cen-chemjobs: Job Seeker Resources

Grant Writing: The Basic Process
Karen Young Kreeger

For newly minted PhDs, two of the activities that define your work are undoubtedly writing papers for peer-reviewed journals and submitting grant proposals. Both processes, at this point in your career might seem a bit hazy. No fear, there are many opportunities for chemists at all stages of their careers as well as in many sectors.

Show me the money

First, where do you start looking for the research dollars? Peter Dorhout, an associate professor of chemistry at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, says that the greatest amount of support for chemists doing basic research comes from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Other government agencies funding chemists for fundamental and applied projects include the Department of Energy (DoE), the Department of Defense (DoD), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). At NIH, chemistry-related programs are related to biomedical research and are diffused across all institutes.

Such other agencies as the Department of Commerce (DoC) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) also support some chemistry research grants. The national lab system also supports specialized research for visiting chemists; for example there's special money set aside for researchers to use the synchrotron at Argonne or the light source at Stanford, or to perform experiments in laboratories with special facilities like a radiochemical lab or a special laser or neutron source.

Private foundations also support chemists, but, says Dorhout, which foundation depends on your research focus or perhaps the state in which you live. Information about each foundation is typically circulated by word of mouth, he says; so ask around your department for ideas.

Industry also supports research at universities, but it's obtained in a different way than with private and government competitive grants. "You're at a meeting and you give a talk and there happens to be someone from Shell in the audience," explains Dorhout in an example scenario. "They approach you and say: 'It seems like we're working on a very similar problem and that you have something that's hot.'" That type of funding involves the university patent office or tech transfer to set up some type of agreement, he adds.

Robert Rich, a program officer for the American Chemical Society's Petroleum Research Foundation (PRF) points out that every agency has a different policy for accepting proposals. PRF has several grant categories ranging from one for new faculty within the first three years of a tenure-track appointment to one for undergraduate institutions to one that emphasizes new and innovative ideas for tenured or tenure-track faculty.

George Rubottom, program director for organic chemistry at NSF, says that half the money that goes to support chemists there goes through the Division of Chemistry. Within this division, programs include organic and macromolecular chemistry; physical chemistry; inorganic, bioinorganic, and organometallic chemistry; and analytical and surface chemistry. There are also programs for chemical instrumentation, as well as other divisions that fund chemists, such as materials research, the biology directorate, and some programs in the geosciences.

The Chemistry Division is a great first reference for young chemists starting out but, says Rubottom, they should be aware that there are other sources for chemists at NSF. NSF also supports a five-year grant that combines the research and educational activities of scientists in the first years of their employment. These proposals are sent into the division and placed into the appropriate programs and sent out for ad hoc reviews. But these grants, unlike other mainstream grants, are also reviewed as a group.

In addition, notes Rubottom, for the foreseeable future the way new money comes into NSF is through initiative funding, called focus areas-hot new areas like nanotechnology, information technology, and biocomplexity. "People should be very aware of what they are because if their research falls into this area, this is one way for an individual to have essentially two proposals in the system at the same time," says Rubottom. These areas are listed on the NSF Web site.

DoD does support applied research for chemists, notes Stephen Lee, a grants administrator in organic and inorganic chemistry for the U.S. Army Research Laboratory in Research Triangle Park, NC. These areas include chemical weapons research, as well as ways to protect soldiers from chemical weapons, the safe demilitarization of surplus munitions, and the destruction of toxic wastes during restoration of old military compounds. Lee recently wrote an article for the ACS Younger Chemists Committee Newsletter about the different types of grants that DoD supports, including a Young Investigator Program that gives special consideration to investigators proposing research within five years of having received their PhD. The article also explains how to best work with DoD program managers. Lee advises that his "greatest point for people applying for research dollars from a military program is to really engage the program manager about their ideas and tune the work so it matches well with the program managers' packages."

The Process

The process for applying for grants isn't similar among all granting agencies. DoD for example, says Dorhout, typically asks grant writers to submit a white page (a type of preproposal), which is a one-to-two-page statement of your research idea, whereas, DoE and NSF don't require white pages, but depending upon a particular program they might require that you send in a preproposal. Some NIH programs require a preproposal.

At PRF, says Rich, as proposals come in, they're catalogued and assigned a number. Then the program officers collectively decide into which technical area the proposal falls in order to assign it to a committee and appropriate program officer. From then on the proposal, and if it becomes a grant, will be handled by that PRF program officer. Next, the program officer assigns the technical reviewers. PRF uses a snail-mail review process using experts in the proposal writers' field. The reviews and proposals go to the advisory board, which makes the final determination and ranking. Once the advisory board has made its decision, the ACS directors ratify the decision and the grant becomes official. At PRF, in the Type AC grant, those going to tenured or tenure-track faculty member, 32 percent were funded last year; for the type B, those for faculty at non-PhD granting departments, 41 percent were funded; and for Type G Starter grants, 36 percent were funded.

At NSF, says Rubottom, proposals that come into the division are assigned to specific programs. To find out what's going on in the individual programs, researchers should really get in touch with program directors, he advises. Much as with PRF, the proposals are then sent out to a panel of outside reviewers in the researchers' field. NSF grant administrators then call all proposal writers when the decisions are made about their proposals, whether they are accepted or denied, to call their attention to trends in the reviews. Some of the more common comments by reviewers include: 'Had this person had more preliminary results this would have been a great proposal.' So says, Rubottom, "we tell the grant writer to try and get some preliminary results before resubmitting." The acceptance rate for NSF career grants over the past several years is about 20 percent and for other mainstream grants it's 25 to 30 percent, he notes. What has gone down over the last several years is the rate of renewal proposals, with about 50 percent currently accepted.

Rubottom also suggests that researchers could become more familiar with the NSF grant system by volunteering to be proposal reviewers. The organic chemistry program he heads uses up to 900 reviewers in a given year, so there's plenty of room for people to break into the system, he notes. It's a great way for less experienced researchers to get a sense of how people are writing proposals.

NIH's proposal review is a two-tiered process, which differs from some other agencies. The Center for Scientific Review provides scientific review for most NIH grant applications though panels of outside reviewers called study sections. Scientific Review Administrators like Janet Nelson, who handles the Metallobiochemistry study section, select the scientific experts to serve on the panels, administer the panel meeting, write up the summary of the members' discussions at the meeting, and send the scores and comments to the applicants. From there, the proposal goes to the individual institutes, where final decisions on which proposals to fund are made. Program Officers, who work closely with the Scientific Review Administrators, handle the funded applications.

Because NIH has many different types of mechanisms for funding research from broad-based alliances to research-initiated grants, Nelson recommends that applicants do some early legwork to help match their research interests with that of the agency. She urges applicants to contact the program officer in the institute to which you plan to submit your proposal and discuss how what you want to do fits in with the mission of that institute. She also recommends a keyword search on the Computer Retrieval of Information on Scientific Projects (CRISP) database of funded NIH projects to look at what types of research have recently been funded.

Sage Advice

Now that you have some idea of the where to go for the money and a roadmap for the general process, you need some tips for writing the actual proposal. Grant administrators point to professional society workshops, books, and your colleagues for advice, but are also quick to share a few helpful nuggets.

For Rich, the top five pieces of sage advice that program officers can impart are:

If you have a question, ask the program officer. That's what they're there for. Don't assume that program officers are so unapproachable that you can't speak with them.
Follow the directions precisely. Do not ignore the directions. Do not pay attention to the directions only some of the time. "I like to tell the story of people that submit proposals to us that are missing critical elements," says Rich. "For example the one person who didn't put their name on the front of the proposal." Or, in terms of formatting, if your proposal is supposed to be no more than 10 pages and you write 25, you're not even going to get considered, he says.
Before you send your proposal into a granting agency, show it to a number of your colleagues and solicit their comments. Don't forget to factor that into your timeline to meet the grant deadline.
A proposal that's finished just before the deadline usually isn't. If you wait to the last minute, Rich has found historically that those proposals fare more poorly than those that PRF receives earlier in the cycle.
For researchers who are just coming out of school or just finishing a post-doc, don't propose an idea that's the same as what you were doing in grad school or in your post-doc. You need to show that you have some creative ideas of your own. (Many grant administrators echoed this recommendation. It's not a wise career move and agencies aren't too excited about funding derivative research, they say.)

Researchers need to be "resourceful in these days that Uncles Sam isn't going to take care of you in the way our academic grandfathers and fathers were taken care of," concludes Dorhout. So, he and others advise that researchers apply for many grants, but make sure they carefully tailor their ideas to the mission of the granting organization. So, do your homework.

Karen Young Kreeger is a freelance science writer based in Ridley Park, PA.