Over the past year, the Body Imaging Research Group has begun hosting Peer Grant Feedback sessions where we share and critique our submissions before they go into the funding agencies. While it is typically only a small group of 5 or so people participating, it seems like they have valuable and those of us participating have been very active!

I’ve decided to share here a few helpful comments that have come up as well as some open questions amongst us in the discussions. I hope to have continued participation in these sessions going forward.

Tips

• Be very clear in the overall theme and big picture impact, and repetition of these concepts is good

• Careful choice of words is required, especially in the Aims, that clearly convey the impact

• Sometimes less is more - you don’t need to include every idea or even everything you might do with a grant, but focus on those that are the most compelling in terms of impact and/or premise (supported by prelim data)

• Think big in big grants! The R01 is a pretty long term project and can have lofty amibition.

• Grants can take a long time, with months of preparation and many months between submissions and reviews, so plan ahead

Some general open questions that we had

• When to resubmit versus when to create a new application?

• What to do if the resubmission fails? When do you call it quits?

• How to pitch the blend of technological innovation with translational research that many of us perform?

• How to choose a study section?

Let’s go from

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