide or the Electronic Submission Transition Timeline.
To learn more about Ts, go to Training Grants.
Advice Corner
Forget to Identify Yourself as a New Investigator?
What should you do if you submitted an R01 a while ago but did not enter your degree and discipline-specific training dates in your Commons profile?
First, register in the Commons now as a new investigator. NIH is also looking out for people who qualify but did not register, but do not rely on this.
Being a new investigator has advantages both for peer review and funding decisions, so at this point, you should do the following: 1) if your application hasn't been reviewed yet, call your scientific review officer, and 2) talk to your program officer about your situation.
Read more at Are You "New"? in the New Investigator Guide to NIH Funding.
Reader Questions
Feel free to send us a question at deaweb@niaid.nih.gov. After responding to you, we may include your question in the newsletter, incorporate it into the NIAID Research Funding site, or both.
"What opportunities are there for new PIs and ESIs as part of the Recovery Act?"—Tiffany Horng, Harvard School of Public Health
Though you can apply for any ARRA opportunity, you will have special benefits for R01s only, which most ARRA opportunities are not. In addition, ARRA opportunities provide support for a limited time period.
Instead, consider applying for a regular R01. We don't have FY 2010 paylines yet, but they tend to be better for new investigators, and you can potentially get a four or five-year grant.
"Once you are awarded an ARRA grant, what are the expectations?"—an anonymous reader
Go to What You Need to Do if You Get Stimulus Funds for details.
You may also want to check out the following pages on NIAID and the Economic Recovery Act, the portion of our site dedicated to ARRA:
- Special ARRA Requirements—Recovery Act Questions and Answers
- Grants Policy Differences Between ARRA and Other Grants
- Don't Confuse Stimulus Money With Our FY 2009 Budget
"If the new peer review scores are supposed to be between 10 and 90, how can the R21 payline be 137?"—Maja Maric, Georgetown University Medical Center
The paylines you see on our site at NIAID Paylines are for FY 2009 funding of applications reviewed using the old scoring system.
Next fiscal year, we will be funding applications that are now being reviewed using the new scoring system. So for FY 2010 paylines, scores and paylines will be between 10 and 90.
New Funding Opportunities
See these and older announcements at NIAID Funding Opportunities List.
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