Faculty Programming and Proposal Support

ORSD assists Harvard Chan School faculty with coordinating external expert reviews, editorial assistance, and graphic design support for grant proposals:  

• External Review Services: Working with Harvard Chan faculty to identify an external content expert, ORSD hires reviewers to  complete a detailed review of proposals using NIH review criteria. Through this service, faculty PIs can identify opportunities to improve their scientific design and assess the impact and significance of the proposal.  
• Editing Services: ORSD maintains a pool of experienced scientific editors who have been trained in NIH grant writing and editing. Editors assist with copyediting, reducing length, and strengthening clarity and organization of ideas.  
• Graphic Design Services: ORSD coordinates partnerships between faculty and designers to develop graphics to illustrate key points and concepts in proposals. 

The School offers several competitive internal funding mechanisms to promote and facilitate faculty research agendas:  

• Dean’s Fund for Scientific Advancement: The DFSA facilitates the exploration of early ideas, the development of strong interdisciplinary team science, and the creation of new transformative research collaborations that advance the frontiers of science. 
• Dean’s Emergency Research Response Fund: This fund is designed to produce research findings that contribute in real-time to an emergency response and/or allow for data to be collected in a particular setting, during an unforeseen public health crisis or leading up to an important policy or legislative decision. 
• Taplin Equipment Grant Fund: This program provides funds for instrumentation expenses that may be difficult to fund through other mechanisms.

The Harvard Chan School’s Faculty Grant Writing Course is designed to assist primary faculty who are actively developing NIH grant proposals for upcoming cycles.  The course is open to Harvard Chan faculty with a range of experience writing grant proposals and focuses on the sections of NIH proposals that are particularly challenging and most important for reviewers: specific aims, significance, innovation, approach, title, narrative, and abstract. The course is led by Donald Halstead, Lecturer on Epidemiology and Director of Writing Programs in the Office of Education and is offered once or twice annually based on enrollment.

The HOME: Grant Concierge Program is led the Office of Research Strategy and Development (ORSD) and integrates the efforts of the Office of Faculty Affairs (OFA), and Research Administration (RA) with that of mentors and academic departments to provide an individualized research development support system for each new faculty member as they launch their Chan School careers. 

The goal of the program is to provide streamlined and supportive guidance to new faculty through their first grant submission at the Harvard Chan School. Through this program, faculty will establish strong relationships with key administrative departments, receive strategic support to navigate the funding landscape, and be given the tools and resources they need to succeed as members of the Harvard Chan research community as they begin to build their research programs. 

The Office of Research Strategy and Development’s Intranet is a PIN-protected online tool for investigators to find important information meant to support proposal development and funding strategies. Examples of information on the website include sample letters of support and other non-disciplinary grant templates, NIH paylines and research priorities, and HSPH-specific policies and processes. Faculty, research scientists, and post-docs can access curated lists of funding opportunities, links to funding search engines, and other resources to help in finding funding and developing proposals.