{"id":19627,"date":"2019-02-19T18:42:58","date_gmt":"2019-02-19T18:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/sponsored-programs\/?page_id=19627"},"modified":"2021-08-18T11:10:25","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T15:10:25","slug":"crutcher","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/sponsored-programs\/presentations\/crutcher\/","title":{"rendered":"Q&A with Dr. Keith Crutcher, Former NIH Scientific Review Officer"},"content":{"rendered":"

OSP was honored to host Dr. Keith Crutcher, a former Scientific Review Officer at the National Institutes of Health, on March 28 for a half-day workshop. The overall goal was to ensure familiarity with the NIH and its extramural funding programs in order to enhance competitiveness in grant proposal submissions. Prior to the event, we took the opportunity to ask Dr. Crutcher some questions of great importance to the MSU research community.<\/p>\n

\"Workshop<\/figure>\n

How can Montclair State University build or improve its reputation with NIH?<\/strong><\/em>
\nFrom an institutional perspective, you need to pick and choose where you want to focus your effort. What the NIH is looking for is some kind of focused commitment to an area of research or a particular technology that\u00a0 says \u201cif you want to do \u2018x\u2019 or \u2018y,\u2019 Montclair State is the place you want to come to do that.\u201d You build on existing strengths and then make strategic recruits and strategic alliances going forward.
\n


\nWhat does NIH look for in early stage and beginning investigators?<\/strong><\/em>
\nYou have to convince reviewers that these are individuals with the appropriate pedigree\u2014which can be evidenced by their training history and publications\u2014and that they are in a place where they can do what they\u2019re qualified to do.
\nI would strongly encourage young faculty to collaborate as much as possible, not just within the University but\u2014in terms of the University becoming more visible to the NIH\u2014collaborating outside of it as well. As long as that work is good, quality work and your name is on it, you can pull that out as evidence that you do have the qualifications for ultimately becoming an independent investigator, and I think that\u2019s really what the NIH is looking for.
\n<\/div>
\n
\"Keith<\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>
\nIn your experience, what do NIH reviewers look for? What makes a proposal stand out?<\/strong><\/em>
\nEven though the NIH says they give high points for innovation, the reality is that they really give high points for incremental progress. Work that doesn’t fit within the existing paradigm is actually hard to get past reviewers.
\nPeer review still ends up being a primarily retrospective review. I think it\u2019s important to keep in mind that reviewers are looking at if an investigator is capable of doing what they say they are going to do, and they are going to do that based on what the investigator has done in the past.
\nThey are also going to be looking at whether the investigator has the strategic collaborations that are going to allow them to do things they don\u2019t already know how to do.<\/p>\n

Is it important to talk with someone at NIH before submitting a proposal? If the PI does, will this increase his or her chance of success?<\/strong><\/em>
\nI think a much better strategy is to look at what they\u2019ve funded. One of the websites I\u2019m going to make sure people know about is NIH RePORTER<\/a>. At an institute level, you can find out what projects they\u2019ve funded and that speaks much louder than what any program officer will tell you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OSP was honored to host Dr. Keith Crutcher, a former Scientific Review Officer at the National Institutes of Health, on March 28 for a half-day workshop. The overall goal was to ensure familiarity with the NIH and its extramural funding programs in order to enhance competitiveness in grant proposal submissions. Prior to the event, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29,"parent":45,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-19627","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/sponsored-programs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/sponsored-programs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/sponsored-programs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/sponsored-programs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/sponsored-programs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19627"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/sponsored-programs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20774,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/sponsored-programs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19627\/revisions\/20774"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/sponsored-programs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/45"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/sponsored-programs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/sponsored-programs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}