CTSI R Workshop: A Tactical Approach to Writing Your Grant Application (HSR) Tannaz Moin, MD, MBA, MSHS Associate Professor of Medicine at UCLA Associate Director, UCLA Specialty Training and Advanced Research (STAR) Program

1. A Tactical Approach
to Writing Your
Grant Proposal
Tannaz Moin, MD, MBA, MSHS
UCLA CTSI R Workshop
November 2, 2023
Special thanks to Drs. Catherine Sarkisian and O. Kenrik Duru

2. 4-6 Month Time-line:
1st month
• Pick a high-impact topic you love and get excited to be creative
o Should be natural extension of your K work
• Draft Specific Aims
• Start to put together scientific team
• Meet with admin team – map out calendar and divide up tasks
o Find out who can help you and identify key dates
(i.e., resources, budget, DSMP, figures, references etc. . . )
o Set target dates to get drafts to Co-Is
• Consider vacations, hospital attending etc.
• Schedule CTSI grant studio if possible

3. 3-4 Months Out:
Meet with your
Program Official
• Remember that most PO’s love seeing K
awardees get R01s
o Relationship evolves during your K
• Will he/she/they will read your specific aims?
• Suggestions re study section?
• (Cover letter can mention your PO)
• (Send thank you email and copy of grant)

4. Putting Together Your Team:
Think Both as a Reviewer and as PI
• Interdisciplinary teams are increasingly important
• Each team member needs to be making unique/
complimentary contribution (avoid overlap)
• Consider linking with strengths of your institution
• Will be attractive to reviewers
• Good opportunity to expand your network

5. Putting Your Team
Together (Continued)
• Think carefully about subcontracts
(allow extra time)
• Balance of seniority levels
• Think about division needs
• Choose people you want to work with

6. Developing
your Team
Leadership
Style
• Embrace the role of PI (gradual process
evolving over K period)
• Emulate PI’s you admire
• Consider formal leadership training
• Be very clear to Co-I’s what is expected
• Exact role?
• How many meetings? Format? Travel?
• What % time covered?
• Authorship?

7. Start Budget Early
• Tension between being economical and practical (talk to your PO)
• Agencies like low-budget projects BUT
• Make sure you can do the work!
• And, likely to get across the board cuts
• Budget justification is CRITICAL
• Investigator time:
• As new investigator consider 35% time
• 5% time for Co-Is can be red flag to reviewers

8. Don’t Under-budget:
• Project Director salary
• Ground transportation for staff
• Cell phones and service
• Translations
• Data storage
• Publication fees for open access journals

9. Writing
Your
Grant
• Approach (Methods) is MOST important
• Write first. Do not wait.
• Remember your audience
• Few MDs
• May know nothing about your area of research
• Make it easy on the reviewer
• White space, figures, tables, colors

10. Telling Your Story:
Preliminary Studies
• Purpose:
• (Findings that support your
hypotheses)
• Most important: to show the
reviewer your team has
experience to do the project

11. • Discuss trade-offs of your
design decisions
• Example: randomizing at
individual vs. cluster?
• Can do this throughout or in
summary section towards end
of approach section
• How will you deal with
potential problems?
Show that you have
considered potential
obstacles/ tradeoffs
and how you will
address them

12. Make it Easy for the Reviewer
• Use exact language from program
announcement
o “the stated aim of this program announcement is
XXX and our project addresses this by . . . . “
• Remind reviewer of specific review criteria
and state specifically how your project
addresses
o Consider bulleted sections
o Significance
o Investigators
o Innovation
o Approach
o Environment

13. Avoid Common Pitfalls
• Write face page (abstract) early and circulate
• Don’t be unjustifiably overambitious
• Convince reviewer of feasibility
• Preliminary studies
• Benchmarks
• Alternative plans
• Institutional support
• HAVE FUN!