Paula Gregory, PhD, Associate Dean for Faculty & Educational Development at University of North Texas, offers grant writing guidance to NIH fellows through a series of workshops and a full course specifically focusing on the K99/R00 funding opportunity. These programs are highly recommended for trainees who plan to transition into an academic career. Until the next offering, here are Dr. Paula Gregory’s top tips on grant writing according to two NICHD fellows who recently attended one of her workshops.
Jeremie Oliver
Graduate Student, D’Souza laboratory
“Always remember that grant reviewers have a broad range of backgrounds. Even though your proposal must be focused, it also must be understandable to everyone.
This workshop taught me not only how to construct an entire grant application using my own primary data, it taught me how to articulate my hypotheses, preliminary results, and experimental approaches in concise and understandable terms. Paula and her course opened my eyes to the principles and skills inherent to writing fundable grants at the trainee level and beyond.”
Joyce Thompson, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow, Rocha laboratory
“Paula asks students to share their aims page and other documents and opens discussion from the rest of the class. I benefited a lot from sharing my aims page without hesitation.
[A useful strategy] I learned from my experience submitting the K99 was to just keep going. The K99 has so many documents, and it can seem intimidating and daunting. To make getting to the finish line easier, I used an Excel document containing a list of the application documents and their page limits. I set deadlines for each document, and as I finished them, I crossed them out. When I got stuck on a document, I just took a break and wrote some of the easier parts.”