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Grant Assistance

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Learn how to find research funding opportunities and how to get your grant proposal edited

Contact person: Satya Kolar - Satya.Sree.N.Kolar@uth.tmc.edu - 713-500-7924

The CCTS can help investigators learn how to find funding opportunities and can edit grant proposals.  Maureen Goode, PhD, ELS, former CCTS Administrative Director, is an experienced grant editor who has edited or written more than 300 grant proposals ranging from small proposals for student/postdoctoral funding through standard NIH R01 and P01 grants to large multi-institutional grants such as the CTSA.  She has taught grant writing and finding funding in many venues, including at NIH. Contact Tricia Hill-Thomas for information on editing availability and instruction on how to find funding. 

Tips and information about grants:

  1. Learn the NIH grant format. NIH is the largest awarder of biomedical research grants in the world, so most of our investigators apply for NIH grants.  (But we provide assistance for all kinds of grants.) The NIH grant format is used by many other grant agencies, too.
  2. Familiarize yourself with the Office of Extramural Research (OER). The OER is the arm of NIH that awards grants. Its web site (https://grants.nih.gov/grants/oer.htm ) has a wealth of information on how to apply for NIH grants, advice on writing good grant applications, and listings of grant opportunities. 
  3. Subscribe to the NIH Guide listserv, at https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/listserv.htm

Every Friday, this listserv will send you a list of all NIH Notices and Funding Opportunity Announcements NIH has published that week.  This is the best way to keep up to date on new grant opportunities from NIH.

  1. Check out the NIH’s 27 institutes and centers (described here https://www.nih.gov/institutes-nih ). Each has its own web site, which lists the institute/center’s funding opportunity announcements and has tips on grants that may be relevant to you even if your work is not relevant to that institute/center. 
  2. Read sample grant applications. To write a good grant application, it helps to have a good model to follow.  You learn how to write journal articles by reading journals, but it’s harder to find grant applications to read.  One source is the applications on the NIH NIAID web site, at https://www.niaid.nih.gov/grants-contracts/sample-applications .
  3. Ask your colleagues for their grant applications. For grant applications in your field, ask your collaborators if you can read their funded grant applications.  I have also found that if you’re applying for an unusual grant, such as an NIH K99/R00, successful applicants at your institution will usually share their applications with you.
  4. Use NIH RePORTER (https://report.nih.gov/ ) to find those people at your institution with particular grants (or to find anything about funded NIH grants).   
  5. As for CCTS Letters of Support for your grant proposals. We can give you a letter of support for your grant application saying you can use CCTS services for your proposed research.  Contact Tricia Hill-Thomas for more information.

Maureen Goode's talks on writing grant applications:

Writing Your Research Hypothesis

Planning Your Grant Application

Working with Funding Organizations:  Call Them

Avoiding Fatal Flaws in Grant Applications

How to Write NIH Grant Proposals