Internal Grantsmanship Workshop Yields Three NIH F31 Grants

Mon, 23 Sep 2013 10:58:37 -0400

In May 2012, the IMSD Meyerhoff Student Board, a student advisory board for the graduate IMSD program; organized with the assistance of IMSD staff a grantsmanship workshop that included an interactive workshop where participating IMSD graduates were required to bring with them to the workshop their “pre-written” Specific Aims. During the workshop the IMSD Director, Michael Summers and the former Chair of the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department, Dr. Ralph Pollack (retired) would review and provide feedback to the students. Following the workshop, students who were planning to submit their proposals by the August deadline submitted their proposal to IMSD staff who then distributed the proposals to a pre-selected review panel that included faculty from both campuses - Dr. Michael Summers (IMSD Director), Dr. Antonia Antalis (Director, Molecular Medicine Program UMB), Dr. David Eisenmann (biology professor). In July 2012, the student participants re-convened for the second half of the workshop which was a “Mock Study Section”. The review panel selected one proposal to review before the students and provided constructive feedback to the group.

Three (Atum Buo, Jodian Brown and Brittny Davis) of the four students who submitted proposals were funded and more recently, the fourth student received a good impact score and is pending feedback from a resubmission. The IMSD graduate students are eager to host the second grantsmanship workshop. We plan to have this workshop in November 2013 and again in the spring 2014.