The Jadavji Laboratory turned 7 years old this month! I can’t believe I have been doing this for 7 years, but I also can. 🙃 

This month we also had our first clinical data accepted for publication in the Journal of Translational Stroke Research. I feel like this is a big milestone because the goal has always been to incorporate clinical work into what we do.

Lots to celebrate!

Since opening the doors of the Jadavji Laboratory I have learned a lot about grant writing. I am sharing the lessons I have learned. I compiled my top 10 board pieces of advice with some sub points. I hope you find them useful.

Happy writing!

Nafisa's Top 10 Grant Writing Tips

1. Apply! Learn from mistakes and get comfortable with grant writing and managing everything else you must do as a PI.

2. Plan early if you can. I use Trello, but there are many tools out there. Find one that works for you.

- Make a calendar of grant deadlines for the next 6 months to year, so you know what is coming.

- Once you decide to write a grant make list of every document you need to write. Sometimes there are several!

3. Try applying broadly and then narrow focus – figure out what works for you and which agency/foundation responds to your applications. You don’t know until you try.

-Set up funding searches, check out whether your institution has a subscription to a data base and sign up.

4. Get feedback! Attend training sessions, as many as you can, and read! Write early and send out your grants for feedback!

5. Filter Feedback - it is not all useful. The more you practice the faster you will learn!

6. Build a team – get letters of support, offer salary to collaborators, include students on grants.

With students, get them involved with making figures and/or listing them specifically to work on specific aims.

7. Cite yourself if you have published with techniques you are planning to use in your grant and use figures or images as preliminary data. You might be considered young; show the reviewers you can do what you are proposing.

8. Write regularly (grants, papers, etc.). Block off time in your calendar. Some days I write for 2 hours and other days it is 15 minutes – anything is better than 0.  that’s better than nothing. 

9. Revise grants - use reviewer comments to improve grants. 

10. Celebrate each submission – it’s tough, celebrate getting the grant out