In mid-December Cayuse will release an update that will include support for all the new NIH forms outlined in http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-09-149.html as well as form support for the training (T) opportunities. According to the announcement “Applicants must download and use the new application packages for submissions targeting due dates on or after January 25, 2010.” Once the Cayuse424 update is complete (mid-December) you will be able to download and submit these new forms and opportunities. You will also be able to “transform” any proposals using the current forms-set to the new form-set after the update.
The School of Medicine and Public Health will be providing demonstrations of the Cayuse software throughout the year. Participants from any unit on campus are welcome to attend; no registration is required.
Upcoming SMPH Cayuse Trainings:
Thursday, December 11
9am-11:30am
1360 Biotech Center
Thursday, January 8
9am-11:30am
4201 HSLC
CALS Research Division has had a number of questions about the processing of some grant competitions (i.e. graduate school, provost office, UW System, and so forth). The following will outline how applications will be handled by CALS.
All applications (regardless of what the instructions state) should be routed to the CALS Research Division with a WISPER record.
Since many of the competitions require original signatures, the completed application with all signatures, except for the division signature, should be delivered to the CALS Research Division at least one week prior to the due date listed in the proposal instructions.
Upon receipt, the applications will be reviewed for submission. Upon approval, units will be contacted to pick up and complete the delivery of the submission.
These funding opportunities can be found at: http://www.grad.wisc.edu/research/researchfunding/index.html
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) repays outstanding student loans through its extramural Loan Repayment Programs (LRPs). The LRPs target researchers who are or will be conducting nonprofit biomedical or behavioral research, and the application cycle opens September 1. Applications will be accepted online until 8:00 p.m. Eastern time on December 1, 2009, at www.lrp.nih.gov.
The five extramural LRPs are:
BENEFITS
New LRP contracts are awarded for a two-year period and repay up to $35,000 of qualified educational debt annually. Tax offsets also are provided as an additional benefit. Participants may apply for competitive renewals, which are issued for one or two years. Undergraduate, graduate, medical school, and other health professional school loans qualify for repayment. An NIH grant or other NIH funding is not required to apply for or participate in the LRPs.
ELIGIBILITY
Applicants must possess a doctoral-level degree (with the exception of the Contraception and Infertility Research LRP); be a U.S. citizen, national, or permanent resident; devote 20 hours or more per week to conducting qualified research funded by a university, nonprofit organization, or federal, state, or local government entity; and have qualified educational loan debt equal to or exceeding 20 percent of their institutional base salary.
AWARDS
Each year, some 1,600 research scientists benefit from the more than $70 million NIH invests in their careers through the extramural LRPs. Twenty-six percent of awards are made to individuals within one to five years of receiving their doctoral degree. More than 75 percent of awards go to individuals within 10 years of receiving their doctoral degree. Approximately 40 percent of new applications and 70 percent of renewal applications are funded.
QUESTIONS?
Visit the LRP website at www.lrp.nih.gov for more information and to access the online application. For additional assistance, call or e-mail the LRP Information Center at (866) 849-4047 or lrp@nih.gov.
Several improvements will be implemented soon as a result of the work of Administrative Process Redesign (APR) teams.
End IT Access for UW-Madison Employees Leaving the University
It hasn’t always been easy for HR administrators to notify DoIT Security when employees have left the university and need to have their IT access ended. That’s changing this September, when a new standardized, automated notification system called Terminated Employee Access Removal (TEAR) system will be introduced to campus HR administrators.
HR administrators can use the new system to request that employee IT access be terminated by DoIT Security for the following campus IT systems: Payroll, HR and Budget transactions (Mainframe 3270), PVL, CHRIS, Insurance Prepay, UWBA, Student Appointment Payroll System, UW Madison Employee Reports, InfoAccess, and the Housing Assignment/Billing system.
Making the Transfer of Non-Salary Costs More Efficient
Changes being implemented to improve efficiency and reduce the time it takes to process non-salary cost transfers include: separate forms for processing grant and non-grant cost transfers, new policies and procedures, offering training and certification in the use of the JET tool so that schools and colleges can directly enter non-grant corrections into SFS, and eliminating the need for a validation step in Accounting Services for the non-grant cost transfer process. A pilot training program of the new process and JET usage is planned for September.
One requirement of the NIH Public Access Policy is that individuals submitting an application, proposal or progress report to the NIH must include the PubMed Central (PMC) reference number (PMCID) when citing applicable papers that are authored by the Principal Investigator or that arise from the PI’s NIH-funded research. The NIH Manuscript Submission ID (NIHMSID), which is issued upon submission, is a temporary substitute for a PMCID.
Effective August 21, 2009, an NIHMSID may be used to indicate compliance with the Public Access Policy for up to three (3) months after a paper is published. After that period, a PMCID must be provided in order to indicate compliance.
<http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-09-136.html>
The NIH Public Access Policy requires submission of the final peer-reviewed approved manuscript at the time of acceptance unless the journal is an NIH depositor (e.g. Protein Science) or you request the publisher deposit the manuscript for you (e.g. ACS – Option C).
If you have questions, please contact: Julie Schneider, jschneider@library.wisc.edu, or Emily Wixson, ewixson@library.wisc.edu.
The national conference for the scholarly exchange of ideas on sustainable agriculture, and natural resource management and conservation will be hosted by the College of Agriculture and Related Sciences at Delaware State University (see http://cars.desu.edu/symposium for details).
Papers and other scholarly work submitted for the conference will be published in a special issue of the Journal of Environmental Monitoring and Restoration.
Please remember to let your proposal development contact in the CALS Research Division know of any change in the status of your proposal submissions.
Please remember to let your proposal development contact in the CALS Research Division know of any change in the status of your proposal submissions. When proposals are selected for funding, we can help you by facilitating the award setup process. If a proposal has not been selected for funding, it helps us all keep WISPER as effective as possible when we can work with RSP to update the WISPER record accordingly. To find your contact in the Research Division, please go to http://www.cals.wisc.edu/Research/staff/index.php?1?Cp8 and click on your department’s name.
Please review the following information on NIH Training Grant protocols, the transition to electronic submission for NIH fellowships , and support for shortfall on NIH training grants and predoctoral fellowships.
Protocols on NIH Training Grants
With the addition of Animal Care and Use protocols to the PLuS (Protocol Lookup System), it is no longer required to enter any protocol numbers or attach protocol approvals to WISPER records for NIH Training Grants. Instead, attach an Excel spreadsheet that lists all active and applicable protocols for the Training Grant to the WISPER record. As a reminder, it is required that, for each Training Grant, information is recorded and updated regarding all protocols under which active trainees are working. This information will be required by RSP at time of award.
For more information on entering protocols for training grants in WISPER, please visit the Graduate School’s website at http://www.grad.wisc.edu/research/traininggrants/animalhumanbiol.html.
NIH Fellowships transition to electronic submission for August 8 deadline
As of the upcoming August 8 deadline, NIH will require all fellowship applications to be submitted electronically. Note that this means, at the UW, we will us Cayuse for all fellowship applications. Cayuse plans to release version 3.8 in mid-July, which will include support for NIH fellowships. More information on Cayuse training for fellowship submissions will follow, but please consider the following two steps that can be completed in the meantime:
In addition, all applicants must have an NIH eRA Commons account, and all letters of reference are required by NIH to be submitted via the Commons.
Contact Becky Bound, rbound@cals.wisc.edu, 265-8443, with any questions or plans to submit a fellowship application.
Support for shortfall on NIH training grants and predoctoral fellowships
The Graduate School recently released a memo stating that, as of Fall 2009, coverage will be available for the shortfall on all NIH training grants and predoctoral fellowships on campus. For details, please visit http://www.grad.wisc.edu/research/traininggrants/documents/TuitionRemissionGraduateFellows61609.final.pdf.
There will also be limited support available for the shortfall on other graduate training and fellowship programs, as outlined in the memo. Please contact Becky Bound, rbound@cals.wisc.edu, (608) 265-8443, with questions about the memo or how it might affect your particular award.
A reminder that the indirect cost rate on USDA AFRI proposals is 28.2% of *Total Direct Costs*.
Page 134 of the AFRI Request for Applications states that the indirect cost rate for these proposals is capped at 22% of Total Federal Funds. Because Total Federal Funds = Total Direct + Total Indirect, we have to “back into” the rate as a percentage of Total Directs - the calculation to arrive at 28.2%, then, is 22/78. This indirect cost rate is based on the statutory rate established by Section 7132 of the Food, Conservation and Energy Act amended section 1462(a) of the National Agricultural Research, Extension, and Teaching Policy Act of 1977 (7 U.S.C. 3310(a)).
*In Cayuse*, the budget forms are set to default to the university’s negotiated indirect cost rate. When you enter a budget for a USDA AFRI proposal into Cayuse, be sure that “MTDC_On_campus” is selected as the indirect cost type for ALL budget categories (Cayuse does not have a “TDC” option, so this is the workaround to achieve the same result). Cayuse will list tuition remission as excluded, and will also apply an indirect cost exclusion to the portion of any subcontract that exceeds $25,000. The tuition remission category needs to be changed to “MTDC_On_campus” and the full amount of all subcontracts must be included in the IDC base in order to ensure that your indirect costs will calculate correctly.
If you have any questions when preparing an AFRI budget, contact your department’s contact in the Research Division.
The Fiscal Year 2009 (FY09) Defense Appropriations Act provides $80 million to the Department of Defense Prostate Cancer Research Program (PCRP) to fund research that will eliminate prostate cancer.
This program is administered by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command through the Office of the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP). A summary of PCRP funding opportunities is provided below. Detailed descriptions of each of the funding mechanisms, evaluation criteria, and submission requirements can be found in the FY09 PCRP Program Announcements.
Please see this research program's full description for more information.
The Research Division’s tuition remission transfer system is still not fully functioning. The system created transfers for USDA projects that do not allow tuition remission. Currently, the transfer information is being pulled and created manually. Transfers are sent to department contacts via email for review and further processing.
It is possible that some projects are being missed because there is a large amount of data to review each month. Please review all of your USDA awards to ensure tuition remission is being transferred for those that do not allow it. Currently we are only processing transfers for USDA awards only.
It is the departments’ responsibility to ensure transfers are being submitted on a monthly basis for other sponsored projects that do not allow tuition remission.
The volume of applications being submitted nationally through Grants.Gov is staggering. Grants.gov processed 38,646 applications in March 2009, a 78% increase over applications processed in February. This alert is provided as a reminder – early submissions are strongly encouraged.
NIH has released two new announcements related to Recovery Act funding.
The first, the Recovery Act “Grand Opportunities” Grants program (nicknamed “GO” grants), will support high-impact ideas that lend themselves to short-term, non-renewable funding and may lay the foundation for new areas of investigation. Applicants may propose to address a specific research question or to create a unique infrastructure/resource designed to accelerate scientific progress in the future.
For important details about the project scope and specific requirements for these grants, click here.
Applications for NIGMS “GO” grants should be responsive to the NIGMS topic list, which is posted at http://www.nigms.nih.gov/Research/GrandOpportunityAreas.htm.
The second, the Recovery Act program for Biomedical Research Core Centers to Enhance Research Resources, is intended to help institutions hire tenure-track faculty. The formal name relates to the P30 mechanism that is used. NIGMS will consider applications from institutions to hire, and help support start-up packages for, faculty who are newly independent investigators doing research related to the NIGMS mission. NIGMS is particularly interested in helping to restart faculty searches that were discontinued due to economic constraints.
The request for applications is at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-OD-09-005.html.
Testing for Adobe Reader version 8.1.4 is complete and is now compatible with Grants.gov.
The compatible versions of Adobe Reader are available to download for free on the Grants.gov website on the Download Software page. For more information on Adobe Reader please visit the updated Adobe Reader FAQ section.
The USDA CSREES AFRI (Agriculture and Food Research Initiative) Request for Proposals has been released. View the complete 2009 AFRI Request for Proposals. Here are some tips and hints to remember when putting together your application:
For more information about the USDA CSREES Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), visit the CALS Research Division USDA webpage.
For ARRA information, please visit our ARRA Information and Opportunities webpage.
It’s not uncommon for an effort commitment to change over the course of a project. Since effort levels are part of the award documents and a commitment that needs to be met, changes need to be documented with the sponsor. Read on to find out how to easily request an effort change.
If you are planning on changing a commitment more by more than 25 percent, you must notify the agency. Deviations within in 25 percent are acceptable and do not need to be approved. For example, if you have a 10 percent effort commitment, you can report as low as 8 percent without notifying the sponsor.
For NIH awards, we are required to get approval for effort changes including withdrawal from the project, absence for any continuous period of three months or more, and reduction of time devoted to project by 25% or more from level in approved application. We are required to request agency approval for these changes, so the best way to obtain approval is to write a letter to the NIH Program Officer when the change is first known.
If, for some reason, you are not made aware of the key personnel changes until you complete the progress report, then notification via the report is necessary. For awards under SNAP, the only way to notify NIH of a change in Key Personnel via SNAP is to answer Question #2 of the SNAP report. (“Will there be, in the next budget period, a significant change in the level of effort for the PI or other personnel designated on the Notice of Grant Award from what was approved for this project?”) Please note: the absence of a PI or Key Person from the Personnel Report portion of the eSNAP does not meet the NIH reporting requirement. Question #2 must be answered “yes” with a detailed explanation of the changes requested.
For awards not under SNAP, a supplemental cover letter explaining the change must be included.
To construct your effort change request letter, please use the Effort Change Template on the CALS Research Division website. If you have any questions, please contact the CALS Effort Coordinator Ginger Freitag at (608)890-1648, gfreitag@cals.wisc.edu.
For those submitting NIH applications in Cayuse, please read the following information about how Cayuse forms transition may affect your submission.
You may need to complete an extra step if your application has been begun but not yet submitted because the system is undergoing a change to new form sets. If there is an issue with your submission, an expired opportunity icon will appear next to it (a red circle with a line through it). If this occurs or if you have any questions about your NIH application, please talk with your CALS Research Division Pre-Award Contact.
Despite this temporary glitch, you are strongly advised to use Cayuse for any NIH submissions. You will need to use the new form sets for submission to grants.gov, and without the alert from Cayuse you may not know until your application is rejected by grants.gov.
PI’s: We’ve recently received notice that some proposals submitted using Cayuse424 are getting a “Transmittal Error” upon submission. The “Transmittal Error” message is not a problem with Cayuse; it is being caused by performance issues Grants.gov is experiencing during this deadline period. Proposals are being submitted and accepted by Grants.gov but in some instances the Grants.gov servers are not sending back the tracking number, which is our confirmation that the submission was successful. As a result, we may experience delays in receiving these submission confirmations from Grants.gov. The potential problem exists in the rare situation in which, instead of confirmation, we receive notice that the proposal submission was unsuccessful due to errors. To ensure that your proposal submission is successful and, if necessary, that we have time to address any errors or complications, CALS Research Division is strongly encouraging PI’s to plan for their Cayuse proposals to be submitted at least a day in advance of the proposal deadline.
If you are planning for an upcoming Cayuse proposal submission, please contact your department’s preaward contact in the Research Division.