Grantopedia

NIH changes program announcement numbers

You may have noticed changes in the program announcement naming convention for the NIH parent opportunities. For example, the Parent R01 is now PA-10-067. That can lead to confusion if you're searching for opportunities by announcement number using the old number. Here is the link to the new Parent Announcements (For Unsolicited or Investigator-Initiated Applications):
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/parent_announcements.htm

Huge numbers from Cayuse customers

We've tallied Cayuse customer usage stats from 2009 and the numbers surprised and impressed us. We knew that usage and volume would be up significantly in 2009, owing to the Recovery Act grant opportunities and the addition of many new customers. But we were pleasantly surprised to see that volume on the Cayuse platform had nearly tripled from 2008 levels.

In aggregate, Cayuse customers submitted federal grant proposals worth over $17 billion in 2009. That's up from $6 billion in 2008.

Year over year, the average medium- to large-sized customer site more than doubled the number of proposals they created and submitted using Cayuse424. On average, the total proposed dollars tripled for those customers from their 2008 levels. That's a huge increase in volume.

The platform becomes more valuable over time. For a constant price, customers can dramatically increase proposal volume and the associated potential downstream funding. In 2009, Cayuse424 allowed customers to respond to the huge increase in Recovery Act opportunities without additional investment.

Frictionless

For organizations that prepare and submit federal research grants, there are always changes to pay attention to. The next big one that looms over everyone is the migration of parent opportunities to an updated form set known in the biz as "Adobe Forms-B." At the same time, the NIH's NRSA Training Grant opportunities are converting from paper submission to electronic submission.

Next week, Cayuse customers receive Cayuse424, version 4.0. It includes all the Adobe Forms-B updates, all the validation updates associated with the new forms, plus the ability to prepare and electronically submit NRSA Training Grant opportunities. 

Since most Cayuse customers use Cayuse424 over the web, they don't have to do anything - the updates just appear. Frictionless.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Hat Trick of Cayuse customers on NPR

NPR's All Things Considered Saturday featured a trio of stories about research emanating from Cayuse customer sites. It's great to be reminded where the grant proposal process, where Cayuse makes such a strong contribution, fits into the world of science research.

While students at Rensselaer Polytechnic, Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre did research on mushrooms that led to a commercial venture for green insulation

From South Dakota State University, a story about chemistry professor Jihong Cole-Dai's research into a mystery volcano that may have caused the "year without a summer" in 1816.

Meanwhile, over at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill (where the Cayuse team was just visiting), a story about rising CO2 levels and overgrown lobsters.

"Best Places to Work in Academia" list

The Scientist magazine has published its list of the Top 40 Best Places to Work in their November issue. There are quite a few Cayuse customers on this list. Congratulations are in order!

• UC San Francisco (in 2nd place, up from 12th last year!)
• AECOM at Yeshiva
• UT Austin
• UCLA
• Cal State Fullerton
• University of Wisconsin, Madison

Heads-up to the other schools on the list. Here's one way to support the strong infrastructures that make an organization a good place to work: use the web-based proposal development and grant submission solution from Cayuse. Faculty and administrators appreciate how easy Cayuse makes the grant proposal process. 

Cayuse chooses not to "tweet"

Cayuse, Inc., the leader in web-based software for federal grant applications, announced today that it will not be using Twitter, the micro-blogging service, to share details and updates about its business. Cayuse will not be posting multiple daily entries about "all things Cayuse", updates on federal grant programs, or the value of SaaS in research administration. The company will not be harassing its customer base with reminders to "follow" company tweets, nor will it be sending similar invitations to the larger grant community. 

Instead, Cayuse staff will continue to answer the phone, write informative customer emails, and otherwise communicate with our growing list of customers. We will also continue to respond directly to the many institutions that are interested in the Cayuse approach to saving time and money in their grant procedures.

Research Grants in Kansas

Two Cayuse customer sites in Kansas have announced research grant awards.

At the University of Kansas, there was a $300,000 lung cancer research award to Emily Grant made under the Recovery Act. 

Scott’s research is directed at understanding how a particular lung enzyme works — the cytochrome P450 enzyme that breaks down nicotine

And up the way, at Wichita State, a $20 million grant from the NSF is being shared among several Kansas schools, most of which are Cayuse customers.

The five-year award is for the Kansas NSF EPSCoR (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research), a statewide program that includes WSU and other major Kansas research universities. It will provide a fresh integrative approach to address climate change and renewable energy challenges

Cayuse customers share gene research grant

Two Cayuse customers, Kaiser Permanente and UC San Francisco, are sharing a research grant from the NIH to conduct genetic epidemiology research on a database of over 100,000 participants. The $24.8 million grant will create a new resource for studying disease. From the Kaiser press release:

The resulting resource will give researchers an entirely new platform for studying genetic and environmental influences over time on a wide variety of health conditions, across diverse populations.

The UCSF Institute for Human Genetics is the partner on the project and will perform the actual genotyping. Grant funds will be shared by both institutions. 

Congratulations to both institutions! 

Web 2.0 for researchers

The NIH is funding university-driven development of a web 2.0 social networking application. As described in the press release, it's

a two-year, $12.2 million grant to bolster a national, Facebook-like, professional social network that enables scientists to find new biomedical research and partnerships.

There have been a number of commercial attempts at this concept, though there don't seem to be any clear market leaders. Perhaps this effort will have a better chance.

(h/t to the ever-vigilant Dave Cassidy at TCG for the links.)

Dr. Lee Hartwell at the AIRI Conference

At the AIRI conference in Seattle this week, Dr. Lee Hartwell, President and Director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center opened the conference with his perspective on changes in the research landscape. A few insights from his presentation:

• Collaboration is the rule. Very few projects are single-PI oriented. Now, most research is multi-researcher and multi-institute.
• The new generation of philanthropy has changed the nature of research funding. The former model was organization based. The new model is project based, and the funding is managed more like a venture capital investment.
  
• Investment in non-U.S. research is expanding as industrialized and growing economies realize the value of biomedical research. Scientists trained in the U.S. over the last few decades are returning to their countries of origin and are bringing their expertise with them.