The Art and Science of Successful Scientific Grant Writing - Part 1

Introduction

Every scientist will, at some stage in their career, have to write a grant proposal. For undergraduates there are opportunities to submit proposals to federal granting agencies to fund their subsequent Ph.D. research (graduate fellowships). For Ph.D. students at many institutions it may be a requirement to write a grant proposal for their "Preliminary Examination" or "Qualifying Examination". Ph.D. students may also have to develop and submit a proposal to a federal granting agency for a post-doctoral fellowship to pursue their scientific career. Post-doctoral fellows hired as assistant professors in academia will then be expected to submit proposals to fund their research, and their promotion and tenure will likely depend substantially upon their success in this endeavor. Scientists entering industry, rather than academia, may also find themselves needing to write proposals to compete for interal funds to pursue novel avenues of research of potential benefit to their company. Thus, grant writing skills are important tools in the scientist's tool box. These skills are acquired skills, meaning that it takes patience, persistence, and much practice. The first grant proposal that you prepare may be a daunting and painful challenge, but it does get easier with time!

I speak on this subject from 30 years of experience. In my career as a plant biologist I have had grant proposals funded by the UK Science Research Council (SRC), the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the US National Science Foundation (NSF), the US Department of Energy (DOE), the US Office of Naval Research (ONR), Pioneer Hi-Bred International and the McKnight Foundation. I have served as a panel member on several federal grant agency review panels, including USDA, NSF and DOE, and was a panel manager for the USDA Plant Responses to the Environment program in 1997. I taught a course on "Grants and Grantsmanship" at Purdue University from 1990 - 2017. This course was intended to help Ph.D. students write their first grant proposal for their "Preliminary Examination".

I would now like to take this opportunity to impart my knowledge of grant writing "do's" and "don'ts" to any young scientist out there who has ambitions to pursue a career in academia or industry. This cannot effectively be done in a single post and so I would like to break this topic down into different parts .... relatively small chunks, so as not to overwhelm the reader. Today's post (Part 1) will focus on planning the grant proposal with emphasis on finding appropriate funding opportunities in the USA, obtaining the latest guidelines, and preparing a draft Project Summary.

Planning the grant proposal

Proposal title: At the outset it is imperative that you develop a succint working title for your proposal that captures the essence of the problem that you wish to obtain grant funding for. You can always change or refine the title at a later stage, but this well help to keep your focus.

Find a suitable granting agency for your proposal: Next, you will need to go online to identify a granting agency that is most suitable for your proposal. If the topic of your proposal is agriculture related, look at the USDA website (https://nifa.usda.gov/grants). If it is human health related, look at the NIH website (https://grants.nih.gov/funding/index.htm). If your proposal is in any way asking basic science, engineering or mathematical questions, consider the NSF (https://www.nsf.gov/funding/). If it is energy related, consider DOE (https://science.energy.gov/funding-opportunities/). If it is defense related, consider DOD (https://www.acq.osd.mil/chieftechnologist/funding.html). If it is space related, consider NASA (https://www.nasa.gov/about/research/index.html). Or, do a search of GRANTS.GOV (https://www.grants.gov/) with key words from your working title.

Finding a suitable program within your selected grant agency: Once you have selected a suitable granting agency for your proposal, search within that organization for a program, funding opportunity, request for proposals (RFP), funding opportunity announcement (FOA) or request for applications (RFA) that best matches the topic of your grant proposal. For NIH grants it may be necessary to drill down to a specific NIH institute (https://www.nih.gov/institutes-nih) to find a suitable program announcement (PA) or request for proposals (RFP) that is current and applicable to the human health problem that you wish to address. Please also give careful attention to the type of grant funding that is most appropriate for your NIH proposal (https://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/funding_program.htm):

• Research Grants (R series)
• Career Development Awards (K series)
• Research Training and Fellowships (T & F series)
• Program Project/Center Grants (P series)
• Resource Grants (various series)
• Trans-NIH Programs

Suppose that you were wishing to apply to NSF in the general area of biological sciences and the theme of your proposal is on DNA repair, you might wish to drill down to the Biological Sciences (BIO) directorate (https://www.nsf.gov/dir/index.jsp?org=BIO), the Molecular and Cellular Bioscience (MCB) program within BIO (https://www.nsf.gov/funding/programs.jsp?org=MCB), and eventually the Genetic Mechanisms cluster (https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503626) which specifically funds research on DNA repair mechanisms.

The latter page gives you contact information concerning the program directors for the Genetic Mechanisms cluster, a synopsis of the types of proposals that they wish to receive, and their funding priorities. It also provides links to recent awards made by this program, including their abstracts. Furthermore, it links to the
Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences: Investigator-Initiated Research Projects (MCB) PROGRAM SOLICITATION NSF 17-589 (https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2017/nsf17589/nsf17589.htm) which provides more detailed information concerning eligibility, proposal preparation and submission instructions, and a link to the current NSF guide for preparation and submission of NSF applicaations via GRANTS.GOV (https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/grantsgovguide0118.pdf).

It is imperative that you download the latest guidelines for the specific granting agency and program area that you plan to submit your proposal to, and follow these guidelines very carefully. Such guidelines are available from the other federal funding agencies that I have mentioned above.

At the time of writing this post, the Due Date for proposals submitted to the Genetic Mechanisms program has expired (November 20, 2017) and is "Waiting for New Publication". Be prepared to contact one of the program directors by e-mail of telephone to see if they can provided information on the next deadline in advance of its publication on the NSF website. It is a good idea to start writing your first proposal at least 12 weeks before the due date for submission.

Preparing a draft project summary: Once you have settled on a working title for your proposal, have found a suitable granting agency and specific program or funding opportunity within that agency, have knowledge of the likely due date, and have downloaded the appropriate guidelines, it is very valuable next to prepare a 1 page draft Project Summary. The Project Summary page is the most important page in your proposal. Make sure that it is well written, free of typographical errors, succinct and clear.

Your Project Summary should be formatted something like this:

1. Begin by stating how your research topic is relevant to the mission of the agency and priorities of the program area. Include statistics about the significance of the area if available and appropriate (e.g. for a human disease, what is the prevalence of the disease and estimated annual cost in lives or $ for treatment; for a U.S. agricultural crop, what is the acreage of the crop and/or annual value).

2. Briefly describe what is known about the research topic.

3. Briefly describe what is not known about the research topic (identify the key gaps in the field).

4. State your hypothesis/hypotheses and/or articulate the questions that you want to address. Ideally, this hypothesis/hypotheses should tackle the afore-mentioned gaps in knowledge.

5. Define your objectives or specific aims (1 is insufficient, 5 is probably too many, 3 is optimal).

6. Give a few details of the experimental approach to be used under each objective or aim.

7. Conclude by stating how successful accomplishment of these objectives or specific aims will move the field forward and towards your long-range goals.

8. Highlight/bold your hypothesis and any feature of the proposal that is novel or innovative.

9. For NSF proposals please include a "Broader Impacts" statement (see: https://www.nsf.gov/od/oia/special/broaderimpacts/). Your NSF proposal will be reviewed based on two criteria: the intellectual merit of your proposal and its broader impacts.

Your draft Project Summary can serve as a useful guide in mapping out your proposal and developing your Project Description. The emphasis (bolding) of your hypothesis/hypotheses and any novel/new/innovative aspects of your proposal within the Project Summary is important to eventually draw the attention of the reviewers. The reviewers will mostly focus on these features. Reviewers will be specifically seeking to fund novel ideas that will help move the field forward.

There is no need to include references in the Project Summary. It is in the full Project Description that you will provide a literature review of what is known about the problem that you are addressing, where the knowledge gaps reside, and how you propose to address these deficiencies experimentally with rational hypotheses and a sound experimental plan. This will require careful research to ensure that you are familiar with the literature that has already been published in the field. Developing your Project Description will require a great deal of attention to detail (including appropriate literature citations), and careful time-management on your behalf. I recommend devoting about 1 hour per day to writing about 1/2 page per day in order to develop your first draft of your Project Description of 10-15 pages over a period of about 4 - 6 weeks. As your draft Project Description description develops it may require revision of your Project Summary to match your revised objectives/aims. Be prepared to go through several drafts of your Project Summary and Project Description. I will expand upon these points in subsequent posts in this series.

In the meantime, your draft Title and Project Summary can be e-mailed to the program director along with a cover letter to introduce yourself, and to ask if the topic of the proposal is appropriate for submission to the specific program that you have selected. The program director is there to assist you and may be able to identify a program that is more suitable for your proposal.

A formula for success

The take-home message from this post is the following "formula for success":

Guidelines +
Research +
Attention to detail +
New ideas +
Time management =
$uccess

If you have any questions, please feel free to post them in the comments section below. I will try my best to answer them as soon as possible.