January 18, 2012

Feature Articles

Step Five to a Winning Application: Size Up Your Specific Aims

Opportunities and Resources

In the Spotlight: Early Independence Awards and Awardees

Other News

Advice Corner

Tour Our List of Non-NIH Funding Sources
Reader Questions
- We are preparing a multiproject application where one core is using animals to generate cell lines that will be used by the five projects. On the Face Page, which sections should be Yes for Vertebrate Animals?

New Funding Opportunities

See the list

Step Five to a Winning Application: Size Up Your Specific Aims

Ten Steps to a Winning Application

Conduct a Self Evaluation
Find Your Niche
Draft Specific Aims
Identify a Study Section
Size Up Your Specific Aims
Outline Your Experiments
Nail Your Budget
Define Resources
Build Your Team
Write to Excite

This article is the fifth in our Ten Steps to a Winning Grant Application series.
At this point, we have covered finding an area of research to work in, drafting Specific Aims for a project, and seeking a review committee that would be excited by your project idea.
Find links to previous articles in the box at right.
Summary

Adopt a fresh perspective to assess the significance of your research idea from the viewpoints of your potential reviewers.
Don't assume your reviewers will consider your research area to have the same priority that you do.
Know how innovative your project should be to meet reviewers' expectations.

If you've been following our series, you already know how to create a project for an R01 application that will fire up your reviewers' enthusiasm by proposing research they will regard as new and important.
Here we show you how to put to the test the objectives—Specific Aims—you planned for your project. Though we are following the iterative approach outlined in the box below, this step provides an extra check of your aims in light of the study section you identified.

Iterative Approach to Application Planning

Staying in your niche, propose a project that:
- Addresses a highly significant problem.
- Is innovative—can create new knowledge.
Outline draft Specific Aims and one or more hypotheses.
Identify a potential funding institute and a study section that would likely embrace your research.
Outline experiments.
Assess feasibility.
- See whether you have access to all needed resources and expertise.
- Make sure the project is not growing too big for your targeted time and budget.
If you hit a roadblock, go back to the failure point and revise your plans.

Take Aim

Start assessing your Specific Aims by taking a hard look at the significance and innovation of your planned research.
Ask yourself:

Would my reviewers see my proposed project as tackling an important problem in a significant field?
Would they view my Specific Aims as capable of opening up new discoveries in my field?
Would my reviewers regard the work as new and unique?

You'll want to get outside opinions for a fresh perspective. Don't assume others, including your reviewers, will consider a research area to have the same priority that you do.
Target those who are in your field and those who are not. It’s highly likely that at least one of your assigned reviewers will not be in the field.
Also discuss your draft aims with colleagues who also aren’t in your field. If they can understand your project and get excited about it, you have a better chance your reviewers will as well.
At this point, you may want to go back to Step Three to a Winning Application: Draft Specific Aims, so you can be as certain as possible that the committee will appreciate your research plans.

Be Innovative But Stay Mainstream

Although innovation is one of the five peer review criteria, many experienced investigators report that it's difficult to succeed in review with highly innovative research.
Heed these words from an investigator who is a PI of an NIH New Innovator Award.
"It's always more difficult to convince people against commonly held beliefs (even though they may not be based on experimental data). Moreover, due to the higher risk of our work, we may also have a higher failure rate," says Sanjay K. Jain, M.D., of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health.
As you scrutinize your Specific Aims, make sure your reviewers will view them to be within the scientific mainstream.
You can think of your research as a fish in the river of scientific knowledge. While you can swim anywhere, you have to stay in the water. Reviewers expect the same idea: your research can be somewhat innovative—at the water's edge—but not so innovative that it's out on the bank.
So the research you propose should be new and unique and able to push forward the frontier of knowledge just ahead starting from what's known, as our graphic illustrates.

Illustration: starburst graphic showing how your research pushes the borders of your scientific field outward.

Then when you write your application, you'll put the information about your project's importance and innovation in the Significance and Innovation sections.
Get an idea of how investigators who wrote outstanding applications balanced these complexities by viewing our Sample R01 Applications and Summary Statements, and read more advice on the pages linked below.
In the next article, we will describe how you will follow our iterative process to assess the feasibility of your aims.
Related Links
Strategy for NIH Funding

Design a Project in Part 2
Investigate Committees and Members in Know Your Audience in Part 3

Find publications
NLM Databases and Electronic Resources
Find funded projects, experts in your field, their publications and grants, and study sections that reviewed their applications
NIH RePORTER

In the Spotlight: Early Independence Awards and Awardees

Hollywood will honor the best of the best next month at the Oscars, but NIH has already chosen the 2011 winners of "outstanding junior scientists in a leading role."
Their prize: an NIH Director's Early Independence Award (EIA), which matches exceptionally creative, mature, and productive young scientists with a host institution.
As the first to receive EIAs, the 10 investigators—including NIAID grantee Dr. Nicole E. Basta at the University of Washington—are getting a lot of attention.
Not only were they in Bethesda last month for an inaugural kickoff meeting with NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, but they're also featured in a new NIH brochure and video.
Read NIH Director's Early Independence Award (EIA)—A Grand Experiment in Catalyzing the Biomedical Workforce for a brief description of the awards and awardees, and watch the 2011 NIH Early Independence Award Scientists video to hear recipients' thoughts on the benefits of EIAs.
Five of the awardees are also in the spotlight outside NIH. They made Forbes Magazine's 30 Under 30

, a list of 30 people under the age of 30 who are considered to be tomorrow’s brightest stars in several categories, including Science and Innovation

.
Their appearance on the list speaks to how exceptional a junior investigator you must be to receive an EIA. We touched on this in our December 7, 2011, article "Gain Early Independence With NIH Director's Award." We also mentioned that the deadline for applications is January 30, so keep that in mind if you plan to submit.
EIAs are part of the High Risk-High Reward program of the NIH Common Fund, which encourages collaboration and supports a series of exceptionally high impact, trans-NIH programs. Find additional information at The NIH Common Fund.

New FY 2012 Paylines for R01s

We just announced our actual (non-interim) FY 2012 paylines at 10 percentile for non-new PIs and 14 for new PIs.
Unlike the other paylines, we maintain our R01 paylines until the end of the fiscal year.
The remaining paylines are interim. We still do not have a payline for institutional training grants (T32).
See the full list at NIAID Paylines.

Warm Welcome for Our Acting DEA Director

Following up on the January 4, 2012, article "Changing of the Guard for DEA," we are pleased to announce the selection of Dr. Matthew Fenton as acting director of the Division of Extramural Activities.
Dr. Fenton is a familiar face to many of you in his former role as chief of the Allergy, Asthma, and Airway Biology Branch in the Division of Allergy, Immunology and Transplantation.
Working in that position for seven years, he oversaw NIAID-supported research of asthma, allergic diseases, and related immune-mediated diseases, focusing on initiatives to promote the translation of basic research findings into clinical trials.
For example, Dr. Fenton helped lead the effort to assess the safety and efficacy of a novel monovalent 2009 pandemic influenza vaccine in asthmatics, resulting in the first clinical trial to evaluate the immune response of severe asthmatics to an influenza vaccine.
He also chaired a broad-based group that created the Clinical Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Management of Food Allergy in the United States.
In addition to authoring over 100 peer-reviewed publications, Dr. Fenton has chaired peer review study sections, served as section editor of the Journal of Immunology

, and held the position of president for both the International Cytokine Society

and Society for Leukocyte Biology

.
Before joining NIAID, Dr. Fenton was a tenured professor of medicine, immunology and microbiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore and a professor of medicine and pathology at the Boston University School of Medicine.
He received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Boston University in 1984 and was a postdoc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1984 to 1988.

Coming in July: Grantsmanship Workshop on New Clinical Trials Units

Before your calendar fills up, leave room for a workshop on applying for clinical trials units (CTUs) for NIAID's clinical research networks. A funding opportunity announcement for the CTUs is expected to be out this spring.
To help applicants navigate the application and review process, the Institute will hold three workshops, the first of which is scheduled for July 28 and 29 in Washington, D.C., immediately following the International AIDS Society’s XIX International AIDS Conference

(“AIDS 2012”).
We don't yet have dates for the other two workshops, but we do have the locations: South America and Africa.
Come spring, you'll find additional information, including registration instructions, at Restructuring the NIAID Clinical Trials Networks.

News Briefs

Here's news from around NIH.
Business as Usual for Reauthorized Small Business Programs—For Now. Though NIH's small business programs were reauthorized on December 31 as part of H.R. 1540, we don't expect to get the final rules for months. Until then, our existing policies continue.
Reminder: Annual Report on Laboratory Animals. Your calendar year 2011 report is due from your institution by January 31, 2012. See Annual Report to OLAW for instructions and a sample.

Tour Our List of Non-NIH Funding Sources

If you’re looking for funding beyond the NIAID Funding Opportunities List, take a moment to review NIAID's List of Foundations and Other Funding Sources.
You'll find links to independent research grants, fellowships, training opportunities, and other types of support offered by organizations outside NIH.
We cull the list to make sure it’s up-to-date and features organizations and opportunities within NIAID’s research areas.
If you'd like to suggest a foundation to add, please email mailto:deaweb@niaid.nih.gov?Subject=Foundation list. Our list is intended solely as a service to the community and we don't endorse any organization.

Feel free to send us a question at deaweb@niaid.nih.gov. After responding to you, we may include your question in the newsletter, incorporate it into the NIAID Research Funding site, or both.
"We are preparing a multiproject application where one core is using animals to generate cell lines that will be used by the five projects. On the Face Page, which sections should be Yes for Vertebrate Animals?"—Jacqueline Arciniega, NYU Langone Medical Center
The overall program and each project using vertebrate animals need a Vertebrate Animals section, unless any project is using the cell lines only. On the face page, indicate Yes for vertebrate animals.
The administrative core does not need a Vertebrate Animals section. Basically, any part of the application that uses animals must have a Vertebrate Animals section, otherwise it will receive a bar to award.