Written by: Jessica Bloomer

This year’s workshop was on March 14^th – 15^th during UC’s spring break. The workshop is an important piece of the Pilot Research Project Program because it helps prepare individuals to write a research proposal by presenting information on sources of funding, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) processes, preparing the application including the budget, and aligning research priorities with federal grant administrators.

There were seventeen attendees consisting of PhD students and junior faculty from the Air Force Institute of Technology, Purdue University, University of Cincinnati, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Kentucky, University of Toledo, and Western Kentucky University. Some of the participants’ fields of study included biomedical engineering, occupational health nursing, industrial hygiene, occupational health psychology, and health education.

On day one, Dr. Burr Zimmerman a principal consultant from the Urban Venture Group, led six sessions on grant overview, different funding agencies, SBIR/STTR, finding grant opportunities, how to prepare to write a proposal, and executing under and award.

Day two was lead by Dr. Eric Smith, a research scientist in the UC College of Medicine with Dr. Elizabeth Kopras, a senior research associate in the UC College of Medicine and Dr. Amit Bhattacharya, a professor in the Department of Environmental and Public Health Sciences. Dr. Smith taught skills on writing a research proposal and Dr. Bhattacharya discussed the peer review process. In the afternoon, the participants were grouped together into interdisciplinary teams and worked to prepare a practice proposal with a hypothesis, specific aims, approach, and to incorporate all group members’ research backgrounds. This activity was meant to demonstrate how interdisciplinary research teams are developed as well as to practice writing questions and aims. The proposal topics developed by the groups were;

• Using Heart Rate Variability to Test Mindfulness-Based Interventions for Emergency Nurses
• Exploring Interventions for Physiological and Psychosocial Impacts on Familial In-home Care Providers
• Use of a Multi-Sensory Tool to Reduce Direct Care Worker Stress in a Long-term Care Facility
• Improving Fentanyl Detection and Furnishing Outcomes in the Home Healthcare Workforce
• Matched Case-control Study to Validate Non-invasive Biomarkers to Screen Primary Lung Cancer in Kentucky, US

Small groups work together to prepare a practice proposal 

The groups then presented their proposals and then scored each other’s presentations based on the NIH scoring criteria. The instructors and additional faculty including Drs. Judy Jarrell and Jun Wang in the Department of Environmental and Public Health Sciences, also evaluated the practice proposals and provided feedback as well as advice from their proposal writing experiences. The winner of the most outstanding group proposal was;

• Matched Case-control Study to Validate Non-invasive Biomarkers to Screen Primary Lung Cancer in Kentucky, US

Thank you to the presenters and panelists for making this a valuable workshop for our attendees.