Landing large grants with a little help from your friends

The  Disrupt Diabetes design challenge was spearheaded by two graduating Stanford seniors, Divya Gopisetty and Urvi Gupta, and funded by the Diabetes Center’s grant.

 

During the summer of 2016, Seung Kim, MD, PhD, professor of developmental biology, decided to submit a proposal to the NIH for funding the first ever Stanford Diabetes Research Center. His ambitious goal was to bring together nearly 100 physicians and scientists from across the university to improve the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of diabetes and its complications.

“There were many Stanford researchers interested in diabetes, but there needed to be a focal point or lightning rod for their energies and talents,” said Kim.

To help pull together this complex, interdisciplinary grant application, Kim enlisted the support of Michael Helms, PhD, MBA, director, and Sandra Holden, PhD, grant development officer, from the Stanford Research Development Office (SRDO).

Drs. Helms and Holden provided expert assistance on the writing, editing and formatting of many sections of the grant. They also did the heavy lifting on compiling the data tables and letters of support required by the NIH. The data tables alone were over 120 pages long.

In the end, Stanford was awarded a five-year, $7.8 million grant, which provides support for diabetes-related research, training and clinical activities of faculty from the schools of Medicine, of Engineering and of Arts and Sciences.

The SRDO specializes in helping faculty with large multidisciplinary grant proposals and early-career research funding. Services include identification of funding opportunities, facilitation of collaborative work, editing proposals, managing the assembly of large proposals and interfacing with sponsors and university liaisons. Since 2015, the SRDO has assisted with $62.2 million in new awards, and several applications are currently pending review and final decisions.

The Development Office is currently focusing its efforts in three areas:

  • Large multi-investigator, multidisciplinary grant applications that support School of Medicine centers and programs.
  • Multi-investigator grants focused on the school’s priority initiatives, such as precision medicine and big data.
  • Grants for early-career assistant professors who are writing proposals for their first independent research projects.
     

To request assistance for your project, contact Michael Helms, PhD, MBA, at mkhelms@stanford.edu or 723-4526.