Research

Faculty Research Resources

General Information  

4202 E. Fowler Ave
ISA 2015
Tampa, FL 33620

USF Federal ID#: 59-3102112
DUNS#: 06-968-7242
OLAW Assurance# for IACUC: A-4100-01
Congressional District: FL-015
Current F&A Rate: 49.5%

Indirect Cost Agreement

Current NIH Post Doc Salary Minimum: $43,692

ARC Portal

Internal Form

If you are having issues with the internal form please first contact the CMMB Unit Research Administrator. The second point of contact is BJ Fortune in Sponsored Research.

Budget Prep Tool (spreadsheet)

Role of CMMB Unit Research Administrator vs. Sponsored Research Administrator

Finding Funding

Proposal Templates

Budget Justification

Writing Help

Please contact Dianne Donnelly, College of Arts & Sciences Assistant Dean of Research. She will review your grant proposal and give feedback about grammar, structure and clarity. Every proposal she has reviewed has been funded.

Subcontract

The following items are needed when including an institution outside USF on a proposal:

  • Detailed Budget
  • Budget Justification
  • Statement of Work
  • Sub Recipient Information Form filled out and signed by an authorized official
  • A-133 Financial Status Form (Domestic or Foreign)
  • If you are working with a Foreign institution we will need to email the Export Control office and give them the PI name, Project title and abstract for review.
  • Check to see if their institution is PHS compliant on this website.

Sponsored Research Fact Sheet

NIH Resources

R01 Sample Applications and Summary Statements

Applications for an R01 award are not limited in dollars but need to reflect the actual needs of the project. Modular budgets are most prevalent with modules of $25,000 up to $250,000 per year. Applicants requesting more than $250,000 in direct costs per year must submit a detailed budget. Applications are generally awarded for 1-5 years. R01’s should include preliminary data. R01’s should support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the PI in an area representing their specific interest and competencies and should be based upon the mission of NIH. Research Strategy is 12 pages unless the FOA states otherwise.

PI and Grantee Institution Application Resources
Colin Parrish, Ph.D., of Cornell University
"Structural controls of functional receptor and antibody binding to viral capsids"
Summary Statement
Research Plan
Full Application
Adam Ratner, M.D., M.P.H., of Columbia University
"Gardnerella vaginalis: toxin production and pathogenesis"
Summary Statement
Research Plan
Full Application
Boris Striepen, Ph.D., of the University of Georgia
"Biology of the apicomplexan plastid"
Summary Statement
Research Plan
Full Application
Carolina Wählby, Ph.D., of the Broad Institute
"Image analysis for high-throughput C. elegans infection and metabolism assays"
Summary Statement
Research Plan
Full Application

R03 Sample Applications and Summary Statements

Applications for R03’s should be projects that are of limited cost or scope that use widely accepted approaches and methods. The project period is up to two years with $50,000 modules per year. No preliminary data is required but it may be included. The Research Strategy may not exceed 6 pages.

PI and Grantee Institution Application Resources
Martin Karplus, Ph.D., of Harvard University
"Modeling atomic structure of the EmrE multidrug pump to design inhibitor peptides"
Full Application
Chad A. Rappleye, Ph.D., of Ohio State University
"Forward genetics-based discovery of Histoplasma virulence genes"
Summary Statement
Full Application

R21 Sample Applications and Summary Statements

The R21 grant mechanism is intended to encourage exploratory/developmental research by providing support for the early and conceptual stages of project development. Preliminary data may be included but is not required. Modular budgets are most prevalent with modules of $25,000 for a budget period of two years. The total direct cost budget may not exceed $275,000 (we typically request $125,000 in year 1 and $150,000 in year 2 or vice versa). The Research Strategy may not exceed 6 pages.

PI and Grantee Institution Application Resources
Steven W. Dow, DVM, Ph.D., of Colorado State University, Fort Collins
"Mechanisms of enteric Burkholderia psuedomallei infection"
Summary Statement
Full Application
Joseph M. McCune, MD, Ph.D., of the University of California, San Francisco
"Human immune system layering and the neonatal response to vaccines"
Summary Statement
Full Application
Peter John Myler, Ph.D., and Marilyn Parsons, Ph.D., of the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute
"Ribosome profiling of Trypanosoma brucei"
Summary Statement
Full Application
Howard T. Petrie, of Scripps Florida
"Lymphoid signals for stromal growth and organization in the thymus."
Summary Statement
Full Application
Michael N. Starnbach, Ph.D., of Harvard University Medical School
"Alteration of host protein stability by Legionella"
Summary Statement
Full Application

Access grants.gov

NEW Bio sketch

Application Quick Guide


Fast Formatting Tips

  • Use an Arial, Helvetica, Palatino Linotype, or Georgia typeface, a black font color, and a font size of 11 points or higher
  • Type Density, including characters and spaces, must be no more than 15 characters per inch. Type may be no more than six lines per inch. Use standard paper size (8 ½ X 11). Use at least one-half inch margins (top, bottom, left, and right) for all pages. No information should appear in the margins.
  • Use of columns for text is strongly discouraged by NIH.
  • All attachments must be in PDF format and use file names that do not include any hyphens, dashes, slashes, spaces or periods between letters. No special characters.

NIH Peer Review Criteria

  1. Significance. Does the project address an important problem or a critical barrier to progress in the field? If the aims of the project are achieved, how will scientific knowledge, technical capability, and/or clinical practice be improved? How will successful completion of the aims change the concepts, methods, technologies, treatments, services, or preventative interventions that drive this field?

  2. Investigator(s). Are the PD/PIs, collaborators, and other researchers well suited to the project? If Early Stage Investigators or New Investigators, or in the early stages of independent careers, do they have appropriate experience and training? If established, have they demonstrated an ongoing record of accomplishments that have advanced their field(s)? If the project is collaborative or multi-PD/PI, do the investigators have complementary and integrated expertise; are their leadership approach, governance and organizational structure appropriate for the project?

  3. Innovation. Does the application challenge and seek to shift current research or clinical practice paradigms by utilizing novel theoretical concepts, approaches or methodologies, instrumentation, or interventions? Are the concepts, approaches or methodologies, instrumentation, or interventions novel to one field of research or novel in a broad sense? Is a refinement, improvement, or new application of theoretical concepts, approaches or methodologies, instrumentation, or interventions proposed?

  4. Approach. Are the overall strategy, methodology, and analyses well-reasoned and appropriate to accomplish the specific aims of the project? Are potential problems, alternative strategies, and benchmarks for success presented? If the project is in the early stages of development, will the strategy establish feasibility and will particularly risky aspects be managed? If the project involves clinical research, are the plans for 1) protection of human subjects from research risks, and 2) inclusion of minorities and members of both sexes/genders, as well as the inclusion of children, justified in terms of the scientific goals and research strategy proposed?

  5. Environment. Will the scientific environment in which the work will be done contribute to the probability of success? Are the institutional support, equipment and other physical resources available to the investigators adequate for the project proposed? Will the project benefit from unique features of the scientific environment, subject populations, or collaborative arrangements?

NIH Scoring System

Common Proposal Pitfalls

  • Significance: Not significant, exciting or novel, lack of compelling rationale, incremental and/or low impact research
  • Specific Aims: Too ambitious or overly complicated, unfocused aims and/or unclear goals, limited aims and uncertain implications
  • Experimental Approach: Inappropriate level of experimental detail, lack of feasibility, lack of appropriate controls, failure to directly test hypotheses, no discussion of potential pitfalls, correlative or descriptive data, no discussion or alternative models or hypotheses, no description of how data will be interpreted
  • Research Team: No expertise or publications related to research plan or approach, low productivity and/or few recent papers, no collaborators or lack of support from partners

NSF Resources

Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER)

  • Criteria for a CAREER award is based on innovative research at the frontiers of science and technology that is relevant to the mission of NSF and community service demonstrated through scientific leadership, education or community outreach. *PI’s can submit one CAREER Award proposal per competition but are limited to 3 CAREER Award competitions.
  • CAREER FAQ’s
  • CAREER Budget: The budget request should reflect the scope of research and education plans. The minimum budget amount for the BIO program is $500,000 for 5 years.

Biological Sciences (BIO) Program at NSF

Areas within BIO


Biological Infastructure (DBI)

DBI empowers biological discovery by supporting the development and enhancement of biological resources, human capital, and centers.  These investments underpin advances in all areas of biological research. Support for Research Resources includes development of informatics tools and resources, development of new instrumentation, the curatorial improvement and computerization of research collections, improvements of research facilities at biological field stations and marine laboratories as well as in living stock collections. Support for Human Resources includes research experiences for undergraduates (sites), undergraduate research and mentoring in biology, undergraduate interdisciplinary research experiences at the interface of biology and mathematical sciences, research initiation grants to broaden participation and, in selected areas, postdoctoral research fellowships. Support for centers creates opportunities to address targeted but deep biological questions that have major societal impact. In addition, BIO's participation in a variety of crosscutting activities such as IGERT, Graduate Research Fellowships, and Major Research Instrumentation is managed in DBI.

Environmental Biology (DEB)

The Division of Environmental Biology (DEB) supports fundamental research on populations, species, communities, and ecosystems. Scientific emphases range across many evolutionary and ecological patterns and processes at all spatial and temporal scales. Areas of research include biodiversity, phylogenetic systematics, molecular evolution, life history evolution, natural selection, ecology, biogeography, ecosystem services, conservation biology, global change, and biogeochemical cycles. Research on origins, functions, relationships, interactions, and evolutionary history may incorporate field, laboratory, or collection-based approaches; observational or manipulative experiments; synthesis activities; as well as theoretical approaches involving analytical, statistical, or simulation modeling.

Emerging Frontiers (EF)

The Emerging Frontiers (EF) Division is an incubator for 21st Century Biology.  EF supports multidisciplinary research opportunities and networking activities that arise from advances in disciplinary research.  By encouraging synergy between disciplines, EF provides a mechanism by which new initiatives will be fostered and subsequently integrated into core programs.

Integrative Organismal Systems (IOS)

IOS supports research aimed at improving our understanding of organisms as integrated units of biological organization.  The Division welcomes diverse approaches to research addressing organismal questions, and especially encourages integrative and interdisciplinary perspectives on complex problems in organismal biology. The goal is to predict why organisms are structured the way they are and function as they do.  Projects that innovatively apply approaches that combine experimentation, computation, and modeling, and which lead to new conceptual and theoretical insights and testable predictions about integrated organismal properties, including the relationship between genotypes and phenotypes, are particularly encouraged.  Research that integrates data across spatial/temporal/ biological scales, leads to transformative methods, tools and resources, and/or seeks breakthroughs in the areas of phenotypic plasticity and organismal resilience will be given high priority for funding throughout the division. However, research motivated by relevance to human health or addressing the mechanisms of human disease is not appropriate for the Division and will be returned without review. Proposals are welcomed in all areas of science supported by the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems, including interdisciplinary projects that cross cluster boundaries. 

Molecular and Cellular Biosciences (MCB)

The Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences (MCB) supports fundamental research and related activities designed to promote understanding of complex living systems at the molecular, subcellular, and cellular levels.  MCB supports quantitative, predictive, and theory-driven research and related activities designed to decipher the molecular underpinnings of complex living systems.  MCB encourages proposals that address major biological questions using approaches at the intersections of biology with other disciplines, such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, computer sciences, and engineering.  In addition, MCB encourages research utilizing model systems that are appropriate to the questions being addressed. If the proposed research is relevant to a bio-based economy and biological industries, researchers are strongly encouraged to highlight the relevance of their research to bio-inspired solutions to clean energy, biomaterials, industry, and environmental change.  However,as stated in the grant proposal guidelines, "Research with disease-related goals, including work on the etiology, diagnosis or treatment of physical or mental disease, abnormality, or malfunction in human beings or animals, is normally not supported. Animal models of such conditions or the development or testing of drugs or other procedures for their treatment also are not eligible for support."  Proposals that include reference to the etiology, diagnosis or treatment of human disease, or that are relevant to or motivated by the medical importance of the research topic are not appropriate for the Division and will be returned without review.

MCB continues to provide unique education and training opportunities for the next generation of researchers, scientific educators, and scientifically literate citizens. Highest funding priority is given to applications that are outstanding in both intellectual merit and broader impacts.  Successful proposals often demonstrate close integration of scientific and educational aims, and the division encourages creative activities that broaden participation and stimulate an appreciation and curiosity for molecular and cell biology among the widest possible audiences.

NSF Review Criteria        

  • Intellectual Merit- the potential of the project to advance knowledge
  • Broader Impacts- the potential to benefit society and contribute to the achievement of specific desired societal outcomes
  • Additional criteria: Integration of Research and Education, and Integrating Diversity