Let's pretend that there is no pandemic and we can all focus on our work. Let's do a thread on writing NSF grants. I learned to write NIH grants first, so I came to NSF writing from an entirely NIH perspective. In some ways, that was helpful but I also had to unlearn some bad habits. I'll share my experience - but please feel free to chime in.

I'm 40 and female - I would have happily taken JNJ and AZ vaccines if offered. The math on this is not hard.

1 in a million chance of a clotting disorder post-vax for JNJ. 4 in a million chance for AZ.

225 in a million chance of death from covid for my age group. The issue here is how serious do we think covid actually is. Is it serious enough to close down the world, destroy entire economic sectors, induce increase in mental health disorders, addiction, violence, and social unrest?

Let's talk a bit about graphical abstracts. What is a graphical abstract? I call it a visual hypothesis or in essence, the model that will be tested in a grant. It can also represent the workflow or how smaller components fit into the big picture.

Overly Honest Grant Writing Workshop

(feel free to add) Slide 1: Who is the audience for this workshop? Those pitiful peons from non-ivy schools. For the purposes of this presentation, Stanford and UCSF are considered Ivy League.

These morning email shenanigans reminded me to talk about writing big grants. So I have some unpopular opinions about big grants: 1) It's still a one-person led grant. The main PI has to be on board and fully behind whatever is being done. The rest of the team is replaceable. If you are not a PI on the big grant, it's best to remember that.

The world is on fire and the R01 deadline just passed so it's the perfect time to talk research strategy for an R01 application... First, a disclaimer: this is how I do it. I have a PhD, I worked as a scientific writer for a while, and have been drafting grants for a decade. This is what works for me (most of the time). It's not an iron-clad rule of how it should be done. Feel free to ignore. Now...

Since starting to work with NSF grants a few years ago, after coming in with years of NIH experience, I am constantly comparing and contrasting the two agencies. One of the first things that stood out to me with NSF is that the POs are often rotating - meaning most are not professional POs like at NIH and instead are academics on "loan" from their home institution.

Ok, let's talk about the Specific Aims page. As anyone with any experience with NIH grants will tell you, this is THE most important document in your package. There are many ways to approach the SA page and I am going to tell you here how I do it. It may or may not work for you but hopefully it gives you an alternative in case you are struggling.

I'm not going to dunk on the Harvard dean because so many people are doing it with so much skill that I couldn't add anything of entertainment value. But it got me thinking about the last training grant I worked on.... The PI got really upset with me when I told them that they have an inclusion problem because there was a sizable discrepancy in grade outcomes between their non-URM and URM students.