Overview

The Office of Grant Support (OGS) provides pre-award administrative assistance to the entire Albert Einstein College of Medicine community. Our goal is to enable faculty scholars to submit competitive grant proposals and to successfully manage all subsequent non-financial responsibilities of the award, resubmission, and renewal processes.

Useful Resources

Cayuse Funding Opportunities Forms Grants Corners

The OGS can assist with:

Funding opportunity identification
Proposal guidelines (e.g. eligibility, forms, institutional data)
NIH policies, procedures, and jargon
Grantsmanship
Awards Committee nominations (for limited submission programs)

Required registrations for electronic application submissions
Use of Cayuse 424/SP (electronic grant application resource)
Submission of Non-competing applications/Just-in-Time/Supplemental Materials
Communications with grant-making agencies

Grants Corners

Grant Lifecycle

The grants lifecycle is split into two sections, commonly known as Pre-Award (or proposal phase) and Post-Award (or award phase).

Learn More about the Process

Flash News

Weekly NIH Funding Opportunities and Notices

March 29, April 05, April 12, and April 19.

OGS Workshops

May 2024 (by invitation only)

In-person Cayuse training session

OGS organizes in-person Cayuse training sessions on a monthly basis in the library training room. This hands-on training session is open to invitation only. Our Cayuse Training has been revamped. It involves switching between the new OGS website and the Cayuse Test environment. Access to the Cayuse Test environment will be granted to the participants. The OGS team will be present to answer any questions that may arise during the training session. Our goal with these small training sessions is to increase dialogue and situational questions. To attend the in-person training in April, please send your email request to OGS@einsteinmed.edu.

NIH Notice for eRA commons ID validation change from warning to error

NSF Updates

grantsgovguide0524| NSF - National Science Foundation NSF Grants.gov Application Guide - May 2024

NSF has released an updated version of the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide (NSF 24-006). In general, the Guide has been revised to match the changes in NSF's Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) (NSF 24-1). A summary of changes by chapter is provided at the beginning of the document.
The guide will be effective for applications submitted (via Grants.gov) or due on or after May 20, 2024. The guidelines in grantsgovguide0123 are applicable to proposals submitted before May 20, 2024.

To All Research Administrators:

The NIH salary cap has been increased from $212,100 to $221,900 effective January 1, 2024 Guidance on Salary Limitation for Grants and Cooperative Agreements FY 2024.

The new salary cap of $221,900 should now be used, when appropriate, for all new and non-competing proposals to federal agencies that mandate the NIH cap.

For awarded federal grants and contracts, the $221,900 salary cap should be applied to all existing grants. However, we do not want to create a disruptive process. Therefore, at your earliest convenience, please process an EPAF with the new salary cap for the next pay period.

Attached is the updated salary cap template.

Foreign Components

The Office of Grant Support (OGS) and Research Finance (RF) have been in collaboration to address the changing landscape and compliance requirements related to the establishment of planned federal foreign subawards. This is in response to NOT-OD-23-182.

As many of you are aware, NOT-OD-23-182, outlines the terms and requirements that all prime and subsites must agree to establish a subaward. As an institution, Albert Einstein College of Medicine must implement new procedures to ensure compliance at time of application and award.

Pre-Award changes for all grant applications with foreign components:

During proposal planning when PIs, department administrators and study teams are communicating concerning the required sub documents (ie. Budget, budget justification, F&A agreement, signed SOI, etc.) they will need to share that a Letter of Support (LOS) is also required for submission. This letter must be signed by both the foreign site PI and their institutional official. The letter will also need to include specific language that will meet the compliance requirement. The required language to provide the subsite is below:

We confirm that all appropriate programmatic and administrative personnel involved in this application are aware of the prime awarding agency’s policies, agree to accept the obligation to comply with award terms, conditions, and certifications, and are prepared to establish the necessary inter-institutional agreement consistent with those policies.

As outlined in NOT-OD-23-182, we will provide access to copies of all lab notebooks, all data, and all documentation that support the research outcomes to the primary recipient no less than once per year, in alignment with the timing requirements for Research Progress Report submission.

This language must appear in the letter of support (LOS) and the LOS must also be included in the application.
OGS will be utilizing the “Flag” feature of Cayuse to identify all proposals that have a foreign component. This flag can also be utilized by the department administrators when they create the proposals. The flag is “Grant with Foreign Component.” This information will be helpful in our metrics and reporting but has no impact on the application.

Post-Award changes for all awards with foreign components:

Amendments on current foreign agreements will be modified and sent out to all Foreign Subs for signatures
Attestations to the PI in accordance with revised policy and requirements will be sent and tracked.
Revision of Outgoing subcontract template to foreign subcontractors.

The Grants.gov Program Management Office (PMO) schedules system-wide software releases to bring its users new features and fixes. During these releases, downtime will be scheduled to deploy new enhancements. The PMO also performs scheduled maintenance on its databases and Websites in order to provide enhanced IT security and increased network reliability. The Grants.gov Calendar lists anticipated dates for both system-wide enhancements and scheduled downtimes for system maintenance.

For NIH submissions: In the SF424RR, page 2, #14, the Division should be: Albert Einstein College of Medicine. We have new instructions from the eRA commons helpdesk that this is needed in order for the PI Department to populate in eRA Commons and the NIH RePORTER.
Proposal Central submissions: Select Indranil Basu as Grants Officer (Signing Official, Authorized Institution Official Representative), Suzanne Locke as Fiscal Officer and Janis Paradiso as Technology Transfer Officer.
OGS is organizing an in-person Cayuse training session for the DAs on a monthly basis in the library training room. This small group hands-on training session is by invitation only. Please send your email request to OGS@einsteinmed.edu if you would like to participate.
For awarded continuations of incoming subcontracts, foundations, associations, and industry projects, it is no longer required to create an SP proposal record. The RF Award set up template will be revised to ask for the Cayuse project number (A23-XXXX). The RF Award Set-up team will proceed with their review and inputting the award in Cayuse SP & Banner. This does NOT include NIH RPPRs and non-NIH continuations where submission to the sponsor is needed after OGS review.
- Please find here the RPPR routing process in eRA Commons.
Please use the revised PI Certification form if the PIs choose not to certify the proposal directly in Cayuse SP.

Message from the Director

Hello all,

April has had a unique start this year. First with an earthquake and then an eclipse. I hope you all stayed safe and caught the celestial event!

In this edition of the newsletter, I will provide details on our institutional submissions, office updates, sponsor updates, internal forms changes, system updates and proposal reminders.

Application Breakdown

Application numbers have been analyzed and from January - March 31, 2024, Einstein has submitted 260 applications for a total cost request to all sponsors of $351,699,721. These applications were submitted by 45 Departments/Divisions across the institution. The funding breakdown: 50% Federal prime, 23% Federal and Non-Federal subcontracts, 22% Non-Federal prime, and 5% Industry. We will provide more information on funding success in the coming months.

Office Updates

OGS has launched our office hours. Please drop by Tuesday and Thursday from 12-1PM and 3-4PM.

The Office of Grant Support is recruiting for the role of Senior Grants Specialist. Please apply here. We will start recruitment for an additional grant support role this month.

Please ensure that your communication and especially any required clarifications from sponsor contacts routes through OGS. As the Authorized Organization Representatives (AOR), we will review, provide feedback and offer our countersignature and/or concurrence for all direct sponsor communications.

NIH Updates

There are many changes coming from Federal Agencies and especially the NIH in 2025. These will include changes to the review framework, the implementation of commons forms (Biosketch, Other Support), and a new forms package (FORMS-I).

Agencies of the NIH are also preparing to implement changes related to the National Security Presidential Memorandum 33 (NSPM-33). This memorandum is a directive from the executive branch of the government that is intended to safeguard the security and integrity of federally funded research. There will be more stringent review and requirements for disclosures related to this implementation.

NIH Peer Review – Simplified Review Framework for NIH Research Project Grant Applications (NOT-OD-24-010). This new framework and structure will begin with submission or due dates on or after January 25th, 2025. The simplified review framework is expected to better focus peer reviewers on the key questions needed to assess the scientific and technical merit of proposed research projects: “Should the proposed research project be conducted?” “Can the proposed research project be conducted?” Information concerning the framework will be included in updated NOFOs.

Parent Announcements have been extended (NOT-OD-24- 099). This impacts Parent R01/R03/R21 mechanisms. These announcements will be updated again in fall 2024 in preparation for the implementation of the simplified peer review framework.

*Pay very close attention to the FORMS package and the expiration date of the NOFO/funding opportunity you intend to use.

More to come on these changes including training, resources and further updates.

Upcoming Form and System updates:

The required Cayuse Supplemental form is undergoing final edits. This will be circulated for use prior to April 30th. This form will be implemented for use for deadlines starting May 15th.

As mentioned in the March Newsletter, OGS had requested Cayuse add a new field to capture Early Approval/Submission Requests for applications. This field is now live and is designed to alert OGS of plans for early submission of applications to assist with our review prioritization and workflow. Not all proposals will be impacted. If you have any proposals in Unsubmitted status you will be prompted to answer this question to enable the Submit for Routing button. Please continue to use the short title in Cayuse424 to identify the actual deadline of the application.

OGS will circulate a Qualtrics survey in advance of the May/June/July Deadline to identify and plan for review volume. This will be circulated next week.

Reminder:

Cayuse training will continue to be available monthly by invitation. Please contact OGS to request inclusion (OGS@einsteinmed.edu).

OGS will communicate planned training schedule soon.

Please continue to reach out to OGS for all your research administrative related inquiries. We look forward to continuing to provide a high level of support for your applications as well as clear updates on sponsor requirements and guidance to maximize funding success!

Sincerely,
M. Caitlin McKenna

Join Our Newsletter

Contact Us

ogs@einsteinmed.edu
718-430-2238

Office of Grant Support
1300 Morris Park Avenue - Belfer 1106
Bronx, NY 10461

Office of Grant Support

Grad Student Corner

Postdoc Lounge

PI Lounge

DA Toolkit

Grant Lifecycle

Message from the Director

Contact Us