Grantopedia

Quick overview of sponsored research cost-sharing

David Ngo of the University of Wisconsin Madison delivers a succinct presentation on cost-sharing in this presentation on YouTube, which is offered by NCURA, the National Council of University Research Administrators. Thanks, David!

And the Winner is...

The results of our drawing for an iPod Nano at the 53rd NCURA Annual Meeting is:

Fariba Deravi, of Auburn University of Montgomery

Congratulations, Fariba! Thank you to all the many the people who stopped by the Cayuse booth. It was great to see current and future customers.

Red Hill Studios designs physical therapy computer games

Cayuse customers Red Hill Studios and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) are using NIH funding to collaborate on building computer games that assist patients with Parkinson's disease improve their gait and balance.

UCSF and Red Hill were the first research team in the United States to receive federal funding in the burgeoning field of low-cost computerized physical therapy games. Unlike off-the-shelf computer games, these specialized games encourage scientifically tested specific physical movements to help people with functional impairments and diseases.

Read more at the Red Hill Studios site.

Cayuse 424 Training Webinars in November

Cayuse Customer Support will be offering four online training webinars during November. Each session is 30 minutes.

Getting Started with Cayuse 424 will be offered on 11/7 at 10:00 Pacific Time and 11/15 at 1:00 Pacific.

Detailed Budgeting in Cayuse 424 will be offered on 11/3 at 1:00 Pacific and 11/16 at 10:00 Pacific.

Send email to support@cayuse.com for registration instructions.

2012 Cayuse Users Group Meeting Summary

Around 30 of Cayuse's customers sent representatives to Portland for two days of meetings on August 1 - 2. We had great discussions, peeks into the future, debate about enhancements, dialog about best practices, and terrific weather. We kicked off the event with a dinner at the Portland City Grill, featuring a view from the 30th floor, overlooking Portland and the West Hills. It was an excellent event, and we're grateful for our customers and their support.

A few numbers from the meeting:

100: Number of current Cayuse customers

$15,823,295,249: Value of federal proposals submitted by Cayuse customers in FY 2011

99.9%: First time submission success rate to Grants.gov using Cayuse 424

We posted a few pictures of the event on our Facebook page.

 

Update on grant proposal submissions and operations during shut-down

The best information we have as of today is that Grants.gov will continue to operate normally during a federal government shut-down. The site is hosted and staffed by a government contractor at a third party location. These operations are fully funded, so all indications point to grant applications being processed normally by the Grants.gov servers.

Most of the main sponsoring agencies, like the NIH, have systems which automatically retrieve grant proposals from Grants.gov. As long as Grants.gov is accepting applications and as long as the automated agency systems are retrieving them, proposals will be submitted normally.

However, anything that requires human interaction would be subject to delay. Technical issues with a submission, for example, that would normally route through a help desk escalation process would not be likely to receive attention during a shut-down, owing to staff and contractor furloughs. This good news for Cayuse sites, since errors or problems on proposals are quite rare.

The official guidelines from the White House to the federal agencies are posted here (PDF). The only services and web sites that would continue operating are "excepted activities," meaning those that deal with public safety.

This article from Federal Computing Weekly offers reporting on questions surrounding other types of government web sites.

Grants.gov and the government shut-down

Although nothing official has been published from Grants.gov, we don't expect any impact on Cayuse customers who may be submitting grant applications during a possible government shut-down. The Grants.gov servers and technology are operated by a third-party contractor. Since those services are paid in advance, there will be no interruption in service. There may or may not be an impact on the Grants.gov help desk, but Cayuse customers rarely need to use the help desk, since nearly every Cayuse 424 electronic submission is error-free. If the shut-down occurs, the staff at the Grants.gov PMO will likely be drastically reduced. Here is some additional information on a possible shut-down.

Horn toot

We really appreciate getting messages from our customers like the following. Here is an actual note we received today (customer name withheld).

"All is well here.  Folks all over Campus rave over the Cayuse product.

We have found the Cayuse Customer Service folks to always be helpful and they go out of their way to advocate for our submissions, in those rare instances when an anomaly materializes.

Keep up the great work, it is greatly appreciated."

This is similar in tone to most of the feedback we receive from customers. Have you hugged your software company today?

 

Caltech Ends 310-game Losing Streak

We like to point to noteworthy accomplishments at Cayuse customer sites, especially in the area of research. This one is a little off the research theme, but certainly merits mention: CalTech snapped a 310-game losing streak in conference basketball. Congratulations, Caltech!

GRC Workshop Story: Picasso Project

Last month's  GRC Proposal Development Workshop, at which Cayuse was a sponsor, afforded the opportunity to meet people in the front lines of research and sponsored project management.

I had an interesting chat with Enrique Mallen, a professor at Cayuse customer, Sam Houston State University. Dr. Mallen oversees the Picasso Project, which is so well known that it's the top listing in a Google search on its name. Dr. Mallen offered the story of how he started the Picasso Project, how it's funded and supported, and some of the challenges it faces. It was a reminder that sponsored research applies to the arts and humanities, as well as to the sciences.