Grant Writing Articles- June 1, 2009
Grant Writing Articles:
Article 1: ARRA Energy Research and Education at NSF & DOE
Article 2: Recovery Act R&D Update at Three Months
Article 3: Applying for NSF REU Sites
Article 1
By Mike Cronan
ARRA Energy Research and Education at NSF & DOE
The National Science Foundation reports it is joining the Department of Energy and other government agencies in efforts to educate students at all levels in fields contributing to fundamental understanding of energy science and engineering systems. At NSF, this will be implemented across many of its core programs that advance the integration of research and education at all levels, an underlying theme in many NSF programs.
The focus will be on Specialized Energy Centers modeled on Engineering Research Centers (ERCs) and Science and Technology Centers (STCs), Individual Fellowships to Graduate Students involved in Clean Energy Research, Integrative Graduate Training Programs involving Clean Energy, a new flagship IGERT (Integrative Graduation Education Research Traineeship), and Focused Research in K-12 Science Education Strategies and Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (More…).
Similar to NSF’s plans for an energy focus in ERCs (Engineering Research Centers) and STCs (Science and Technology Centers), and new NSF Specialized Energy Centers, ScienceInsider reports that Energy Secretary Steven Chu on May 7 highlighted the department's biggest new research initiative, a set of eight new Energy Innovation Hubs, each one focused on a different energy-related challenge: solar electricity; fuels produced directly from sunlight; batteries and other kinds of energy storage; carbon capture and storage; new technologies for the electrical grid; efficient buildings; extreme materials; and modeling and simulation. The centers will be modeled on DOE's three recently established bioenergy research centers. Each one will be funded for 5 years, at about $25 million annually. The 2010 budget proposal includes $280 million for these hubs. (More…)
Although both NSF and DOE are pursuing similar goals, it is reasonable to assume for planning purposes that any future solicitations related to energy centers from NSF and DOE will be distinctly different in their configuration. NSF advances a vision for the integration of research and education across all their flagship programs, including those mentioned above, something clearly required in the upcoming round of competition for ERC funding, called “Gen-3 ERCs” by NSF. In many ways, in contrast to DOE centers, NSF centers are umbrella research and education structures that integrate discrete NSF flagship programs like the Clean Energy IGERT mentioned above and others into a robust and synergistic center configuration.
How either future NSF or DOE centers related to energy are finally configured will not be known until there are actual solicitations. However, in the case of NSF it is likely that any center structure will mirror existing research centers in core programmatic components, whereas for a mission agency such as DOE anticipating future center structures can be done with much less certainty, thereby making advance competitive positioning more difficult. For example, for an NSF energy center the importance of research and education integration, diversity, etc. will likely be emphasized as core program areas but will likely not be addressed for DOE.
Therefore, while advance strategic planning for the development and writing of NSF centers related to energy will be a challenging task, it something that can be done with enough certainty to make the process worthwhile. However, as with all NSF center grants, there are often many “Achilles heels” that manifest themselves in the development and writing process that need to be addressed early on in order to be competitive for funding. At NSF, competitiveness requires the capacity to define a clear research vision tightly mapped to the framework of the agency’s center concept.
The NSF response to President Obama's "New Energy for America" plan is sweeping across many of NSF’s most prestigious and sought-after flagship programs. However, the transition from successful researcher to successful center leader can be difficult, and requires a compelling strategic vision to answer the core NSF evaluation question of “why is it better to fund the umbrella structure of a center rather that funding discrete awards to different PIs.” For NSF, the right answer embeds itself in synergy and integration. While the NSF Specialized Energy Centers and related educational programs above are not yet defined, it is not to early to think of competitive strategies to pursue them based on what is already well known about competing for NSF centers, particularly in planning to avoid the common pitfalls that lead to non-competitive submittals, including:
• Lack of prior collaborations among team members
• Lack of a competitive research track level at the center level
• Need to bring substantive expertise to each of the center goals, not just the research goal
• Centers need to be defined in a much larger research context than a research proposal
• Centers represent a complex configuration of multiple center elements surrounding research core—synthesis and integration of the parts is key.
• Searching for money with ideas ancillary
• Trying to force fit discrete research to a center structure
• Hobbled by pre-existing research partnerships and dynamics (wrong team)
• Unable to define an overarching vision for the center
• Unable to explain why the integration of N research strands achieves a compelling vision and synergy not possible if the research strands were funded as N discrete projects
• Lacks integrative skills required for center’s multiple components
• Poor organizational, scheduling, and communications skills
• Poorly managed proposal development process
• Lacks capacity for teaming
• Lacks perspective to appreciate the importance of all agency required center components in addition to research core
• Supplants the agency’s center concept with the PI’s center concept
Recovery Act: Wind Energy Consortia
The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Golden Field Office (GO) intends to issue, on behalf of the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Wind and Hydropower Technologies Program (WHTP), a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) entitled “Recovery Act: Wind Energy Consortia between Institutions of Higher Learning and Industry” (More…). Below is a limited list of areas in which proposals will be sought.
Partnerships for Wind Research and Turbine Reliability
Universities in regions of the country representative of the mid-west wind belt (typically having a steady Class 3-4 resource all year) are encouraged to team with industry partners to establish facilities/equipment and a research agenda necessary to study major challenges facing today’s wind industry. Proposals that address one or more challenges described in the “20% Wind Energy by 2030” report and include descriptions of how the wind hardware and software purchased will be requested. DOE will highly encourage research in “turbine reliability” as a topic in any consortia proposal.
Wind Energy Research & Development
University R&D to advance material design, performance measurements, analytical models, and leveraging partnerships with industry to improve power systems operations, maintenance or repair operations, wind turbine and/or component manufacturing, and interdisciplinary system integration. Fellowships, internships, etc. may be used to support the research agenda. For this, DOE will provide $24 million for the development of up to three consortia between universities and industry to focus on critical wind energy challenges. These partnerships will allow universities to establish research and development programs to advance material design, performance measurements, analytical models, and work with the industry to improve power systems operations, maintenance and repair, and component manufacturing (More…).
Also in May, Secretary Chu Announced Nearly $800 Million from Recovery Act to Accelerate Biofuels Research and Commercialization. The Biomass Program plans to use $110 million to support fundamental research in key program areas, distributed in the following manner:
• Expand the resources available for sustainability research through the Office of Science Bioenergy Research Centers and establish a user-facility/small-scale integrated pilot plant ($25 million);
• Create an advanced research consortium to develop technologies and facilitate subsequent demonstration of infrastructure-compatible biofuels through a competitive solicitation ($35 million); and
• Create an algal biofuels consortium to accelerate demonstration of algal biofuels through a competitive solicitation ($50 million) (More…).
Find more information on ARRA R&D at the Department of Energy at DOE Recovery Act Site. DOE funding opportunities are posted at e-Center.
Article 2
By Mike Cronan
Recovery Act R&D Update at Three Months
The Recovery Act (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 signed by President Obama on February 16, 2009) is now some three months old. Nearly two-thirds of the allocation of $21.5 billion in R&D funding of interest to universities under ARRA went to NIH ($10.4 billion) and NSF ($3 billion). Research announcements by Secretary Chu related to ARRA R&D funding from the DOE Energy Programs ($2.5 billion) and from the DOE Office of Science ($1.6 billion) began to be published in May, but are not yet fully implemented in terms of allocations to competitive DOE solicitations for basic research. In late May the first Quarterly Report to the President On Progress Implementing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Of 2009 was submitted.
Generally, however, after a tsunami of initial activity related to the startup of ARRA R&D funding across various federal agencies, including the establishment of agency-specific ARRA tracking web sites, the pace of agency ARRA announcements and the posting of solicitations of interest to the academic research community has now quelled considerably. The key questions, listed below, are now mostly answered as they relate to the “research” portion of ARRA funded R&D that will be awarded through the peer-reviewed, merit-based process for funding basic research at NIH and NSF:
• How will the ARRA R&D money be allocated among federal agencies and programmatically within each agency?
• How will each agency award the money, e.g., solicitations, supplements, non-funded but well reviewed proposals in-house, etc.?
• Are there important competitive factors PIs need to be aware of in applying for research funding under the ARRA program, e.g., special review criteria?
At NSF, the majority of proposals eligible for Recovery Act funding at NSF include those that are already in house and will be reviewed and/or awarded prior to September 30, 2009, with the exception of the recently announced solicitations for the Major Research Instrumentation Program (MRI-R²) and Academic Research Infrastructure Program: Recovery and Reinvestment (ARI-R²), both with August due dates, and the yet to be announced Science Masters programs. NSF also will consider proposals declined on or after October 1, 2008. The reversal of the decision to decline will be based on both high quality of the reviews received on the initial submission and lack of available funding at the time the original decision was made. The cognizant program officer will contact the institution when a reversal is being considered by NSF ( NSF Important Notice 131). The NSF Terms and Conditions May 2009, National Science Foundation for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 were published in May.
At NIH, in addition to numerous new solicitations receiving ARRA funding, ARRA funding is going to active NIH grants through several mechanisms, including Competitive Revision Applications, Administrative Supplements, and Administrative Supplements Providing Summer Research Experiences. If you are funded by NIH currently you may become better funded under ARRA through one of these mechanisms.
In most cases, some NSF programs being an exception, ARRA requires that the money be spent in two years, and this has served to significantly compress the solicitation process into a very tight time frame. In the case of NIH and NSF solicitations receiving ARRA funding for equipment, instrumentation, facilities, and core facilities, the open period from the date of announcement of the opportunity to the application due date has been significantly reduced. These ARRA solicitations place limits on the number of proposals that can be submitted by one institution, thereby requiring an accelerated internal process for selecting proposals that may be submitted by an institution.
According to ScienceInsider researchers face a very competitive environment when seeking Recovery Act funding. NIH reports that 2,400 letters of intent were submitted to the Grand Opportunity (GO) program that will likely have a 10% funding rate, and the Challenge Grant program will have an estimated 2% funding rate for the 20,000 applications submitted. By comparison, NIH received fewer than 1,600 applications for competitive revision awards and expects to fund nearly 30% of them, according to NIH acting Director Raynard Kington.
The funding rate for the NIH C06 Research Facilities Improvement and G20 Core Facility Renovation grants is likely to be very low as well given the estimated number of awards possible out of the total $1 billion of funding available, with awards ranging from $2-$15 million and $1-$10 million, respectively. The number of proposals submitted to these programs is likely to be very large given the intense interest in the grants by universities, medical centers, and other 501(c)(3) research entities. Further inflating the number of expected proposals will be that an eligible institution is defined as an organization with a separate IPF code, three proposals per IPF are allowed for the C06 and two for the G20, and many larger research universities and medical centers will have multiple IPF codes.
One key take away message from all this is that it is important not to let the ARRA money divert the eye from the ball of the existing research opportunities (non-ARRA dollars) at NIH and NSF. Both agencies expect the success rate for all research funding to increase above the normal success rate while ARRA funding lasts, but to drop below it afterward, particularly at NIH.
Article 3
By Lucy Deckard
Applying for NSF REU Sites
One of NSF’s priorities is to encourage more U.S. students to pursue degrees in science, math, engineering and technology (STEM) fields, encourage more students to pursue careers in STEM research, and increase the diversity of future scientists and engineers. One approach that NSF sees as particularly effective in accomplishing these goals is providing research experiences for undergraduate students. NSF’s Research Experiences for Undergraduate program aims to make these research experiences available to more students and currently funds over 600 REU Sites. This program provides an excellent opportunity for departments and programs to bring in undergraduates from other institutions for summer research experiences, providing infrastructure for broader impacts components of other NSF proposals while also serving as a recruiting tool and raising the profile of the department or program.
NSF REU programs come in two categories: sites and supplements. REU Site proposals are typically due each August, while REU Supplement proposals can be submitted throughout the year, at the discretion of the Program Officer. REU Sites typically host 6 to 12 undergraduate students each year, usually during the summer for 8 to 10 weeks. REU Supplements provide funding to PIs already funded with an NSF grant to allow one or two undergraduate students to participate in research experiences related to the funded project. We will focus here first on REU Sites and then on REU Supplements.
REU Sites
REU Site grants may be funded for a period from two to five years, with three years being typical. REU Sites usually involve a number of faculty who agree to act as mentors to student participants. Faculty mentors should have active research projects in research areas supported by NSF but do not necessarily need to be funded by NSF grants. A track record of success by these faculty in mentoring undergraduates in research will improve the proposal’s competitiveness. It is important for all participating faculty to understand that REU grants do not fund research; they fund stipends, living expenses, and additional activities for participating students. It is assumed that the research is already supported by other sources, although expenses such as consumables used by the student may be included in the budget.
Since NSF’s goal is to provide research experiences for students who otherwise might not have the opportunity to participate in research, large research universities are expected to recruit most participating students from outside their institutions, focusing on predominantly undergraduate institutions, community colleges, or small institutions with limited research programs. Undergraduate institutions who host REU Sites may have a larger proportion of participants from their own institutions, with 50% being typical. The REU proposal must include a plan for recruiting and selecting student participants, including strategies to promote diversity of the students. Successful recruiting strategies include leveraging the university’s other recruiting activities, working through faculty collaborators at other institutions to recruit students, taking advantage of existing institutional partnerships, and visiting institutions personally. Selection criteria will depend on the goals of your particular project but should be stringent enough to admit students who are likely to succeed while not being so stringent that only the very best students qualify.
In addition to the recruitment and selection plan, REU proposals must include discussions of the research projects in which the students will participate, additional enrichment activities planned, the qualifications of the faculty mentors, and a plan for assessing the project. While all of these components are important, the core of the proposal is the description of the research projects and specifically how students will participate. Reviewers must be convinced that participating students will have a meaningful research experience; therefore, proposals should include not only general descriptions of faculty mentors’ research but also specific descriptions of what the students will do as part of that research. It is important that they are not merely assistants to graduate students or faculty but have a project that will allow them to take ownership of the process. At the same time, procedures should be in place to keep students on track and help them when they reach a roadblock in their research project. These strategies should be discussed in the project description. There are a wide range of literature and online resources available discussing “best practices” for mentoring undergraduates in research, and it’s a good idea to read some of that literature (and cite it in your proposal) when planning your REU project. Some key resources on how to plan REU projects are listed on the OPD website at http://tinyurl.com/o76bwk.
It is also expected that a variety of enrichment activities will be available to the students. These activities might include, for example, additional training, information on research careers or graduate school, opportunities to connect with faculty and with other students, social events, and tours of the campus. These activities should help to promote communication and bonding among the students while also advancing the goals of the project.
Another important component of REU proposals is the assessment plan. NSF has steadily raised the bar for what it expects in assessment over the last several years so that a strong assessment plan is now a requirement to winning one of these grants. As with any program, the assessment plan must relate to explicitly stated program goals and objectives and should be structured to determine if the program goals are being met. For example, one goal might be to encourage participating undergraduates to attend graduate school. The program’s success in meeting that goal might be measured by tracking the students to see if they did indeed attend graduate school as well as by surveying them before and after their research experience about their plans for graduate school, and determining if they took the GRE test. In addition several survey instruments specifically designed for undergraduate experiences by David Lopatto (and funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute) are posted at http://www.grinnell.edu/academic/psychology/faculty/dl/sure&cure/.
Other resources for assessment, as well as more detailed advice on how to write an REU proposals are posted on the OPD website at http://tinyurl.com/o76bwk.
REU Supplements
Applying for an REU supplement (or committing in an NSF proposal to apply for an REU supplement if funded) is an excellent way to enhance the broader impacts of your NSF project. This will help you to establish a track record in mentoring undergraduates which can be helpful when you apply for your next NSF project. REU supplements may support research experiences for students at your institution or from other institutions and may run through the academic year or may support summer experiences. They typically support one or two students.
Before applying for a supplement, be sure to check with your NSF Program Officer. They will let you know if they are open to funding an REU supplement and when to apply (typically, Program Officers encourage REU Supplement applications in the spring). They will also let you know what kinds of REU projects they would be willing to support (for example, will they support an REU experience for a student from your institution or do they prefer that you recruit students from elsewhere). The 3-page REU supplement proposal is much easier to write than an REU site proposal, but it is still important to convincingly describe what your goals will be for the experience, why the experience will be valuable to the participating student(s), and how you will assess whether the REU project was successful. In addition, if you have identified the students who will participate, you will be asked to include their biosketches.
REU Supplement proposals have a 3-page limit and include the following sections:
• Summary
• Form and Nature of Prospective Students’ Involvement (What will the student be doing? What enrichment activities do you have planned? How will you assess the experience?)
• Experience of the PI in Involving Undergraduates in Research
• Process and Criteria for Selection of Students (if your student or students are identified, discuss their backgrounds and why the research experience will be valuable to them here).
Funding decisions on REU Supplements are made by the Program Officer, so the funding decision is generally made relatively quickly.
Finally, it is very important when developing either an REU Site or REU Supplement proposal to pay close attention to the proposed budget. Hosting a student for a summer experience may require not only funds for stipend, lodging and meals but also funds to enroll the student in your institution so that they have access to campus facilities such as the health center and library. Other expenses can include travel to and from their homes, expenses related to social or enrichment activities, and funding for travel to present their results at a conference. Not including these expenses in the budget, or underestimating expenses for room and board can result in significant headaches for the PI when implementing the project, so it is important to work out these details during the proposal development process. NSF expects typical expenses to be about $700 - $900 per student per week of the experience, which includes a stipend to the student of at least $450 per week. For descriptions of funded REU sites, go to NSF’s REU page, click on the link, “Abstracts of Recent Awards Made Through This Program” near the bottom of the page, and then look for projects with titles that start with “REU Site.”
