The NSF Grant Proposal Guide has been updated and the changes go into effect 02/24/14. The updated guide, as well as a summary of the changes, can be found at the link below.
The revised guide contains changes to policies that impact proposal preparation as well as updates and clarifications intended to make the proposal process more user-friendly.
Click here for a summary of significant changes in the new version.
Derek Eberhart has been named interim director of UGA’s business incubator, the Georgia BioBusiness Center (GBBC), effective February 1, 2014. Eberhart joined UGA in 2008 and currently serves as director of the Technology Commercialization Office (TCO). Previous GBBC director, Margaret Wagner Dahl, recently left UGA to become Associate Vice President, Health IT, at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Under the Office of the Vice President for Research, TCO and GBBC work closely together to facilitate technology-based economic development. TCO shepherds UGA discoveries from the lab to the marketplace through partnerships with industry. For some UGA technologies, formation of a startup company is an essential step in the commercialization process/
The GBBC works with startup companies to accelerate their growth through access to space, equipment and support services. GBBC programs encourage the commercialization of UGA discoveries by supporting companies that translate research into products and services. The GBBC partners with the Georgia Research Alliance, whose Ventures program provides seed funding and other support for promising ventures, with the goal of growing more startup companies from universities and strengthening Georgia’s economy.
UGA Vice President for Research David Lee said, “I look forward to working with Derek to leverage the combined strengths of TCO and the GBBC to enhance UGA’s impact on technology-based economic development.”
Eberhart received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Georgia. He earned his doctorate in genetics and molecular biology at Emory University. As an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, his research focused on the generation and analysis of mouse cancer models. Prior to joining UGA, Eberhart served as director of Alliance and Portfolio Management at Lexicon Pharmaceuticals in Texas. He managed several of Lexicon’s drug discovery partnerships, including alliances with multiple pharmaceutical and biotech companies.
Registration is open for the Sustainability Science Symposium & Workshop, to be held 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM, Friday, Feb. 28, 2014 at the UGA Hotel and Conference Center.
Registration is free, but required. The deadline to register is Wednesday, February 19. Registration is open to all faculty, students, and staff.
Download 2014 Sustainability Symposium_flyer
Events at this inaugural interdisciplinary research symposium include: keynote addresses by international leaders in Sustainability Science, faculty presentations, a poster session featuring both faculty and student research initiatives at UGA, networking opportunities, and a faculty collaboration-building workshop.
This program is supported in part by the President’s Venture Fund through the generous gifts of the University of Georgia Partners, and made possible through the support of our co-sponsors: Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR), Bioenergy Systems Research Institute (BSRI), Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities (CURO), Department of Geography, Department of Management Information Systems, Department of Marine Sciences, Franklin College of Arts & Sciences, Odum School of Ecology, Office of Sustainability, Plant Genome Mapping Laboratory, Sustainability and Landscape Performance Lab at the College of Environment and Design, and the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources.
Questions? Contact Talley Vodicka, cicr@uga.edu or 706-542-0458.
The National Science Foundation’s Office of the Inspector General promised in a written report recently to use every compliance and enforcement tool at its disposal to ensure compliance with federal rules and regulations.
The current Inspector General proposes to expand debarments to include Principal Investigators (PIs) who are not current with submission of required final reports. Debarment is a tool that ensures, for a defined period of time (often three years), that the entire federal government will not conduct additional business with individuals or organizations whose improper conduct leads to questions regarding the party’s honesty, ethics, or competence.
All UGA PIs receiving funds from NSF should take note of this threat and ensure that any and all final technical reports on projects for which they have received NSF funding are submitted in accordance with grant terms. Failure to timely submit required final technical reports to the NSF could torpedo your ability to apply for funds from any federal agency for periods up to three years.
For PIs working with the NIH National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute:
The NHLBI will fund investigator-initiated R01 competing applications, regardless of percentile or priority score, for four years or less. The only exceptions to this policy are:
These excepted applications will generally be awarded for the full length of their National Heart, Lung, and Blood Advisory Council (NHLBAC) recommended project period.
Last week Congress passed the 2014 Omnibus Appropriations Bill, which, in addition to government spending and budget cuts, includes language that promotes public access to federally funded research. President Obama is expected to sign it into law.
The bill requires federal agencies under the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education portion of the Omnibus bill with research budgets of $100 million or more to provide the public with online access to articles reporting on federally funded research within 12 months of publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
Previously, the National Institutes of Health was the only government agency with a statutory public access mandate. Last year, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) made moves in this direction by requiring agencies with similar research budgets to formulate, and eventually implement, their own public access policies.
The additional agencies covered would ensure that more than $31 billion of the total $60 billion annual U.S. investment in taxpayer-funded research is now openly accessible.
Read about it in Science.
The Office of Research Services is pleased to announce the creation of the UGA Oligo-Core, a web portal for UGA faculty, staff, and students to order oligos — short strands of DNA called oligonucleotides — for delivery to UGA. The portal was developed in cooperation with Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT), manufacturer of oligo products.
The major benefit of this UGA portal is to provide a single, consolidated order to be shipped daily from IDT to UGA. This consolidated order will eliminate shipping costs on small-volume oligo orders (with a few exceptions on special items). Alex Wunderlich, in the Coverdell Stockroom, will track each UGA order to assure it is delivered to the correct drop-off location on campus.
Link to the UGA Oligo Core webpage: https://ovpr.uga.edu/orss/oligo/
Derek Eberhart was named director of UGA’s Technology Commercialization Office (TCO), Office of the Vice President for Research, in January. He has served as interim director since July.
Through intellectual property licensing and other efforts, TCO serves the UGA community by connecting industry with university expertise and inventions for the public good, promoting economic development, and increasing research visibility. TCO evaluates inventions for patentability and commercial potential, protects IP rights, negotiates all IP-related agreements, and facilitates strategic partnerships with universities, industry, and government. In pursuing these goals, TCO works closely with UGA’s business incubator, the Georgia BioBusiness Center.
Eberhart received his B.S.A. and M.S. from the University of Georgia. He earned his Ph.D. in Genetics and Molecular Biology at Emory University, where he studied the molecular basis of a common form of mental retardation known as Fragile X syndrome. As an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, his research focused on the generation and analysis of mouse cancer models.
Prior to joining UGA in 2008, Derek served as Director of Alliance and Portfolio Management at Lexicon Pharmaceuticals in Texas where he was involved in alliance management, technology licensing and business development activities. He managed several of Lexicon’s drug discovery partnerships, including alliances with multiple pharmaceutical and biotech companies, as well as collaborations with federal and non-profit entities.
UGA Vice President for Research David Lee said, “Since joining TCO, Derek has held a series of positions of increasing responsibility, including Senior Technology Manager, Associate Director of TCO, and Interim Director of TCO. His performance in each capacity has been outstanding and as Interim Director he has rapidly gained the trust and confidence of faculty inventors, external clients and the TCO staff.
“I am convinced Derek will bring the necessary energy, rigor and goal-setting to the director position, and that he will play a key role in helping to achieve President Morehead’s vision of an enhanced university impact on economic development. I look forward to working closely with him in this regard.”
The UGA Office of the Vice President for Research relocated some support and administrative offices to the Paul D. Coverdell Center, effective December 20, 2013.
Offices that moved to the first floor south wing of the Coverdell Center, located at 500 D.W. Brooks Drive, include the offices of the Vice President for Research and Associate Vice President for Research Bob Scott, along with Research Fiscal Affairs, Internal Grants and Awards, Postdoctoral Affairs, OVPR Development, and the UGARESEARCH magazine.
Staff phone numbers will remain unchanged following the move.
OVPR Sponsored Programs, GrantSMART, Technology Commercialization, Research Compliance including Human and Animal Subjects, Legal Affairs, Research Communications, and IT all remain in Boyd, along with the offices of Associate Vice Presidents for Research Gina Smith and Chris King.
For researchers who submit to NIH, please note the following changes to eSubmission requirements. Please contact your Grants administrator if you have questions.
Don’t Forget Your Inclusion Data
The new FORMS-C application packages use a different approach for collecting inclusion data. In addition to reformatting the data tables themselves, inclusion data is no longer collected in PDF attachments. Instead, each package includes new Planned Enrollment Report and Cumulative Inclusion Enrollment forms. These forms allow NIH to collect the data in a format that can be leveraged throughout the lifecycle of the application/grant.
The forms are included in the application packages as ‘Optional’ and eRA systems no longer provide an error when inclusion data is omitted. However, our policies on when to include the data in your application have not changed. Applicants must carefully follow application guide and supplemental instructions to ensure the new forms are included when needed. A handy decision tree was recently posted that can also help determine whether the inclusion reporting policies apply to your specific application.
FORMS-C Budget Forms and PD/PIs
The latest version of the R&R Budget form developed by Grants.gov includes some changes in how data is entered. Although the PD/PI name provided on the SF424 R&R cover form is still used to auto-populate the first Senior/Key Person entry in Section A, the Project Role filed for that entry no longer defaults to ‘PD/PI’ and must be manually entered. As a result, more applicants have been running into the following error:
There must be a Personnel entry (with a role of “PD/PI”) listed for the PI or PD on the 424 RR Detailed Budget Page (section A&B) for budget year <x>. (5.7.1)
It is critical to type the string ‘PD/PI’ – NOT ‘PI’ or ‘PI/PD’ or ‘Principal Investigator’ or ‘Co-PD/PI’ – you must use ‘PD/PI’ or you will get that dreaded error. So, please add this to your pre-submission application checks to avoid a corrective submission.
K, F, T and D Programs Moving to Updated Electronic Application Forms (FORMS-C)
A reminder notice regarding the transition of Career Development (Ks), Fellowship (Fs), Training (Ts/Ds) programs to updated electronic application forms (NOT-OD-14-027).
More Multi-project Activity Codes Moving to Electronic Submission
The second group of activity codes in our transition timeline (G12, P30, P40, P41, P42, P51, P60, R28, S06, U10, U41, U42, U45, U56, UC7) move to electronic application submission for due dates on/after January 25, 2014 (NOT-OD-13-075).
If you are planning to apply to a multi-project program in the near future, you may want to become familiar with the resources available to help you through the electronic submission process:
