(no subject)

My first research job was right out of college. When my boss submitted an NIH grant that year, I spent a few hours sitting on the floor by the copier with scissors, tape, and a ruler, shrinking down graphs and trying to fit them all on one page by literally copying and pasting. We were on the west coast, so the drop-dead date for proposal submission was 11pm the night before the due date. Then someone would drive the grant to the airport and get it on the midnight plane to DC.

When I first started working at the IHV, submitting an NIH grant meant making eleven copies of some forms and five copies of others. Everything had to be carefully collated and organized. The research plan would be photocopied onto "NIH continuation pages" and at the very end every page would be hand-numbered, and you'd fill out a table of contents by hand. Then you'd pack it up in a box and a courier would take it to NIH. About a week before that happened, you'd "route" the grant by circulating the budget, a little bit of the research plan, and some forms and things, and having someone walk it around to various offices on campus to have all the right people sign off on it.

When I submitted my first independent grant in 2007, there were no more printed copies couriered to NIH. Instead you uploaded to grants.gov. But you still routed the proposal by walking it around. Someone in the university Office of Research and Development checked all your signatures and then pressed a button on grants.gov to submit your grant.

Now my university has something called COEUS. I don't know what it stands for. But over the past few days I've been sending bits and pieces of grant to my grant administrator and she's been uploading them to COEUS. Last night I checked everything over online from home. She did the same this morning and e-mailed me about a correction or two. And then I pushed a little button that said "submit for approval."

COEUS checked everything to make sure it was in the proper formats for the university and for grants.gov. Then my grant started routing. COEUS displays a chain of eight separate "stops" at which someone will click a button to approve my grant. At the end of the chain, once the Office of Research and Development signs off on it, COEUS will automatically upload my grant to grants.gov, all its sections slotting neatly into the right places. Then grants.gov will relay my grant to NIH. I can sit at my desk and watch the approvals go through one by one.

No paper copy of my grant exists, and it's possible that no paper copy will ever exist. The Center for Scientific Review at NIH will electronically accept it and assign it to a study section. The Program Officer will assign it to reviewers, who can log in to the NIH Electronic Research Administration commons and read it there. That's also where I'll go to find out where my grant is in the process, what score it is eventually assigned, and whether I receive an award.

Oh hey, did I mention? I FINISHED MY GRANT.

(no subject)

Some of you will have already seen this on my Facebook, but I had to share it here as well.

One of Alex's nursery school teachers occasionally has the kids tell her stories for her blog. She posted (with our permission) Alex's account of the universe yesterday. I really like it.

"The universe is made of tiny round cells and the magic is how our cells join together. There is nothing in the space between the cells. Then they bump together and get stuck together and it continues until they are tiny animals like jellyfish and plants.

The first people on Earth were made from apes. I came from my mom. My mom came from my grandmother. My grandmother came from my great grandmother. My great grandmother came from my great great grandmother and so it is for all of them. But my great great great great great great grandmother was an ape. But actually it’s really disgusting. We come from sperm.

I was born from my mom’s tummy in 2005. It felt… strange. I used to be in the darkness there and then I came out and it was so bright I screamed. I wanted to come back into the dark because I thought it was the light. I don’t want to go back now because I don’t need to be in the dark anymore.

When you die you just stay dead, you return to the dark. My babysitter thinks that when you die you become the trees or something. I think when you’re dead, you’re dead.

In the darkness of death, there are lots of stuff. My opinion is, that in the darkness of death everything is possible. It means you can do every single thing. But in the light of being alive you can only do a few things.

We are made of the stuff of the universe because we’re made of cells and cells are part of the universe. All cells are the same. One last thing I’m telling of, is that there is lots and lots of stuff.

My foot is starting to hurt.”

(She walks away)

I quoted the whole thing, which is not good blog etiquette, but I wanted to have a record of it in case she ever takes her blog down. Click through anyway to read other fascinating stories, like "The Love of Hearts When the Dinosaurs Were Made."

I really wonder how she elicits material like this from the kids. I recognize some of the source material from Alex's story - we've been reading a fantastic picture book about human evolution called Our Family Tree - but the metaphysical cast she put on it really startles me.