Dr. Ashley Ross@RossLabUC
Apr 2, 2021
19 tweets
I've been asked to do this before & I'll be honest, I feel like an imposter but here it goes.
Ashley's tips on writing an NIH grant (thread)
1. The 1st and most obvious tip is to pick something that you are excited about. Trust me, the reviewers can tell if you aren't excited.
2. Put the objective of the proposal right at the beginning. As a reviewer, I don't want to wait paragraphs in to find out what the point of the proposal is. Make their lives a bit easier.
3. With that said, make sure the statement is clear and concise. This is not the place to write a run-on sentence. If they read your objective statement and are lost, that's a problem. I like to bold this statement so the reviewer can clearly find what the pt. of the grant is
4. The significant and innovation section is key. If you don't clearly lay out WHY your work is significant and HOW your work is innovative you are going to lose all enthusiasm by the reviewers. Also these sections are separate, don't confuse them
5. The significance section, from my understanding, is how your proposal fits into the context of the field. What has been done? What is needed to push the field forward? Are you shifting any existing paradigms? (NIH LOVES shifting paradigms-use that language)
6. Statements that are key for the reviewer to understand the significance should be bolded., underlined, whatever. Just make sure they don't miss it. This section takes me the longest to write b/c you really want to make sure you have read the pertinent literature.
7. Don't miss citing key literature. If you do, it will make it look like you didn't sufficiently do your research before writing this proposal. Even worse, what if one of the key people in your area is on the panel? You don't want to neglect key work.
8. For the innovation section, this should be specifically written to address what are the new innovations in the proposal? Is it the technology? Is it the application of the technology? Is it both? Most of my grants have been a bit of both and that has worked for me.
9. Show a figure on the first page of the Research Statement. This figure should be like the graphical abstract for the proposal. If it takes you pages into the proposal to show a figure, you have already lost the reviewer. Trust me, we all like pictures.
10. Make sure your aims of the grant are not co-dependent on one another. The only time I have seen where that works is if you provide enough preliminary data in that first aim to prove that a later co-dependent aim could work. But just be careful.
11. Prelim data: Be strategic in what prelim data you are showing. We don't want to see a bunch of random expts you've done to show you are productive. We want to see that you can demonstrate that the proposal is feasible. So before writing, plan what expts would prove this!
12. Organize organize organize. The sections of research strategy should be clearly organized. Whether that's by headings like "Study 1.1, Study 2.2" or "Experiment 1.0" Whatever, just ORGANIZE IT
13. The entire proposal should read like a story. Make all the pts connect. The proposal needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. If it reads disjointed, you are in trouble. I tell my students all the time: you know what a good story is, make sure your writing tells a good story
14. My personal preference (and I know not all do this), is I put prelim data for each Aim. I don't put all the prelim data in the beginning of the proposal. I find that if you put prelim data for each Aim, then you are proving how each aim is feasible. Again, personal preference
15. The way your grant *looks* matters. Make your figures look good, high res, aligned panels, not too small of font, etc. Formatting matters. You don't want to immediately turn off a reviewer when they look at your proposal. Plus if its really bad, it makes you look sloppy
16. READ YOUR PROPOSAL OUT LOUD. Trust me. You will find soooooo many awkward sentences if you do. Fix them. Subject should always be near the verb. USE ACTIVE VOICE. No one likes a passive grant writing :)
17.Once you are done, go back through and read all the statements throughout the grant that you have bolded. If the reviewer can get the gist of your proposal after reading all the bolded statements, thats good! If you read a bolded statement that seems random, then unbold
18. CELEBRATE WHEN YOU SUBMIT.
Yes, so true!!!
Dr. Ashley Ross
@RossLabUC
Associate professor at the University of Cincinnati. Lover of FSCV, carbon materials, microfluidics and brain-immune interactions. Advocate for #WomeninSTEM
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