University of Georgia

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The eResearch Portal is once again able to accept proposals being submitted to USDA AFRI NIFA.

This capability was temporarily suspended in March when USDA added new forms to its applications. At that time, all new proposals had to be prepared and directly submitted through Grants.gov, which meant grants administrators needed additional time to allow for error checking and resubmissions.

Please contact your grants officer in Office for Sponsored Programs with any questions.

 

 

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Effective July 1, 2015, the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) and Contracts and Grants (C&G) will implement a team structure to better serve the research and other sponsored project administration needs of PIs and departments.  Each team will include representation from the pre- and post-award offices and will be assigned to specific departments.

Combining these pre- and post-award functions into unified teams will provide PIs and departments on campus more effective access to grant proposal and award management resources.

In approximately one week, departmental administrators will receive an email with their team assignment, and information regarding a meet-and-greet hosted by their team during the week of June 8.

Beginning in July, teams will reach out to their respective departments to schedule a time to visit PIs and departmental administrators; these meetings will include a question-and-answer session.

 

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The Georgia Advanced Computing Resources Center (GACRC) now has a dedicated trainer for researchers using GACRC resources.

Dr. Zhuofei (Moses) Hou will offer one-on-one and group training sessions for researchers using GACRC resources. Researchers who will be using the GACRC’s new high-performance cluster, called Sapelo, are required to complete training.

Dr. Hou earned his Ph.D. in computational condensed-matter physics and his master’s degree in statistics from the University of Georgia.

Addditional GACRC training opportunities will be announced as they become available.

For more information, please contact Guy Cormier gcormier@uga.edu.

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Recognizing that Principal Investigators/Departmental Administrator(s) have first-hand knowledge of the scope of work being performed under a sub award agreement, the review process on invoices from sub recipients who do not receive an external audit (those classified as high risk) has been simplified.

It is no longer necessary to obtain copies of receipts or other documentation to support the invoice.  Invoices from these sub recipients must include a signed certification as to the appropriateness of the charges such as:  “I certify that all expenditures reported (or payments requested) are for appropriate purposes and in accordance with the agreements set forth in the award documents.”  Additional information from the sub recipient is only necessary if the Principal Investigator or Departmental Administrator feels a charge on the invoice is not appropriate for the project.

Please contact Gail Chester in Contracts and Grants at 706-542-9230  with any questions related to this change.  See more information on other current and completed business process improvement initiatives.

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UGA faculty are reminded that the Faculty Activity Report (FAR) will be decommissioned and replaced with a new mandatory reporting tool, UGA Elements,  in the coming months.

The system will become the primary source of data regarding the research, scholarship, service, awards and honors of UGA faculty. Beginning in 2016, all UGA faculty will be required to use the system to facilitate the annual performance evaluation process.

To transition to the new system, faculty should cease to update the Faculty Activity Repository by June 15, 2015. Any information that has been included in FAR will be archived for current and future migration into the new system. UGA Elements is scheduled to launch in fall 2015.

Each college and school has identified an administrative liaison as an initial point of contact for UGA Elements.  The administrative liaisons may designate additional contacts for each college and school. For questions, please contact your unit’s administrative liaison. A list of administrative liaisons is available at https://elements.uga.edu/contact.

More information about UGA Elements will be forthcoming and posted at https://elements.uga.edu.

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NIH has a revamped resource to help new NIH reviewers, as well as applicants, understand the peer review requirements.

Guidance for Reviewers introduces the timeline and activities associated with each step of the process thorugh step by step instructions and links to a video tutorial series. It also compiles reviewer “do’s and don’ts” for the pre-meeting, meeting, and post-meeting periods.

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Beginning April, 24, 2015, proposals submitted in response to Program Solicitations in FastLane will undergo a series of  automated proposal compliance validation checks to ensure they comply with requirements outlined in the Proposal & Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) (Chapter II.C.2. of the Grants Proposal Guide (GPG)).

These checks will automatically validate a proposal for compliance against proposal sections per type of funding mechanism. For example, an error message will appear if a project description or budget are not provided in proposals submitted in response to a Program Solicitation.

Checks will be triggered when proposers select the “Check Proposal,” “Forward to SPO,” or “Submit Proposal” functions. Depending on the rule being checked, a warning or error message will display when a proposal is found to be non-compliant. If an error message appears, the proposal cannot be submitted until it is compliant.

Please note that these automated compliance checks will not be conducted on proposals submitted to NSF via Grants.gov.

To view a detailed list of all compliance checks, click here

Please direct any questions to the Policy Office in the Division of Institution & Award Support at policy@nsf.gov, or (703) 292-8243.

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NIH awardees are encouraged to electronically report any publications found in Table 1 of the RPPR that were previously reported using the paper 2590 process or as part of a competing renewal application. This transitional, one-time measure to report each publication electronically in the RPPR ensures that NIH systems can store all appropriate award-publication associations.
This notice amends instructions for reporting publications in the Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR).

Current RPPR instructions direct awardees to report only those publications that have been accepted for publication during the reporting period. However, NIH can only systematically link publications to awards if those papers were reported to us electronically using RPPR or eSNAP. These definitive linkages have not been possible for publications reported on paper forms, such as the PHS 2590. Maintaining appropriate linkages between publications and awards enables electronic systems, such as My Bibliography, to automatically populate biosketches and reporting systems, such as RePORTER, to identify results of NIH supported research.

More information and resources on the RPPR. 

 

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NIH’s ability to issue competing and non-competing awards may be delayed for two weeks from May 19, 2015 until June 3, 2015.
During this time, a series of software upgrades will be made to NIH accounting and business systems that have wide-reaching impacts across the NIH.  These also connect to NIH grant-making systems, and while every effort will be made to minimize the expected downtime, it may take up to two weeks to complete all the work.
Read the complete NIH Notice.
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Announcements

In the coming months, UGA’s Faculty Activity Repository (FAR) will be decommissioned and replaced with a new, mandatory reporting tool.

The new system, called UGA Elements, was chosen based on the recommendation of a working group of more than 50 faculty members and staff led by the Office of Academic Planning, Enterprise Information Technology Services, and the Office of the Vice President for Research, in conjunction with the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost.

The new software, which is currently in use at Emory University, Georgia Tech, Duke University, Cornell University, the University of Virginia and elsewhere, has a modern, more intuitive interface and improved tools for public profiling. It also supports automatic population of most publications from publication databases.

The system will become the primary source of data regarding the research, scholarship, service, awards and honors of UGA faculty. Beginning in 2016, all UGA faculty will be required to use the system to facilitate the annual performance evaluation process.

To transition to the new system, faculty should cease to update the Faculty Activity Repository by June 15, 2015. Any information that has been included in FAR will be archived for current and future migration into the new system. UGA Elements is scheduled to launch in fall 2015.

Each college and school has identified an administrative liaison as an initial point of contact for UGA Elements.  The administrative liaisons may designate additional contacts for each college and school. For questions, please contact your unit’s administrative liaison. A list of administrative liaisons is available at https://elements.uga.edu/contact.

More information about UGA Elements will be forthcoming and posted at https://elements.uga.edu.