Faculty Facilitator

Topic

Writing

A collection of 18 issues

NIH Reference Letters

The NIH requires Reference Letters for Fellowships (Fs), mentored Career Development Awards (Ks), and other programs. They are often confused with Letters of Support, but they have a completely different purpose and should be approached in a structured way to ensure that they provide a trainee applicant with the best

NIH Narrative

The NIH allows you 3 sentences to summarize your proposal in the form of a narrative statement. This structure forces you to succinctly and directly address the NIH's review criteria, specifying whether your research proposal innovatively addresses a problem of importance (Factor 1) in an achievable (Factor 3)

NIH Project Summary/Abstract

The Project Summary/Abstract (called abstract from here forward) gives you 30 lines of text to provide an overview of your proposal. The NIH helpfully provides a clear set of requirements for what to include in the SF424 R&R guide. The abstract should touch on all the major

2025 NIH Simplified Review Framework

With the goals of both reducing review burden and broadening the number of individuals and institutions working with the NIH, the NIH is moving to a simplified review framework for all grants submitted on or after January 25, 2025. As of this writing, the outcome of review currently includes 5

Book Review - "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamott

My format for book reviews is heavily borrowed from how James Clear does his book reviews, providing an overall summary and then notes and quotes that resonated with me. Final Summary This was a great book that discussed emotional and practical things that can keep people from writing. Practical recommendations

Grant Tip - Clearly State Your Expected Results

The Research Strategy of an NIH R01 grant contains descriptions of experiments to be performed in order to achieve the goal of the proposed research. While most people do an excellent job stating the goal of an experiment and describing methodology, many forget to clearly define what they expect to

NIH Letters of Support

A Letter of Support for a grant is a means to convey to reviewers that the PI has in place the expertise and resources to complete the proposed grant aims. The letter should be succinct and tailored for the specific grant that the PI is applying for. Structure of the

Authorship Order

The order authors are listed on peer-reviewed scientific papers serves as a shorthand that signifies the contribution of each author. Each discipline has its own system in terms of what each authorship position signifies. Here I write from the perspective of the basic biomedical sciences. What Each Position Signifies The