ProposalBios 598PEN Spr14.ppt - University Of Illinoispeople.physics.illinois.edu/Celia/researchCV.pdf · 2015-01-19 · cv. Over the course of your career, you’ll be asked to provide

Preparing a Proposal CVCelia M. Elliott

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Copyright © 2014The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois 1

One of your basic (and often neglected) tasks as a scientist is to keep an up‐to‐date CV.

Over the course of your career, you’ll be asked to provide a CV many times:

1. for employment decisions—to get a job, to get a raise, to get promoted

2. for applications for special workshops or conferences

3. for funding of research proposals

4. for nominations for honors and awards

Get in the habit of periodically (at least once a year) reviewing and adding new items to your CV.

Save an electronic copy in several different places. It’s one of the most important documents you’ll have, and it will be exceeding painful to have to reproduce it, especially as you get further along in your career, if you lose it.

Today, we’re going to talk specifically about the abbreviated CV‐like document that is part of most grant proposal submissions.

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The examples provided here are for CVs submitted as a required document for proposals to the National Science Foundation or to the National Institutes of Health. Other federal funders have much looser rules about CVs.

An NSF “biosketch is” limited to two pages and has very specific instructions that are mercilessly enforced. We have actually had program officers threaten to return proposals without review because of the PI’s failure to follow the prescribed content and formatting of biosketches.

An NIH “biographical sketch” is limited to 4 pages (for most submissions, but CHECK!), and their rules are also mercilessly enforced. Proposals that are submitted electronically without the requisite biographical sketches are error‐flagged in the eRA Commons (the NIH electronic submission portal) and may not be reviewed.

Remember, as funding becomes more competitive, something as trivial as violating biosketch rules can become the tiebreaker in a fund/don’t fund decision.


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Copyright © 2014The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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Read the directions. Obey.


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NSF:

Times New Roman—11 pt or larger

Helvetica, Courier New, Palatino Linotype –10 pt or larger

Computer Modern family—11 pt or larger

NIH:

Arial, Helvetica, Palatino Linotype, Georgia—11 pt or larger

Most of the DOD agencies:

Times New Roman—12 pt

Margins: 1‐in margins on all sides of the page (left and right, top and bottom) are required for all federal agencies EXCEPT NIH, which allows 0.5‐in margins on all sides.


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NSF calls this section “Professional Preparation.”


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Latin honors are typically given by U.S. universities and appear on the diploma .

cum laude = with honor

magna cum laude = with high honor

summa cum laude = with highest honor

Do not claim honors unless it is marked on your transcript or diploma.

No uniform standard; each university sets its own rules, so comparing Latin honors from one institution to the next is impossible.

Some U.S. universities do not award Latin honors at all, and some use the equivalent phrases in English.


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Read the program announcement or funding agency general instructions to see if listing honors and awards is allowed.

The NSF “bible” is the “Grant Proposal Guide” (GPG):

http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=gpg (as of March 2014)

N.B.—individual program announcements supersede the GPG

The NIH “bible” is “SF424 (R&R) Application Guide for NIH and Other PHS Agencies”:

http://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/424/SF424_RR_Guide_General_Adobe_VerC.pdf (as of March 2014)


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Templates for NSF and NIH biosketches (as editable Word documents) may be downloaded from the course website.


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N.B. These are notmy research interests or contributions; they are examples of the type of items that might be included in an NIH biographical sketch.


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NSF limits products to a total of ten items—five “most relevant” and five “other most significant”

NIH allows up to 15 publications (must be in peer‐reviewed journals; must be at least accepted for publication [“in press’]; NIH also has other rules about “public access” articles


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“Teaching a course” is not a synergistic activity—that is part of your normal job duties as a graduate student or faculty member. Developing a new course or curricular materials, particularly ones that have applications beyond yourclassroom, is a synergistic activity.

Publishing research articles is not a synergistic activity; serving on a journal’s editorial board or serving as a reviewer for a funding agency would be.

Attending a workshop or summer school is not; organizing or teaching at one would be.


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Keep the narrative to one or two paragraphs.

You’ll use the narrative over and over for people to introduce you as a speaker, so emphasize things that establish your credibility as an expert.

You can incorporate the narrative in your formal CV:

Name

Affiliation

Contact Information

Narrative

Education

Employment

….


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Good advice on crafting an academic CV for job‐seeking:

American Association for the Advancement of Science, q.v. http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/tools_tips/how_to_series/how_to_craft_a_winning_resume.

The AAAS website, “My Science Career” is excellent; q.v. http://scjobs.sciencemag.org/JobSeekerX/ and

http://scforum.sciencecareers.org/viewforum.php?f=1


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Documents

ProposalBios 598PEN Spr14.ppt - University Of Illinoispeople.physics.illinois.edu/Celia/researchCV.pdf · 2015-01-19 · cv. Over the course of your career, you’ll be asked to provide