NINDS's Building Up the Nerve

S5E5: Securing Funding for Research

• NINDS • Season 5 • Episode 5

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In the fifth Season of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke’s Building Up the Nerve podcast, we help you strengthen your science communication skills with tools and advice to use throughout your career. We know that navigating your career can be daunting, but we're here to help—it's our job!

In the fifth episode of the season, we talk about Securing Funding for Research focusing on choosing what funding to apply for, “pitching” your science to different funders, and writing effective grant applications.

Featuring Sonya Dumanis, PhD, Executive Vice President of the Coalition for Aligning Science and Deputy Director for Aligning Science Across Parkinson's; Kat M. Steele, PhD, Associate Director of CREATE and Albert Kobayashi Professor in Mechanical Engineering at University of Washington; and Gene Yeo, PhD, MBA, Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at University of California, San Diego and Chief Scientific Advisor, Sanford Laboratories for Innovative Medicine.

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Transcript available at http://ninds.buzzsprout.com/.

Lauren Ullrich:

Welcome to Season 5 of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke's Building Up the Nerve, where we help you strengthen your science communication skills with tools and advice to use throughout your career. We know that navigating your career can be daunting, but we're here to help— it's our job![music fades] Hi, I'm Lauren Ullrich, Section Chief for Career Advancement in the Office of Programs to Enhance the Neuroscience Workforce, also known as OPEN, at NINDS.

Marguerite Matthews:

And I'm Marguerite Matthews, Section Chief for Career Preparation in OPEN, and we're your hosts today.

Lauren Ullrich:

Last episode, we discussed crafting effective presentations. Today, we're going to talk about securing funding for research, which will focus on choosing what funding to apply for, pitching your science to different funders, and writing effective grant applications.[music] Joining us today are Dr. Sonya Dumanis, Dr. Kat Steele, and Dr. Gene Yeo. So let's start with introductions.

Sonya Dumanis:

Hi, my name is Sonya Dumanis, and I wear two hats in this realm. I'm the executive VP for the Coalition for Aligning Science. It's a organization that designs and implements large scale biomedical research programs in the neuroscience space with the goal of accelerating discoveries. And within that purview of the research programs, I'm also the deputy director of one of our largest initiatives, Aligning Science Across Parkinson's, which was an initiative launched in 2019, and-- surprise!-- focuses on Parkinson's disease. In terms of, you know, the things that I think about on a day to day basis, as deputy director, I help oversee our research programs and often we will have research calls. And so I help run those review processes and I'm really intimately involved with that aspect. So I'm really here as a research funder who has read a lot of research grants and can provide that insight. In terms of the three words that I would describe when I think about science communication from a grant writing perspective is clarity, passion, and logic.

Kat Steele:

I'm Kat Steele. I'm a professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington. And as an engineer, my research focuses on movement and specifically human movement. I try to understand how we move and explore our worlds from walking to wheeling. And that involves both understanding how our body moves, but also looking at how technology can support movement and also how environmental barriers and societal expectations influence movement as well. Three words that I think describe my philosophy in science are open, multidisciplinary, and need-driven, looking for the why, and leading with the need.

Marguerite Matthews:

We love the word open around here. So ding, ding, ding, you get to be our favorite [laughter].

Lauren Ullrich:

You're really choosing favorites very early in the episode, Marguerite.

Marguerite Matthews:

Very early on, hey...

Lauren Ullrich:

Alright, and Gene.

Gene Yeo:

Hi, I'm Gene Yeo. I'm a professor at the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at UC San Diego. I wear multiple hats, so I'm also Director of our new Center for RNA Therapeutics and Technologies, I'm Director of the new Innovation Center at the Sanford Stem Cell Institute here, I'm chair of the steering committee at the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine. And recently we launched a new non profit institute, so I'm the chief scientific advisor there for Sanford Labs for Innovative Medicine. In my group, I focus on understanding how gene expression is modulated and controlled at the RNA level. We develop cutting edge computational and molecular technologies, integrating with cell based models to generate robust large scale data sets that can probe different aspects of RNA biology. And we use that knowledge to understand and treat human diseases. The three words that describe our science, I guess, philosophy is we are very pragmatic, we have purpose in our science, and a lot of passion of all the work that we do.[music]

Marguerite Matthews:

So, I'm imagining there will be different, uh, but maybe similar responses to this but what is the purpose of a research grant within our current funding system?

Sonya Dumanis:

I mean, I think about this a lot as we design our programs. Essentially what it boils down to is research grants are funding vehicles to catalyze ideas into practice, right? So we want to test hypotheses or generate foundational work for others to build upon. I think the challenge that's happening in our current ecosystem is that it's done in a resource scarce environment. So a lot of times you're incentivizing the individual, and you want to get that individual promoted and move forward versus a team. And that's why I also love the idea of "open," I mean, we're, we're really strong proponents of that. How do you do team science well? And how do you promote adversarial collaborations? And what I mean by that is you want to have a push and pull of opposing views. You don't want to have everyone have the same group think. And so, you know, when I think about research grants now, what I'm thinking about is, how do we change the research grant funding vehicle to create the environment that is so hard to find?

Gene Yeo:

I agree with that. I mean, we think of research grants as a way to enable us to test proof of concept or proof of value of uh, hypotheses in some sense. And so, so I guess the difficulty is we also have to use the same grants to train people, equip the lab, you know, with newest instrumentations, somehow we're also also have to disseminate these data and findings very broadly, very publicly. And so, the research scarce statement earlier really resonates with me because I do feel that the grants that are available these days ask for a lot, and that doesn't always quite fit the amount of resources that it brings in. And so I think as faculty, as researchers, we tend to have to, uh, piecemeal together a larger program and picture from a diverse source of funding from different funding bodies and agencies with different timelines, just to keep a more holistic picture moving forward at all time.

Kat Steele:

Yeah, and I also think about it in terms of resource distribution. There will always be way more questions and important questions than we have the resources for. So research grants also help to distribute and determine how we can best utilize our resources to advance science, health, technology, the many different aspects that we can fund with these different types of grants.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah, so kind of building off what Gene was talking about in terms of building that portfolio, what are some different kinds of grants that a scientist might apply for? I mean, we have talked extensively about NIH funding on this podcast, cause that's where we're coming from, but we know there are many different kinds of funding, different kinds of grants, different kinds of funders. So what are some of those opportunities and then how do you decide whether or not to apply for any given opportunity?

Gene Yeo:

I live in California. My lab is at UCSD. And so we are able to apply for funding from the state's, uh, California Institute of Regenerative Medicine. So that's a large, uh, funding, agency for stem cell or regenerative based medicines and work in the area. So that's available for us in California. I think, for folks at different, like, in Texas, they have separate for cancer. And of course, you know, there are also a lot of non profit disease focus funding opportunities. And so, at least from my group, we have a diverse portfolio. We apply for federal grants, the U grants, the P01s, the R01s, training grants, the F31s, F32s. We apply for a fair number of CIRM grants. Uh, we do a lot of disease and therapeutic work in my group, so we, you know, get grants from CHDI for Huntington's disease, Target ALS, for neurodegeneration and, we also talk to donors, although for me that's a smaller part of my time. I do enable others to reach out to donors, uh, more effectively than I can and then enable the community quite broadly here. We also think a lot about STTR/SBIR grants because we also build companies in our space. And that's another way of enabling the efforts to keep moving forward, right? In a bit more commercial sense. I think these days there's also collaborations that we can build. Uh, and it raised resources from ARPA H, right, as well. So, yeah, so this is a mix of, uh, broad category of things that we apply for quite frequently.

Lauren Ullrich:

And just for our audience, um, SBIR is Small Business Innovation Research and STTR is Small Business Technology Transfer. And these are grants that are available from different federal agencies to support small businesses. And then ARPA H is the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, this is a relatively new agency within HHS that's looking to drive transformative projects in health and medicine.

Kat Steele:

I was just going to say, one of the great things is there is a really broad landscape of funding opportunities these days. There's the federal, if you're lucky enough, state, foundation, industry as well. And then also those individual gifts and donors. And so that does create a broad landscape and you do send different ideas and questions to different places to hopefully get the questions and the needs that you want addressed.

Sonya Dumanis:

One thing I wanted to just add to build off of that, there's a lot of different ways you can get funds, and it depends on the organization, but different funds come with different strings attached. And so when you're applying, there's always this tension because it is resource scarce. So you're like, I want the money. But do you really want the money is a question that you have to ask yourself, too. Um, I think that we're in an exciting time where we're generating a lot of big data sets. And I personally believe that if you are generating a big data set and you have funding, it's your responsibility to also ensure that it's curated well and sent back to the community. But that is not a trivial ask. And so really understanding what the policies are of each institution, and how they can give you support is something I highly recommend.

Marguerite Matthews:

So when you're beginning to approach funding, whether it's through the federal government, your local government, private foundation, how do you approach writing it? Obviously there's, you have a science question or set of questions in mind, but who are you writing to? Are you writing to the reviewers, the people who may actually be reviewing the application? Are you thinking about the funders themselves, like meeting the mission, sort of the overall idea? Like, what is your process for setting your priorities? But also meeting the priorities, say, of a particular funding opportunity.

Sonya Dumanis:

I mean, you have to read the RFA.

Kat Steele:

I totally agree. You have to read the RFA and when applying for any funding opportunity, you know, I am thinking largely about the reviewers, because I see the reviewers as the knowledgeable party who can give me critical feedback on my ideas. And so depending on the agency, you know, that may be other scientists, it could be people from the community, it could be, you know, industry leaders. But generally these are people who want good science to be done and they want to help improve it and to make every proposal stronger. So I see that audience as a really strong one to write to. And in preparing for that, you know, I also have my own kind of advisory board [laughs] internally when I have a new idea that I send around my one to two pagers to, to get their feedback on early to say, is this worthwhile? What am I missing? Are there other people working in this area? And having kind of that internal feedback loop before you send the proposal out to the external reviewers can be really helpful.

Marguerite Matthews:

As a point of information, an RFA is a Request for Applications. Many funding organizations use that terminology. It has a specific meaning at the NIH. You may also hear of a PA or a PAR. Those are program announcements. So there may be different types of funding opportunities. The solicitation itself gives you the requirements. It will tell you exactly what you need to do. So just as a point of information, especially at NIH, we have just lots of acronyms and letters and number combinations that may not be as familiar to our audience.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah. That's a good point. And we used to call them funding opportunity announcements and now we call them notices of funding opportunity. So we're always switching it up, making sure people are paying attention, I guess.

Marguerite Matthews:

Or not paying attention [laughter]!

Sonya Dumanis:

One thing, to just emphasize the point that you have to write to the reviewers, is everyone's busy, everyone has something going on in their life, and so when you're writing to the reviewers, just remember that they are not going to be an expert on your proposal, so spell it out. And so something that came in handy for me when I was on the other side applying for grants, and I think about often now that I read grants, is I really think a research idea can be distilled into three big sentences for each aim. I mean, sentence one is what is your aim? I mean, what are you trying to do? Sentence two is what is your hypothesis that you're testing with this aim? And sentence three is if this hypothesis bears true, why is this exciting? If you can't write those three sentences to me, then the reviewer is going to have a problem understanding that idea. And so whenever I used to think about writing aims, I would always say like, aim one, and then that would be the logic. Aim one, this is my hypothesis. And if it's true, this is why it's exciting. And then I would go into the details. And so I, I'd highly recommend doing that. And, I love the idea, Kat, of an advisory board, just sending it to people that are not on the review committee just to give feedback and be like, did you what did you think I was asking and getting that feedback as well.

Gene Yeo:

Yeah, I was going to add on to that. I tell my lab this often. I say ideas are actually cheap. They're easy to come by. I think being able to put together the right team, with the right experience, right motivation, and the ability to lead that team, I think that is also a critical feature of being able to acquire funding because I used to chair study section at NIH, right? And we often would go, you know, can it be done? But should it be done by this team, right? And if the idea is, is good, and of course we can, you know, vet it with our close scientific friends and colleagues, but then can you actually assemble the right team to accomplish this, right? Is this idea best shepherded by this specific group that you can put together. Because I've often also reviewed grants where it's like a great idea, but it's like not the right team. And so I would love to fund the idea, but this isn't the right group of people to accomplish it. And that makes an impact for me because ultimately it's about being able to deliver right? And so if you've got a good idea, but your team isn't going to be able to execute, then we, you know, provide seed funding for what is, will be a proof of concept, but then it never actually gets anywhere. And so that, that matters a lot to me. And I, I think a lot about that when I write a grant for the reviewers for NIH and in some other nonprofit setting, maybe to the funders directly, right? Because sometimes it's more important to go this is an amazing group of people with this set of technologies. Here's one idea. But if our initial idea isn't correct, that's okay, because this team will be able to innovate into a better space or come up with something even more important and interesting, right? I think there's some tension here because, of course, you don't want to just fund the best people and just give them money to do whatever they want. But, uh, there is a balance between having a good idea with strong preliminary data to support it, and having the right expertise to be able to execute it.

Marguerite Matthews:

I really appreciate what you all have said, because it echoes a lot of what we've heard over the past few seasons about the process of writing, who you're writing for. Like recognizing the reviewers are knowledgeable, but they're not necessarily experts in your specific field or project, and so it's important to be clear and to make sure they don't want to just set it aside because it's too complicated, it's too hard to read, but also recognizing you have to show them that you're capable of doing the idea regardless of what that idea is, right? You or the team that you've assembled. And so I think it's really great that you all have highlighted all of those points, uh, because we definitely agree. I think as program staff we appreciate that and try to convey that to our applicants, but also recognizing that, you know, it takes some practice to figure out how to get that done in a way. And I guess I'll ask like a follow up. Have you all found the writing different for, say an NIH grant versus any other types of grants that you've applied for, like in terms of your approach and how you communicate your ideas.

Kat Steele:

The fundamentals are definitely all still there, you know, writing to the audience, having as much clarity, a lot of revision and time. But you definitely write differently to each audience. Partially because those reviewers differ a lot between, you know, NIH or a foundation or a local, you know, community organization, and what you focus on varies based on those audiences.

Gene Yeo:

I think the requirements of different grants can be quite distinct, right? So for example, I think for some more clinical or therapeutic idea grants, uh, folks are encouraged to think about a target product profile of the specific therapeutic that they want to develop as the guiding light. And then roll the rest of the aims into providing sort of progress towards that goal, right? I think that's true for some agencies. Other agencies, the federal one tends to be a bit more open ended. I think they have broader goals, but you don't have to declare, you know, X milligram per day, per dose, you know, sort of ideas already, right? Because you don't know it's early, right? So there are, I think, early-- in my mind, early basic biology, basic engineering kind of grants. There's a bit more mature, this is what we want to develop because this fulfills a very clear unmet need with commercial value. And everything in between, right? But they're also grants for training. I think maybe you haven't talked a lot about that, but I think you want to fund the individual based on the potential from the previous work and then forecasting the individual's vision of where he or she wants to go, right, and sort of do the math on what is this future potential and see, okay, this person is worth funding or not. I think that's also an important way to think about how do you pitch these kind of grants, right? For training.

Sonya Dumanis:

Yea I think, obviously, if there's different requirements, it's going to be written differently. But you still want to communicate effectively. One word of caution is if there are two funding agencies that have similar requirements and you've been funded by one, I know it's really hard and you want to be efficient, but don't recycle your grant completely. It's easy to catch. I have often been in a review and been like, I thought this person did this already? And then I went on NIH RePORTER and then questions arise to sort of say, wait, are they already funded to do this? And then there's this tension to say, it's resource scarce. You know how much overlap is there? Et cetera. So, as hard as it is, you want to look at each grant that you're applying to individually as an opportunity and write to that grant.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah, we see that at NIH as well, where we get the other support and the grant title that they already have from a foundation sounds very similar to what they're already doing. And then it takes a lot of work to figure out, is this actually overlap or is it like variations on a theme? And so you definitely as a PI need to be very clear about what the funding is going towards and how these projects are different, for sure. So you all talked about writing to the reviewers, but there is usually also an aspect of kind of writing for the funders especially for funders that have a very circumscribed goal. It might be to support research on a specific disease or to support technology development or, you know, something along those lines. So do you all have an example of how one kind of scientific idea, depending on how it's framed, might be pitched to different types of funders and sort of made to be more in line with their missions?

Sonya Dumanis:

So, as a funder who reads grants, and they're sometimes not written to me, I can speak a little bit about this. Um, So, for Aligning Science Across Parkinson's, we obviously care about Parkinson's disease, and we want to further understanding in this area. We have the collaborative research network, or CRN, and it's essentially curiosity driven team science research, really getting at foundational questions in science that could accelerate discoveries not just for Parkinson's disease, but probably for the field at large. So we have people that are asking, you know, basic mechanistic questions of how does autophagy work, for example, or, you know, what are fundamental network dynamics in certain types of behavior? But if they are missing the link to " how does this impact Parkinson's disease?" That can be an issue. Or if they're really focused on just generating the data, but then don't take the next step to analyze the data, and they're just focused on the collection part, that's a problem because as a funder, we're funding and then we have a responsibility and accountability to say, we have made an impact in this space. And, you know, even if we think it's a great project, if we can't go back to our sort of source of funds and say, look at the impact we've made, we're going to go out of business as well. So, just keep that in mind when you're thinking about the funder.

Gene Yeo:

We do quite a bit of technology development, so I'm not sure if it's the same idea, pitched different types of funders, but it may be different ideas, leveraging core components of the technology that casts different levels of maturity that we pitch to different funders. So for example, uh, one can imagine, you know, here's a basic technology development grant for the platform, right, that's, that goes to a very different funder from someone that may be more focused on here's a example of the asset from the platform that we are now putting through its paces, right, through let's say, for example, preclinical safety and toxicity. That's like a different funding agency. One could also leverage the same type of platform to ask very fundamental biological questions, right? And so in this other funding agency, you don't actually raise money for the platform development, but you go, I will apply a instantiation of the platform to ask a very fundamental basic question in, I don't know, immunology or neuroscience or you know, metabolism. And so then those are all different funding agencies because they're interested in different things, but then you have a core group of people and components where you can leverage at different levels of maturity to push these things along. I'm not sure that resonates as well, but this is something that we think about quite often and we, uh, we do in my lab now.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah, no, I think that's very relevant to what we were talking about earlier, too, of like building that portfolio and figuring out what aspects of your research are relevant to what funders.

Sonya Dumanis:

I just wanted to build upon that, you know, I've sometimes seen proposals come through where we joke: it's it's written by stallions. Like, these are all hotshot investigators that are coming together. Um, it's not really clear how they're going to work together, but they all have this great idea. And essentially, it reads like the kitchen sink where they're all doing all these amazing things, but there isn't a cohesive story. And so as a funder, I don't want the kitchen sink. Like I appreciate you, but that is, you know, we fund a lot of team science. So we want to really understand how you guys are going to build upon each other and tell a story that I can then assess, you know, did this come true or not, rather than saying like, here are 10, 000 billion things that we can do.

Marguerite Matthews:

Yeah, I think it also shows intentionality, right? Like this person, we've thought very clearly about how this person fits into what we're trying to accomplish and not just throwing people's names and areas of expertise in if it's not really going to work, like there's no real role for them. You just think that on name recognition alone, that that will get you somewhere. And maybe it does for some folks, maybe they've had luck with that. But I definitely think that's something that should be avoided, especially if you're, I think someone more junior and trying to establish yourself, showing that level of thoughtfulness in, to what Gene said earlier, like you have to have build a team that is capable of doing this idea or set of ideas that you're proposing and this specific application.

Gene Yeo:

Yeah, the team has to be fit for purpose, right? And I think it's often much easier to write a grant when you have clarity of the idea and how everyone fits, rather than to throw strong people at something ambiguous.[laughter] It's much harder to actually organize that. And then at the end, even when you are able to get the grant, folks have to be reminded often what the mission is. And if the mission is simple, it makes it easier to manage and administer. If it's a complicated one where we just go "we just got money to give everybody some money, good luck!". And that's harder to manage. And I think for funding agencies, that's not a good return on investment.

Kat Steele:

Yeah, I think there's a lot to be said for a lean team with the required expertise because there is a level of administrative and overhead and organizational costs that comes with each person that you add on to the team.

Marguerite Matthews:

So everyone, I think at this point can recognize that you don't often get your first grant or you don't get the grant on the first try. And so can you all talk about how you make the decision whether to resubmit? Are you resubmitting the same sets of ideas? Are you tweaking the ideas? How are you approaching making revisions or changing something? Like maybe there are opportunities in private foundations or even in NIH funding that sort of a one and done and there's not an opportunity to resubmit, but how do you make the decision if you get the notification- this application has not been funded. What would you do after that?

Kat Steele:

So since this is an NIH podcast, I'll start with NIH because one of the things I do love about NIH is the level of depth of feedback you get. You know, you get at least three reviewers' really detailed feedback, which really supports the decision for whether or not you should move forward and resubmit. And if you resubmit for a lot of the different types of proposals, you get a whole extra page to specifically say: "How have you addressed the reviewer's concerns?""What did they add?""How did you fill those gaps that they identified?" and so that's, I think, one of the really powerful things about NIH, because a lot of funding agencies you don't get that level of detailed feedback. Which makes it a lot harder to make the decision. And you have to do a lot more calling the program officer or the funder and asking their opinion from what they heard during the panel or other informal means.

Gene Yeo:

Yeah, I agree with Kat. I think NIH has this tremendous advantage where you can actually read the reviewers comments, but also, I think I would encourage folks to call the program officer and say, I know that there may be some elements of discussion that is not summarized or articulated in the summary of the discussion, but could you give us a sense of the, you know, the feel of the room and the discussion, for this specific proposal, right? I think that helps a lot. And oftentimes we try to address comments, although there have been cases where, okay, clearly this is not the right grant for this study section. And then we try to figure out, is there a different study section where reviewers might resonate more with the idea and understand the technology better and the pitfalls better and that's also great, right? Because maybe this is not the right reviewer set for this specific proposal. Other things we do, um, is we just have to reframe the problem from scratch. And so, uh, maybe we don't put back the resubmission addressing the points, but we just reframe it. And I've seen sometimes that that does also well because you have figured out what are the components people like and what components they don't like, and rather than try to address sometimes very subjective opinions about what they don't like, just rewrite the thing completely, only focusing on the things that people enjoy, right, and, uh, can understand. So that also works. But I guess the last point is sometimes we just will never get funding for something [laughter]! But to me, if the idea is sound and really it will have impact, uh, if there are ways to continue to resource the program in the lab, oftentimes we actually finish it, maybe with a different scale, and then publish the paper. And then write the grant again and go, Hey, guess what? You know, the grant that, we had read that we never got funded. That's now a Cell paper. And so maybe the next cycle, give us a bit more leeway on how we're thinking about the problem statement, right?

Marguerite Matthews:

Yeah, Gene, I really like when you said, focusing on what reviewers liked or what resonated with them or what perhaps you clearly were communicating that they were able to connect with and maybe you do reframe some of the other pieces or really focus on what are the strong points and it's easy, I think, often to focus on the bad or the things that people didn't like or you're like, "you idiot, it's clearly written on page 65, like, exactly this thing that you said isn't there." But if you really take it more from what are people seeing what's popping out to them, is there a way that I can make sure they they get more of this instead of this other thing?

Sonya Dumanis:

Yeah, I think that's a healthy mindset as someone who, you know, prior to being at the Coalition for Aligning Sciences, I was at the Epilepsy Foundation and in both places, sometimes people get very angry and they'll call me and they'll be very aggressive in their anger. And that is not productive. So I would say, read the reviewers feedback, get annoyed and as angry as you would like, then take a week. And then a week later, look at those feedback and think about whether they're fair and if you can address them. And if it doesn't make sense, that's when you can, you know, if there's a program officer or grant managements team, you can ask them "I didn't really understand what this means?" keep in mind that often the grants management is not the team-- they weren't the ones reviewing the grant, um, so they can be your ally, if you frame it as such, to really understand where the disconnect is, um, and sometimes the disconnect is, as Gene said, you just have to reframe the problem. Like, everything you had was right. It's just,

Gene Yeo:

Yeah,

Sonya Dumanis:

you didn't communicate it in an effective way, and that could be why you didn't get it. Sometimes it's because, you know, maybe you did need to use a different technique or approach. Um, and so I think that- that's easier said than done. You know we're trying to get funds, and so it's hard to take this healthy mindset. But, the other approach, I think it usually backfires. It's not, you know, yelling at someone is not going to be the way to, to get a grant through.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yes, please don't yell at me!

Kat Steele:

Yeah, [laughs] I keep repeatedly hearing, you know, the healthy mindset, and I think that's so important. And, you know, I really kind of have a nitty gritty process for how I get the grant reviews. One, I try to always remember that the reviewers are trying to make my science, my design, my technology better. And so I'll print out the reviews. I will go to a coffee shop with my favorite drink and two colors of highlighters, go through, highlight, you know, the good things and the bad things. And then I'll just let it sit, like you said, for a week, because there will be things inevitably in there that make you a little upset or a little annoyed, um, but still remembering that reviewers are coming from a very similar place of you as in this resource scarce environment, trying to improve the science. And then after I let it sit, I come back and I open up a spreadsheet. And I write those specific quotes down under the main review criteria, you know, like significance, innovation, um, and that with the strengths and weaknesses in different columns. And then that's the spreadsheet that I then send to everyone else who's on the team. And then it's at that point that I set up the meeting with the program officer so that we can meet as a team and have a really good foundation for the strengths and weaknesses and ideas for how to improve the science, based upon those reviewers comments. But get yourself a tasty drink and enjoy the process as much as you can.

Marguerite Matthews:

I like that approach. That's really great. But also like maybe a reviewer was not coming at it with the best intentions in mind, right? You can't do anything about that. You can't change this person's mind. And so your job really is to still be able to explain the science, explain the team's efforts on it, and hope that if that same reviewer or someone else can, you know, see that there have been improvements. But it doesn't help to just be angry, like let the anger dissipate, you know, turn it into something productive. Use it towards writing a better, stronger, clearer application. And then like you said, to get a nice tasty drink, the use of your colored pens, uh, all at the same time, maybe throw some money at Target and be able to just, you know, keep the party going.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah, uh, it's a recipe for burnout to take all these things really personally. And so the faster or the sooner you can develop your coping strategies for getting those critiques, um, I think the happier that you'll be for sure. Um, so speaking of communicating clearly, there are many things that a grant needs to communicate within usually a quite limited amount of space. So do you all have any tips for clearly communicating your ideas or any common mistakes that investigators should avoid when writing their grants?

Sonya Dumanis:

So one thing, I'm not saying you shouldn't do this, but just keep in mind that people read the grant with their human capacity of being able to see [laughs]. So, you know, if someone writes something in all italics, small size font, you know, it could be the greatest idea in the world, but the reviewers also straining their eyesight and might miss stuff. And so I think for me, it's really about, formatting is really important as well as the idea. Like, how are you visually going to show that idea? And sometimes graphics are worth a thousand words. So if you have space limitations, you know, make your work schematics. So it's really clear what package is going where and how that ties together. That's probably going to be a much better way of explaining what's going on than writing an essay of step one, step two technical specs of that work package. So having some creativity in how that information is displayed is really helpful. And, you know, just sometimes when you cram too much, that can also backfire. So just know that more is not always better. Because that also means that there's more questions.

Gene Yeo:

Yeah, I agree with Sonya about the graphics. I think you want the grant to be very easily readable, right? And so when there are key points that I want to sort of hammer home, uh, often we distribute that key point again and again throughout the proposal [laughter]. Because one reader may have just like missed a paragraph because, you know, they are having a rough day, but if that same key point appears again[laughter] somewhere else in the proposal, then there's a lower likelihood of the study section missing the point. I think a lot about preliminary data, and, of course, that comes from both published and unpublished source. I think the rationale for the grant has to be very clearly laid out in my mind, as both a writer and a reviewer of grants. And then what is a key critical insight or expertise that the team that's proposing the grant has, right? Because again, ideas are cheap, but can this group actually execute with something kind of creative? And so I think a lot about assembling a grant with the preliminary data deeply integrated into the believability of the execution in the proposal. So that has to be very clearly laid out, and I think if that's structured very well, and oftentimes repeated again and again in the proposal then you have the highest likelihood that, the study section can get it. Keep in mind in NIH study sections, for example, there's a primary reviewer and then second and third reviewer, but many members of the study section may not have read the grant. And during discussion, if someone can flip through the proposal quickly and still pull up points to enable the rebuttal of, maybe incorrect point by one of the reviewers, then that's very helpful for the applicants, right? And so you almost want to write a, version of a FAQ, a Frequently Asked Question, not formally, but sort of embed that in the grant, and so you can anticipate someone going "ah, what about this thing?". And then someone else going, well, I just looked at this and here it is on this page. And so that is a very important tidbit I think I can provide having been both on the study section sharing that as well as writing proposals, right? I think the junior folks should always try to get on Study section to at least run through these exercises. So they understand how does that session actually in practice works.

Kat Steele:

Yeah, like Gene called that FAQ. I think I like bullet points a lot in grants and strategic bolding, where you should basically be able to hold up the review criteria and hold up your grant and say, "Okay, if they're looking for innovation, I've given them four bullets for how this is, you know, hopefully innovative that are convincing." Another beyond the preliminary data and the connection to prior research that Gene emphasized. I also like to think about alternative strategies and what happens when you're wrong. Daofen Chen, one of the program directors at NINDS always liked to ask me, "well, what happens if you're wrong or if you fail, or if your technology doesn't work?" And one, you want to have alternative strategies clearly laid out in your grant to help reviewers gain confidence. But also you want to think about posing your question in such a way that even if your hypothesis is wrong, or your technology fails, that you learn something that advances the science. And so that's a little piece from Daofen that I try to embed in every grant.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah, oftentimes I see alternative approaches that are like, "this will work."[laughter] And it's like, that's not [laughter], that's not an alternative approach. Or it's sort of like, well, our baseline hypothesis is correct, but you know, maybe I'll use a different mouse model because it's the, it's the technique or something else that's gone wrong. But what happens if your hypothesis is fundamentally wrong and having that in your grant can really, I think, give the reviewers the confidence in you that you've really thought through the problem and you really understand all of the different pieces and that you are the right person to tackle that.

Marguerite Matthews:

And I think the FAQ exercise that Gene mentioned could really help with that, right? Like, if this doesn't happen, what? And it may, maybe you don't embed every single thing into the grant itself, but you have thought about it, and you're strategically figuring out. Perhaps this is the bigger question to be asking if something were to go wrong or something, I get something different from what's explained. I think that's really important to think about those alternative or if everything blows up in your face, then what? And start working backwards of how you can kind of fix it.

Kat Steele:

I've literally had tables in my grant where each row is an aim, and then each column is what if we're right, what if we're wrong, and then saying the scientific and clinical impact for each of those aims just to say, well, what happens if we're right or wrong based on each aim or objective of the grant?

Marguerite Matthews:

Oh, that's a nice tip.

Sonya Dumanis:

As a lover of spreadsheets, I also love that idea [ laughter]! I wanted to pick up on something that Gene had mentioned in terms of younger investigators. Something that was really informative and I feel really lucky to have experienced in grad school back in the day was being able to read other people's grants. And I think the ones that were most informative were the investigators that shared grants that weren't funded. And so I could quickly understand the format of a good grant versus the format of a grant that didn't get funded. And a lot of it had to do, as you guys have alluded to, the strategic bolding. There is a way that a grant looks like. And I think that when you're first starting to write grants, you might not be aware of it. And so for the people that are listening to this podcast and want to start writing a grant, you should ask your community, "can you share the grants that got funded or not funded?" And hope that that they're able to share that because I actually think that is one of the best ways to learn when you see how others have done it.

Marguerite Matthews:

I'd also like to highlight being strategic about what that formatting looks like because you may have a very different type of science and I've seen a lot of random bolding and I'm like I have no freaking clue why this is bolded it actually doesn't seem significant whatsoever and so I think being smart about the way in which you're utilizing other people's materials can be helpful. And if you have a question, ask them like "Hey, is there a reason you did this this way?". Because someone else may have done it differently. Um, and so I do think using someone's successful grant or not successful grant can be helpful in getting you into a mindset about the way you're formatting. But also you have to use your brain at some point to say, um, they use this here, but maybe that's not something that I will use, or maybe it's these graphics were really great for explaining their approach, but my approach is quite different and a schematic may not be as useful here as it is for something else.

Sonya Dumanis:

I like that some of the takeaways in this

conversation are:

use your brain. Don't yell [laughter]!

Marguerite Matthews:

I mean, like, I think because we're dealing with scientists who are functioning at such a high level, and they are so many of you all are just brilliant. Those little things can get away from you. And I think sometimes people default to what feels like is the easiest way to get it done, or this is the tried and true and only way a successful grant is written and you just kind of lock into what you've seen others do instead of saying, "okay, does this really make sense for me?" And I, I don't even mean it in a diminutive way. If you're going to write a grant, it's important to spend the time of really thinking about what that looks like. Even, you know, the facilities and resources. Why are you just copying and pasting from another grant when you're not using half of the resources or facilities listed in the document? Like, it really can take away from what is happening, and I think taking the time to comb through, does this make sense? Is this clear? Should this be here? Cannot be underscored enough, even as you get further and further in your career.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah, I mean, I just think one of the hardest things maybe in life is to put yourself in someone else's shoes or to kind of divorce yourself from what you know, and these words on paper in the absence of anything else, is that going to make sense and communicate the things that I want to communicate? And it's almost impossible to do that by yourself. And I think, Kat, you were, you're the one who said that you had this advisory board, right? And I think that's the only way to do it, is to have other people read the grant and tell you if you are communicating what you think you're communicating. Because we just can't step outside of ourselves and know how it will come across to someone else.

Marguerite Matthews:

Great point. So I think each of you have mentioned working with collaborators or having team science. Can you talk about some best practices for writing a grant with multiple collaborators, especially folks who are doing some pretty heavy lifting? So maybe not just someone who's serving in a semi minor role, but someone who really is helping contribute to the intellectual aspects of the grant, as well as a lot of the experimental stuff. What does that look like? How do you break up the components? Who gets what? Who's the contact PI? Or who's the, I don't know what it looks like, non NIH, uh, organizations, but how do you decide who is doing what?

Sonya Dumanis:

So one thing I think about is when you are applying for a team science grant you need to sound like you're a team. And what I mean by that is there probably should be someone who is the team lead that is pulling the grant together and you want to make sure that it's clear that this was written with one voice. Sometimes you see applications and there's different voices in the grant and that gives just a sense of disjointedness and so you really want to think through that and often in team science applications, at least through ASAP (Aligning Science Across you also have to discuss your collaboration plan. You know, how are you guys going to meet together? And you know, it might seem like a cookie cutter paste response of we're going to have weekly team meetings, et cetera, but just really thinking through that a little bit more can help you stand apart as well to show your commitment and your past histories of collaboration. If you're bringing a new collaborator on, why you think it's going to work, those kind of components are things that we think about a lot.

Gene Yeo:

We have had many co-PI, multi-PI grants. And I think an example of learning from that is it's a lot like having a close relationship. Some just don't work out. Right. And some do. And then you continue to invest in that relationship. And so when we first imagine an RFA, uh, that we can apply for and we go, okay, that's something that would be very ideal for if we had, you know, this two people, for example, and us, right? And so then we try to put the team together. It almost works more effectively if the group has already been working together, right? To Sonya's point, I think you have to sound like a team, right? And that the team is actually functioning. I think the RFAs where we have tried to assemble a group that we have not worked together before, but just because of the expertise, that doesn't always go well [laughter]. Sometimes it goes well, but oftentimes it's difficult because, you know, we have not established this long term relationship in terms of working together. And then when we get the funding, that's like the first time some of the group members are trying to work together. Sometimes that works and sometimes that doesn't, right? So I try to first work with people that I want to work with. Independent of any RFA, right. And if that goes well, then together we can try to find opportunities where we can apply for something together with the history of working together in an effective team. So in terms of writing a multi PI grant, we love Google Doc, right? Because then multiple people can be editing that and reframing it as we go. But you still need someone that's the lead author of it because otherwise it gets very difficult in deleting someone's comment and trying to address someone else's point. And then you may have a very different proposal than what you had imagined. And so establishing who is the lead author it may not be the same as the lead PI or the contact PI that has ownership of the intellectual craft it's very helpful.

Kat Steele:

Yeah, I also love multi PI grants and I think most of our grants these days are multi PI grants, largely because the questions we want to answer require that multiple levels of expertise. I agree with everything that they have said about actually being a team, have a history of working together, you know, throughout the grant writing process and hopefully in experiments before you've been meeting for at least an hour, every one to two weeks to really develop that rapport and scientific rigor together. You do need a lead writer. We also spend a lot of time thinking about how we're going to divide the tasks in the grant. So, is each person going to be responsible for an aim? Are there specific aspects that each person will be responsible? It's dependent on each grant. We also kind of dream what our publications will be coming out. So saying like, oh, you know, ideally we'd end up with these four publications and discussing authorship early. And that helps with the vision, but then also helps with transparency for everyone. The one point I also wanted to add was for new investigators is that you do need to protect that new investigator status, especially for the NIH R01 grants. And so often you wouldn't want to be, if you were a new faculty, you wouldn't want to do a multi PI with a senior faculty member, because then if you're lucky enough to get funded, you lose your new investigator status, and you didn't get that extra bump where they fund a higher percentile of the new investigators, depending on some institutes at NIH. And so we often say, okay, well, you're going to write these sole PI grants while you're still a new investigator and get that bump and hopefully, you know, get that independence. And then after that, we can collaborate, you know, more directly and have more multi PI grants as well.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah, that's definitely something that we advise people to be thinking about that early stage investigator status because 10 percentile points, that's what we do at NINDS, is nothing to sneeze at. That's almost double the pay line at this point. But you will still get it as long as all the PIs on the grant are ESI, then the application will be ESI. But yes, if there's one senior person in there, then they just ruin it for everybody. So for this conversation, we've mostly been talking about grants, but there are other ways to get funding for your research, including contracts, cooperative agreements, prizes, individual donors or investors. Do any of you have any experiences with these other types of funding and how do they fit into your kind of overall portfolio of investments that you have?

Gene Yeo:

I have been very fortunate to be able to receive awards, for example, the Allen Distinguished Investigator Award. So that was something in between a grant, but also a prize. And so that was very helpful for my group. We do a fair bit with biotech companies in sort of cooperative agreements. And so that has also been very good for us. We have been part of STTR SBIR grants. So that is in companies that we create. We haven't had investors that funded the lab directly. Typically, they fund companies that were involved with and then companies work with the lab or with our collaborators. So I guess in some way we have touched on different kinds of funding. I think the way we structure these in my lab is people and then sort of the scope of projects. Right? So with contracts from biotech companies, we tend to have technicians, uh, staff scientists work on them. Oftentimes we, we push to publish the findings from even a contract, but if that doesn't work out, then it makes sense to have a non student or non postdoc involved, right? With funding that comes with a bit more open ended, uh, questions, we have riskier projects. And so that's usually a mix of grad students and postdocs. And then with donors or with, more specific sort of requests that we have some of our centers take care of that because that's an organization. They have the administrative reach to be able to enable that and the development office to craft a better experience for the other party, right? I think it's important to have a diverse portfolio just because it's hard to tell when funding ends up disappearing. Sometimes things change at the NIH, and then we have to rely on non NIH funding. Sometimes companies disappear. And then the contract that we were involved with also disappear with the company. And so we have to sort of later on have non overlapping, but synergistic funding. So we sort of piecemeal this together to enable sort of a robust funding environment for the group.

Kat Steele:

Yeah. And I'll also add that, uh, especially for those riskier or new ideas for us, individual donors and gifts have just been critical. You know, we've really been focusing on how we can move the needle for kids with cerebral palsy and Down syndrome. And that requires stepping outside of the traditional clinical and medical modes and getting that preliminary data for federal funding is really hard. And that's especially for us where donors and gifts have been key. And part of the piece that supports that is keeping your community really closely engaged in your research, engaging your participants or families that you're working with to let them know how things are progressing, having an advisory board of those families and participants who can help guide your research. But we really try to keep the community engaged throughout the process. We do treat our gifts just like grants where we want to make every dollar work really hard. And so we write up quarterly reports of the progress and keep people abreast of what's happening and to keep it as a tight feedback loop and keep that community engagement.

Sonya Dumanis:

Yeah I agree with everything that's been said. I was just reflecting on when I used to work at the Epilepsy Foundation and I worked with a lot of startups to help push their ideas forward into the space. I mean, the difference between a grant and an investor, right, is an investor wants to return on investment. So there is going to be this pressure to perform some deliverable, get to a go, no go decision. And so it's a different environment. And so if you have a specific product, then maybe going the investment route might make sense. Um, but again, these funding vehicles will come with different strings attached than your traditional grant. So, I think it also depends on your project about which route you might prefer. I think at the end of the day, regardless, you should always be over prepared. Whether it's for a grant or whether it's for a pitch. As much as possible, try to find other people that have been awarded through those vehicles, so you can get insight on the audience that you're writing for. Different nonprofit funding agencies have different audiences and interests. And the best way to ask that is just a cold call and be like, "Hey, I saw that you were invested by person X, you know, what can you tell me about them?" And the worst that can happen is the person says, "I don't want to say anything."

Marguerite Matthews:

Well, thank you all for sharing your wisdom with us today. Can I ask each of you for one last piece of parting advice for future applicants?

Kat Steele:

Sure. Um, writing is thinking and so writing the grant itself will improve your science and enjoy the process as much as you can.

Gene Yeo:

I think writing is also very iterative, right? And so don't feel like you have to have the perfect draft and idea. I think you can iterate this over time. And I think at the end, the experiments will ultimately tell you whether or not the idea was actually a good one, right? And so, uh, good luck, yeah.

Sonya Dumanis:

And I guess I would go to the three words that I had at the beginning and opening of clarity, passion, and logic. So just when you're writing, write with a vision, be excited about what you're writing about and try to be as clear to guide the reviewer and the funder, um, to why your idea is a good one.

Marguerite Matthews:

And Lauren, what's your advice?

Lauren Ullrich:

I'm going back to this theme of asking other people to read your grant before you submit it. I think one really nice exercise is to actually not just ask for their feedback, but ask them to either summarize or repeat back to you kind of what they heard or what they think the main take home points are. And then you can compare that to what you wanted the take home points to be and see whether you have emphasized the things you mean to emphasize and really got your point across or whether they took something completely different away from your words. And Marguerite, what's your advice?

Marguerite Matthews:

I think I'm going to build off of what Sonya said, that you and your science, your personality, your identity as a scientist should show up in the application. You won't be in the room when your application is being reviewed, but the reviewers, whoever they may be, should understand who you are as a scientist and what you're trying to accomplish. It's great to utilize other people's work to, build your foundation, but think about how you want your science to be communicated and you'll never know how good you are communicating that until you try and see what others have to say about it. So be you as much as you can. And if you're working with a team, help your team create a voice so you can have, I think also, as Sonya said, one team, one voice. That there's a cohesive message happening. And I do think that just may take some time to build that identity, but you should not feel like you have to do things as others have done just because they're successful.

Lauren Ullrich:

And that's all we have time for today on Building Up the Nerve. Thank you to our guests this week for sharing their expertise. Thank you to Ana Ebrahimi, Mariah Hoye, Jimmy Liu, Joe Sanchez, and Tam Vo for production help. And thank you to Bob Riddle for our theme song and music. We'll see you next time when we tackle writing impactful publications. You can find past episodes of this podcast and many more grant application resources on the web at NINDS.nih.gov.

Marguerite Matthews:

Follow us on X @NINDSdiversity. You can email us with questions at nindsnervepod@nih.gov make sure you subscribe to the podcast on Apple podcasts or your favorite podcast app so you won't miss an episode. We'll see you next time.