Grant Writing I: Advanced Grant Writing for Research and Product Development

Catalog description

This course is designed to provide graduate students with a complete understanding of the NIH grant writing and review process with a focus on developing a finished NIH NRSA F31 pre-doctoral proposal. This will be accomplished via a number of different, integrated mechanisms. The bulk of the course will focus on students developing and writing their own F31 applications. The issues addressed here include the generation of a testable hypothesis, the design of experiments to test the hypothesis, and the interpretation of potential outcomes of the experiments proposed. Students will also discuss strategies for developing a fully integrated proposal that addresses the goals and guidelines of a particular funding mechanism. Please note that while students will be generating written documents, the focus of this course is on the concepts, ideas and strategies of successful grant writing, not on the mechanics of the writing per se. Students will present and defend their Specific Aims and Research Strategy that will be written in the format required for the 6 page NIH fellowship application. Additional didactic lectures will cover mentor?s statement and training plan. The course will conclude with a study section-style review of the completed applications. The grant topic written by the student for this course should be approved by the PhD supervisor and final submission to the NIH will be at their discretion. Students may write projects completely unrelated to their PhD research or can create a project that is an extension of their research as long as there is minimal overlap with any current grants in their lab. The project and its relatedness to the PhD supervisors work must be approved by the supervisor before the second week of class.