MCIRCC's Proposal Development Unit Begins Fall With a System for Success

MCIRCC’s PDU Unit Project Wall

MCIRCC’s PDU Unit Project Wall

The MCIRCC Proposal Development Unit (PDU) has been increasingly busy this past spring and summer! Meagan Ramsey, PhD, PDU Manager, and Santinio Jones, Project Manager, have been perfecting their system to help more MCIRCC members get competitive grants out the door. 

Organization and visibility for the PDU has proven to be their keys to success. Working with multiple teams of investigators who all have complex responsibilities and schedules is difficult – but doable with the right planning and systems.

Santinio overhauled the team's internal processes, and the PDU now approaches working with each team using the following stages: 

  • Forming (e.g., identifying team members, creating checklists and writing timelines)

  • Storming (e.g., facilitating brainstorming meetings, drafting specific aims)

  • Norming (e.g., facilitating a team kickoff meeting, outlining and drafting the initial research strategy and other technical documents, creating graphics)

  • Performing (e.g., gathering required documents for the teams, substantive editing)

  • Adjourning (e.g., final copyediting editing, ensuring the research administrator has all needed documents) 

Some specific project management and team science approaches the PDU has successfully applied include using agendas for team meetings, sending team members clear action items with feasible deadlines, and facilitating brainstorming meetings to assist teams with idea generation.

With these new improvements in place, the fruits of their labor paid off in a BIG way this summer! Following are highlights of the over $55 million in proposals that were submitted over the past nine months:

  • $3.72 million was awarded to the Michigan Resuscitation Innovation and Science Enterprise (M-RISE) from the American Heart Association (AHA) as a part of its Arrhythmias and Sudden Cardiac Death Strategically Focused Research Network, which works to support researchers leading new approaches to studying arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death. Primary Investigator Robert Neumar, MD, PhD, the director of M-RISE, worked with the PDU to obtain funding. This grant has allowed the M-RISE research projects to move forward, and they are now actively seeking fellows for their training program.

  • MCIRCC’s first National Institutes of Health (NIH) P01 program project application (worth over $11 million) was submitted to NHLBI last month. Kathleen S. Stringer, PharmD, the lead PI, worked with the PDU and 20 other investigators from 11 units across campus to submit this proposal. 

Stringer said, “This would not have been possible without the help of MCIRCC’s PDU’s Meagan Ramsey and Santinio Jones. They assisted me with everything from setting up and organizing an MBox, to reviewing and editing the science and organization of the application. A P01 has a lot of moving parts, multiple cores and projects and a plethora of investigators; Meagan and Santinio worked closely with me and the team to keep it all together! Their keen organization skills also helped the team stay focused and meet our milestones.” She continued, “The PDU arranged for extraordinary designers from MCIRCC’s Marketing team to construct beautiful and informative figures for the application. All in all, the MCIRCC PDU team was essential, not only to the successful completion and submission of the P01, but to the construction of a well-organized and polished application which, I believe, reflects favorably on entire team, MCIRCC and the University of Michigan.”  

Additional PDU-supported projects that are currently awaiting funding decisions include:

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There are also nine other grants that the PDU is actively developing with MCIRCC members that will be worth around $22 million, and several more will be in the works soon.

For MCIRCC members interested in working with the PDU, please contact PDU Manager Meagan Ramsey, PhD, or request PDU support here. 

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