Limited Enrollment: No more than15 MSU faculty preparing an application for a NIH R01 or R21 grant by February 2020.  Preference will be given to faculty applying for R01s. Faculty writing R03 grants are not eligible. 

Program overview and schedule. Webinars every two weeks will last 75 to 90 minutes and are recorded, so if you miss one you can catch it later. Each month you’ll get at least one hour of personal attention from Tom on any grant problem you’re grappling with. Then, after your research plan is reviewed by peers of your choosing, OVPRI editors will edit your research plan to make it its very best.

Sept 19 - Webinar: Competitive advantage in NIH R01 grant writing. This kick-off webinar focuses on competitive advantages in NIH grant writing   that most professors could use but few do and lays the foundation for the rest of the course.

Oct 3 - Webinar: Competitive intelligence using the NIH Reporter grants database. This free database can reveal what sort of research NIH has funded in your area, for how much, and which Program Officers to contact to discuss NIH’s interest in your work. Learn to use the Reporter to find the best study section to review your grant, and find copies of grants in your field to study as models.

Oct 7 to 11 - Individual grant strategy sessions. Tom will be on campus to meet with you by appointment to discuss anything in your grant you’re struggling with.

Oct 17 - Webinar: How to write Specific Aims and Abstracts that get reviewers excited. See examples of winning Specific Aims and find out        what makes them great. Then do the same for Abstracts.

Oct 28 to Nov 1 -Hotseat session: Specific Aims and Abstract. You’ll meet by conference call with Tom and two other class members to improve your Specific Aims and Abstract.

Oct 31 - Webinar: How to write exciting Significance and Innovation sections. See examples of winning Significance and Innovation sections and find out what makes them exciting.

Nov 4-8      Individual grant strategy sessions. Tom will be on campus to meet with you by appointment to discuss anything in your grant you’re   having a problem with.

Nov 11 to 15 - Hotseat session: Significance and Innovation. Your hotseat group will meet by conference call with Tom to review and improve your           Significance and Innovation sections.

Nov 14 - Webinar: How to make your Approach seem like a guaranteed sure thing.  Examine winning grants for better ways to write the main parts of Approach, how to present preliminary data, how to describe risky experiments, how to summarize experiments and sell them at the same time, and better ways to make figures and tables exciting.

Nov 28 - Webinar: Odds & Ends. Reading a Summary Statement, writing a revised application, biosketches, budget justification, facilities, Early-Stage Investigator support, human subjects protections, multi-PI statements, minority inclusion, data sharing plans, letters of support, cover letters, and the vertebrate animals statement.

Dec 2 to 6 - Individual grant strategy sessions. Tom will be on campus to meet with you by appointment to discuss anything in your grant you’re           struggling with.

TBD - Peer Review and Editing. As a condition for acceptance in the course you agree to have your research plan peer-reviewed by at least two   others in your field. After peer review you may schedule with OVPRI to have your research plan professionally edited prior to submission.

End Result ­– probably the best application you’ve ever submitted, and a better understanding than ever of what it takes to win when NIH paylines are super tight.

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