Writing a Winning NIH Grant Proposal

With flatlined budgets and increasing restrictions on federal spending, winning an NIH grant is harder than it has been in the past. Writing a competitive and winning grant proposal requires that investigators produce a highly polished, cohesive grant that really knocks it out of the park for its significance, innovation, and approach while showing that it will have a major impact on their field. Many investigators, especially new investigators, don't know how to do this or understand what pitfalls to avoid. In this seminar, we will present a systematic approach to writing a winning grant by explaining what NIH expects to see in the research/R grant. We will show some common mistakes investigators often make in writing their grant that causes it to immediately fail. We will discuss the optimum grant organization, aesthetics, and aspects of writing that are vital to a competitive presentation. We present advise on grant writing that is taken from the NIH as well as from faculty who have written successful grants and served as peer reviewers. To be competitive today, new and inexperienced grant writers must learn the essentials of strong grantsmanship that is rarely taught today in academia. This seminar will apply to anyone writing a proposal to NIH, NSF, or a nonfederal medical foundation and is open to graduate students, postdocs, and basic/clinical researcher investigators.