January 2015 Newsletter

FSU's Center for Undergraduate Research & Academic Engagement is soliciting applications for the annual Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Awards ($4000 each), the Mentored Research and Creative Endeavor Awards ($1000 each), the Public Service Research Fellowships ($4,000-$6,000 each), the Social Work Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Award ($4,000), and others.

The awards support a summer research or creative project under the supervision of a faculty member. The funds may be used for research costs, travel expenses, and/or summer living expenses during the project period. The deadline for applications is January 28, 2015.

For more information and to apply visit http://cre.fsu.edu/Students/Research-Funding-Awards.

Sponsored Research Administration will be hosting an open house/meet-and-greet from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Jan. 29, 2015 on the 3^rd floor of the Student Services Building. Faculty members and departmental staff will have the opportunity to meet and mingle with their Pre-Award and Post-Award colleagues. Refreshments will be served.

The Florida State University Coastal and Marine Laboratory’s Fall 2014 newsletter is available online. The newsletter contains tidbits on the lab’s outreach activities as well as information on graduate student research. Access the newsletter at http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs103/1110134778130/archive/1119222074995.html.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has updated its transparency and accountability practices. New guidelines require that for a nontechnical project description, a program office must explain the project’s significance and importance and how it serves the national interest as laid out by NSF’s mission. For more information, view the full press release.

Effective Monday, January 5, 2015, Sponsored Research Administration (SRA) has changed its Pre-Award administrator assignments. For years, administrators have been assigned by agencies/sponsors, but changing needs and campus input have brought about a new assignment model based on FSU departments.

Instead of having to determine which administrator is responsible for the agency to which you are submitting a proposal or from which you are receiving an award, you will have one Pre-Award administrator who will always work with you and your department on proposals and award documents. In turn, each department will have only one SRA Pre-Award administrator and one SRA Post-Award coordinator, which will foster closer interaction and more rapport/cooperation between PIs, department reps, and SRA staff members.

Below is a listing of the new SRA Pre-Award department-based assignments by department ID. If you have any questions about the new assignment system, please contact Pam Ray (pray2@fsu.edu, 644-8643), Russ Lentz (rlentz@fsu.edu, 644-8649), or Julie Wammack (jwammack@admin.fsu.edu, 644-8945).       

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has announced a new biographical sketch format to be used in all grant applications with due dates on or after January 25^th, 2015. See the NIH Guide notice at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-15-024.html for more details.

The Coastal and Marine lab is offering the Biology of Fishes, a four hour class, this summer from May 25-June 5. The course is designed to train undergraduates to enter the work force or graduate school in a marine-related field. Registration is online in January. Contact Mike McIver at mmciver@fsu.edu or visit the website for more information: http://marinelab.fsu.edu/education/courses.

The NIH has published a new notice on salary limitation on grants, cooperative agreements and contracts. For Fiscal Year 2015, the Executive Level II salary is currently set at $181,500, increasing to $183,300 effective January 11, 2015. Read the notice at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-15-049.html for more details.

The National Science Foundation has published a revised grants application guide that applies to all grants submitted after Dec. 26, 2014. For a summary of major changes and clarifications, please refer to page 2 of the guide available here: http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=grantsgovguide1214.

Any questions regarding the guide can be submitted to policy@nsf.gov.

Arts & Humanities Program Enhancement Grant proposals are due January 20^th at 11:59 p.m. The Request for Proposals (RFP) can be found at http://www.research.fsu.edu/crc/ahpeg.html.               

Nominations for the Developing Scholar, Distinguished Research Professor, and Distinguished University Scholar Awards are due in January and February. For more details on the requirements please visit: http://www.research.fsu.edu/crc/dsa.html, http://www.research.fsu.edu/crc/drp.html, and/or http://www.research.fsu.edu/crc/dus.html.               

CRC Programs: Submit Early for Technical Review: As with any grant, the programs of the CRC have guidelines that must be followed for submission. Failure to complete all forms and documents as requested can result in a proposal not going forward for review. In an effort to assist faculty, the CRC Coordinator is now providing faculty the opportunity for a technical review as long as proposals are submitted seven working days prior to the program deadline.               

By submitting your proposal seven days before the due date, the CRC Coordinator will review your proposal to ensure that the proposal follows the program guidelines, the budget is accurate, required documents are incorporated, Chair and Dean approvals have been obtained, etc. If your submission is received after the seven-day window, an effort will be made for review; however, there is no guarantee that a technical review will take place. Please note that ultimately, your proposal’s accuracy is in your hands and is not the responsibility of the CRC to correct. Additionally, revisions cannot be accepted after the program deadline.  

In order for the proposal to receive a technical review, all the required documents listed in the Request for Proposals (RFP) must be uploaded and submitted in the CRC Submission Portal (or EIEG Submission Portal) seven days before the program deadline.               

Congratulations to faculty awards made by the CRC during the fall semester:    

• Warren Allen (Information) “Social Media Pilot System to Represent Soft Skills of Information Technology Students”                   
• Karen Geletko (Health Affairs), Gail Bellamy (Health Affairs), and Karen Myers (Family Medicine & Rural Health) “E-cigarettes: Physician knowledge and patient assessment activity”                   
• Qing-Xiang (Amy) Sang (Chem & Biochem) and Diego Zorio (Chem & Biochem) “Adult Human Stem Cell Chemotherapy Resistance: Functional Roles of Growth Arrest Specific Protein 1 and Multidrug Resistance P-Glycoprotein 1”                   
• Joelle Dietrick (Art) “CodeSpaces + Cargo Mobilities”                   
• Yan Li (Chem & Biomed Engineering) “Constructing Cardiac Tissues Using 3D Auxetic Scaffolds”   
• Arturo Figueroa-Galvez (Nutrition, Food, Exercise Sci) and Judy Delp (Biomed Sci) “Effects of two strength training modes on arterial function, inflammation, and walking capacity in older adults with peripheral arterial disease”                   
• Shelbie Witte (School of Teacher Edu), Don Latham (School of Teacher Edu), and Melissa Gross (School of Teacher Edu) “High School Principals' View of Teacher and Librarian Collaborations to Promote Student Acquisition of 21st Century Skills”                   
• David Gilbert (Bio Sci) “Linking chromosome translocations to altered DNA replication in pediatric leukemia”
• Wei Wu (Statistics) “Metric-Based Statistical Inferences in the Neural Spike Train Space”
• David Johnson (English) “Reconstructing Europe in England (600-1250): Transcultural and Translingual Paradigms”
• M. Elizabeth Stroupe (Bio Sci) “Structural characterization of NDPK with its DNA binding ligand”
• Yu Zhou (Biomed Sci) “The 14-3-3 Functional Knockout Mice as an Animal Model of Schizophrenia”
• Adam Jolles (Art History) “The Curatorial History of Photography in the United States”
• Luke Boosey (Economics) and Sebastian Goerg (Economics) “Timing of Discretionary Bonuses in the Workplace”
• Wei Guo (Mechanical Engineering) “Visualization study of vortex-line dynamics in a magnetically levitated helium-4 drop”
• Mark Messersmith (Art), Judith Rushin (Art), and Lillian Garcia-Roig (Art) “When Worlds Collide, Exhibition at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art”
• Kimberly Driscoll (Beh Sci and Social Med) “Why Don't Patients Use Innovate Type 1 Diabetes Technology?”

Small Grant Awardees:                   

• Michael Blaber (Biomed Sci) “Acceleration of Dermal Healings by Wild-type and Mutant Fibroblast Growth Factor-1 in the NONcCNZO10/LtJ Type 2 Diabetic Mouse”                   
• Shannon Hall-Mills (Comm Sci & Disorders) “Exploring the Language of Persuasion: Analysis of Linguistic Features in High School Students' Persuasive Discourse”                   
• Judy Rushin (Art) “Solar Paintings”                   
• Branko Stefanovic (Biomed Sci) “Toxicological assessment of the novel antifibrotic drug discovered at FSU” 

Equipment and Infrastructure Enhancement Program Awardees:          

• Sandra Brooke (Marine Lab), Felicia Coleman (Marine Lab), Dean Grubbs (Marine Lab), Allan Clarke (EOAS), Angela Knapp (EOAS), Olivia Mason (EOAS), Markus Huettel (EOAS), Jeff Chanton (EOAS), Nico Wienders (EOAS), and Chip Cotton (Marine Lab) “Proposal to the Equipment and Infrastructure Enhancement Program Oceanographic sampling system for the R/V Apalachee”                   
• Yanchang Wang (Biomed Sci), Akash Gunjan (Biomed Sci), Pradeep Bhide (Biomed Sci), Jose Pinto (Biomed Sci), Raed Rizkallah (Biomed Sci), Cathy Levenson (Biomed Sci), Tim Megraw (Biomed Sci), David Meckes (Biomed Sci), Michelle Arbeitman (Biomed Sci), Yoichi Kato (Biomed Sci), Yi Ren (Biomed Sci), David Gilbert (Bio Sci), Wu-min Deng (Bio Sci), Fanxiu Zhu (Bio Sci), Qing-Xiang (Amy) Sang, and Yan Li “Enhancing Biomedical Research by Confocal Microscopy with Quantitative Capability”

Multidisciplinary Support Grant Awardees:

• Xiuwen Liu (Computer Sci) and Xiaojun Yang (Geography) “A Scalable Probabilistic Spatiotemporal Inference Framework for Natural Ecosystem Monitoring by Remote Sensing”

The Proposal Transmittal Form and Instructions for Proposal Transmittal Form have been updated and posted to the web at http://www.research.fsu.edu/sra/forms.html.               

Questions may be addressed to srs@mailer.fsu.edu.           

The faculty has asked and we are delivering! The Office of Proposal Development is preparing for several workshops to take place this semester that will provide information and resources to faculty across campus. Workshops include:

• DARPA- Strategies for working with and applying through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (February 13)
• The Elevator Pitch: How to communicate your research quickly and simply
• Nonprofit Networking: FSU/INIE Connect (Your opportunity to connect with local non-profits for partnering and broader impact opportunities)
• NSF CAREER Workshop
• Finding Funding Workshop (part of SRA workshop series)
• An arts-focused workshop with invited speaker Dr. Audra Pittman, director of Tallahassee/Leon County’s Council on Culture and Arts and FSU alumna, to discuss opportunities with local arts and culture groups.

The OPD workshops page is available at: http://www.research.fsu.edu/OPD/workshops.html. We will be updating our workshops site soon to provide details on the spring workshops.

A monthly awards report is now available online. This report will allow interested faculty, staff and others, to learn more about who has been recently awarded research grants. To learn more, and to access this report, please click here.

Sponsored Research Administration Certificate Series will provide central and departmental staff with the skills and knowledge to manage sponsored projects fiscally and administratively. Space is limited for some classes; please register through OMNI HR Self Service. The following courses are offered during January:  

The entire course list can be found on the Sponsored Research website at http://www.research.fsu.edu/contractsgrants/workshops.html and on the FSU HR training site at http://www.hr.fsu.edu/index.cfm?page=DepartReps_Training_Train.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) spring 2015 Grants Conference will be held in June 2015 in Tampa, FL, and will be hosted by the State University System of Florida. Key representatives from the NSF as well as your colleagues - faculty, researchers and grant administrators - representing colleges and universities from around the US will participate.

This two-day conference is a must, especially for new faculty, researchers and administrators who want to gain key insight into a wide range of current issues at NSF including the state of current funding; new and current policies and procedures; and pertinent administrative issues. NSF program officers representing each NSF directorate will be on hand to provide up-to-date information about specific funding opportunities and answer your questions.

Highlights include:

• New programs and initiatives;                   
• Future directions and strategies for national science policy;                   
• Proposal preparation;                   
• NSF's merit review process;                   
• Cross-disciplinary and special interest programs;                   
• Conflict of interest policies; and                   
• Breakout sessions by discipline.

Sign up at http:events.signup4.com/nsfnotification to be notified when conference registration is available.

Please click here to access some of the latest funding opportunities available for the arts, humanities, social sciences, STEM disciplines and medicine.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is hosting a training webinar regarding its new Proposal & Award Policies & Procedure Guide that went into effect Dec. 26. The webinar, scheduled for Jan. 15, is currently at capacity, but the NSF plans to record the session and make it available to interested parties in the future. The new guide is available here: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappguide/nsf15001/index.jsp

Are you interested in learning more about the capabilities of Pivot, one of FSU’s primary resources for identifying funding in any discipline? Emily Hutcheson, Coordinator in the Office of Proposal Development, will hold office hours to specifically address any questions you have about Pivot and Pivot best practices. Her office hours will be Mondays from 2-4pm and Fridays from 9-10 am, in 2023 Westcott North Annex. Contact Emily any time atehutcheson@fsu.edu with questions.