Everybody, I'm going to give it another minute or two. So if everybody who's signing on just wants to hang tight for a minute, we'll get started in just maybe a minute or two. He's got, did you make it to your destination? Okay, thank you. Yes, we should be good to go. Right. It's just turned 02:00 here. So we'll give it a couple more seconds. Get started. We should have a pretty good crowd here. And Scott, are you comfortable sharing your screen or do you want me to It going to share my screen ahead? No, perfect. And I can monitor chat and if anything comes in, I might throw a question out to you if that's perfect. Fine with questions if they're really complex questions, I might want to wait until the end of fish questions standing on the slide or something. By all means I'll ask it immediately. All right. I think I've seen the entrance slow down a little bit so we can go ahead and get started. I just realized I was already recording. There goes Well, good afternoon everyone. My name is Jen Roth. I'm the Education Manager here for the Research office and welcome to our last workshop of the series for Spring. We're very excited to talk about the Ke Foundation with us. Today we have Scott Manger out of Corporate and Foundation Relations. I always will mess that up. As well as Caroline Millington who is the research development manager. Scott's got overview, what the foundation is, what projects they fund. Then Caroline, we'll go over what the process is for applying to it through UD. Scott, whenever you're ready, you can go and get started. Excellent. Welcome everybody. Good afternoon, Scott, me and Jerry, as Jen Roth mentioned. And thank you, Jen. Inviting me to do this, happy to have to help share my knowledge about the Ke Foundation for about the past five years now, I've managed the relationship with the university and the Ke foundation. So I have a lot of experience working with them, sharing concept papers, and getting feedback from them about the projects that we've submitted to them. For the review, a little bit about Ke foundations cited in 1954, it is oil money from West Coast was bought by Exxon Mobile, I guess maybe in the '50s '60s The foundation assets are in excess of 1 billion. They do have a longstanding history of capital and equipment grants, some of you might remember this, they no longer really play in that space. But there's even a small lab in Harper Lab that's, I forget exactly what the name of the labs quite long title. It's governed by a 35 member board of directors. Most of them are family who don't have Phd's in physics or medical research. What have you. Program officers really set the tone for the projects that they are interested in funding. They have four really crucial grant programs. They're an undergraduate education program, which is really like west of the Rockies geographic restrictions. They have a Southern California program which is obviously restricted to Southern California. They do special projects like the Ec Observatory would be an example of that. The one that we're really only qualified to apply for is the research. Tracy do a medical and science and a separate medical and then a separate science and engineering track their research priorities. These are phrases that I've saved over the years from their website and other places that I've really get hold of because they're interesting and you might even make use of them in your concept papers. This language comes up again and again. A lot of the abstracts that you'll see that come out of C from the researchers who get, are awarded funding. You might want to use some of this language in your own concept papers, should you be interested in writing one? I'm just going to read this aloud. They're interested in research and that's distinctive and novel in its approach questions the prevailing paradigm. Where's the potential to break over a new territory rate in the field? Again, they have two different tracks. They focus on emerging areas of research. They really want to crack the nuts and a start a whole new line of thinking or questioning about whatever it is that your research. They're interested in breakthrough technologies, instrumentation methodologies. They're definitely interested in innovative, significant interdisciplinary research. The big thing at tech is, and they put this in bold, it needs to be high level research, what they mean, high level of risk research. What they mean by that is most of their grants are going to fail. But within that, they've also done a good job. Because nobody else will need to research that now. Because they've already been shown that, guys, this doesn't work. There's value in that, they understand that. But there's also the potential for huge advances in fields across. Sciences, they're looking for transformational or transformative impact. Again, these are all phrases that we say the same thing but differently. They're not interested in translational research, treatment trials, or research for the sole purpose of drug development. They're interested in funding things that NSF and H won't. Not necessarily as the mission of a public funding agency, because those agencies are interested in funding science research, but they want to fill that void. What governments is able to do and what private philanthropy is able to do. They're very interested in you understanding that there are philanthropies needed in order to get this ball rolling your project early stage for an SF grant. You might not have enough research there. It might be too early in the development of equipment or technologies for your project to be viable. So far, I just pulled a few abstracts from last year. Just take a look at them really quickly. The first one is Rutgers University, it's 1.1 million dollar grant. When you can take a look here, while coupling in control of electrical spin ensembles are inaccessible to standard probes such as conventional light. To this team of researchers from workers and New Jersey Institute of Technology proposed a new paradigm using that word, using topological vortex light with orbital angular hommentumn. Next one from Emery, Another 1.1 million interdisciplinary team who recently developed a prototype, a limitation system that opens the door for air culturing microbes. Then we go over to the medical grants, Ocha Cancer Center, right the road, they got a $1,000,000 grant Molecular glues they're interested in studying in Ohio State University. Again, in 2022 they got 1.2 million. Most of that I saw on the website from this past year were 1.2 million or less, then request up to two, but I haven't seen 2 million come out in quite a long time. Ohio State with collaborating organizations, Institutions investigate neural circuits. Yeah, very interesting projects. I encourage you to go on their website, they have all of the projects that they funded for the past at least ten years and abstracts that go with them. So, these are the important dates for us here at UD, the University is able to submit to two tracks of concept papers each year. But we don't because we usually save all of them and do it once because we've never had to hold anybody back from the process. Any university is able to send in four concept papers in medical and four concept papers in science and engineering. It's eight total concept papers. See that we have how many years of the grants for? That's a great question. They vary. They don't like five year grants, I can tell you that right now. They do not like post a five year grant one time and strong need for it to be five years. It was just the Pi's whim, but they definitely three of your projects would be good. Four would be okay. Probably five is when they start to question and they take issue and they're like, well, why does it need to be five? Because they want to get those grants off of their books and the reporting schedules to make way for other grants that they want to fund. The important dates internally, again, June 15. I think Carolyn just sent out the announcement earlier this morning, the deadline for the concept paper, It's one page concept paper through June 15. What we do is we collect those concept papers, we share them with K and we schedule a phone call with usually the Vice president of restrict development and I attend that meeting to and take notes and just get their feedback. But they thought out the concept papers, what the concept papers might do to garner the eye of foundation. Looking deeper into that project, only one application can go forward per track, so you can have one medical go in and one science and engineering go in for the November. So that will be limited submission, there will be only one that will go forward. And that's happens that applications due November 1, if you are invited to submit a phase two proposal, those are quite long and usually the 15, 20 page proposals, the November 1 one, I think is five pages, 6 pages is somewhere in that length. And those are invited in February, mid February, so there's not a lot of time actually before, usually here early January if you're going to do a Phase two application and you have like six weeks really to prepare that, so it can be quite intense to get that second phase done. Possible presentations, if they're really interested in the project, they will fly out and you might have to present to the program officer and the director of the program and then zoom in their colleagues from the west coast or at my all zoom if they just can't make it out to the east coast to. To hear about the projects in person. So that would be something you would have to budget your time for as well you're preparing for those presentations. So there's another question in the chat. It's fine if you have a collaborative Pi outside of the university. The thing is it's hard because there's cost share involved and we'll get into that when you talk about the budget. Really likes to see a near one to one match. We do a lot of that through matching FNA and staff time. If you have a researcher not at UD, we can't really count that. Researchers time, the cost share of the project, that's the only where it gets a little sticky. It's totally possible. But then we need to think about ways that we can get creative and match that grant through something else in the budget. Your concept paper composed of these four things, it's only going to be one page, single spaced. You'd have to cite anything really. There's an example on the website of how they want things cited. They don't want you to put a whole. It'll be like Manger 20121 through 30. That's all they want to see in terms of citations in the concept papers. Your fill proposal will obviously be extensive references, but it's not needed for the concept paper. First and foremost, they really want to see an overview of the research that you're going to be working on. What's unique about it? What work have you done already? Why do you think this is the course of action that should be pursued? They're also going to have a brief description of key personnel and the methodologies that you guys are using. They're going to want to Why, why is an Sp paying for this? Why is and I pay for this. It's going to be smallest part of your concept paper. It's probably going to be three sentences or so. They're going to want an estimated budget broken down by mature areas. If it's $1 million, so I have like 600,000 for equipment and 400,000 for staff I and graduate students. That might be your budget. But you want to say that in a few sentences at the end of the concept paper. And we have examples that you can definitely share with you guys if you're interested to see them. Carolyn, this is the funding opportunities from the research office website. Carolyn, did you have a comment about the slide that you wanted to make or Sure. I just wanted to note that we sent out the call for the concept papers this morning. So it is live and active on the funding opportunities landing page. Which is accessible from either the research development main page or through the email that I sent out this morning. And you can just click on the Learn More and Apply button on that opportunity. And it will take you to the instructions and describe exactly what Scott just presented on in terms of what we're looking for for the concept paper, which is just a file upload to the application portal. And I see Dan had a question. I mean, yes, you can include preliminary data in your concept paper. Again, you have one page with which you need to get all this information put in. But they're going to want to under have an understanding of put the data in the concept paper. But they're going to have an understanding of how are you characterizing that data? What is it telling you? Why do you think it's a high research, high risk project? High risk research project. And you're going to want to reference the data that you have, but you don't probably need to explain the data. They could have figure, maybe, perhaps that showed the data. But they do tend to discourage illustrations in the concept paper because again, you have very little space, Very little space to make it work. They have restrictions of the margins and everything Like every other funder which are overly generous. Definitely something that you need to balance and find a way. I'm happy to take a look at concept papers before we send them to Echo. I can give you some feedback before that happens. It will be after. After the research office collects all the concept papers. Of course, I won't be able to do that beforehand, but okay. So this is the rubric that the research office uses to decide which paper goes forward into the proposal. So it needs to support pioneering discoveries and basic science, engineering or medical research. That's 30% it's 20% again, it supports, you need to sell that high risk factor and that's like 20% of the Bric that we're using here. We really need to sell that. And high impact, high risk, that has to do with the qualifications of not just you but your team. What are the qualifications of the team? Is everybody there that needs to be there? Are there other people that should be there who aren't? Those are going to be the things that the panels are going to be looking at. It represents a quality proposal whose idea has been previously rejected by federal agency. K does like to see if a federal agency has rejected you, not just because For any reason, right? But they want to hear language, and we can put this in your concept paper if you have it, that the review panel says it's just not ready for NSF funding, institutes too high risk, like that's the perfect thing, would be the crowning achievement of your review comments, if you could quote that in your concept paper and be able to do that and then the proposed research is accomplishable. If your project can't be done in five years but you're only asking for funding for two, it's never going to happen, right? So it needs to be viable. Your projects need to be viable to the budget that's on the website, the exceed 2 million. The most recent grants have been 1.4 million or last. It's been, it's been a long time since I've seen a $2,000,000 research grant come out of Kicks Office. I would definitely try and stick in the $1,000,000 range, or 1.2 at most. If you can require your one to one match the research office and your college, we'll work with you. And if you're invited to our full proposal, I'm trying to make possible. Again, there's three or four sentences Should be sufficient to really explain your budget needs in the concept paper. And we can send you some examples of what that could look like. You have a sense of how much details needed, which is not a lot at this stage. These are some of the lessons learned based on the review comments that we've gotten from Ke not the internal ones that UD but this is K telling us about the things that we've sent to UDA, little bit of analytics that we were able to do on our own. We've gone through about five years of Ke awards and what we're seeing is that there's a really equal mix between senior faculty getting Ke awards and assistant professors, early career faculty getting Ke awards. It's evenly split, which is interesting, I'm not even sure that knows that, and that they've looked at their funding that way. And they're very basic science driven. They want to look at the basic science of whatever it is. They're not really, they're not really interested in building devices. We found based on some of the feedback we've got that might not be exclusive. And I'm sure they have funded devices, but they're not overly fond of it, what we've been told from them. This is what they really get concerned with. If there's like a new buzzword, I guess in your field, and they see a bunch of proposals come to them that uses that buzzword. They get really nervous. They're like this, really high risk. Do we want to invest in this? That's not to say that yours is not high risk. They just look at those proposals more carefully because they want to make sure that they're making the right decision, funding the right one. That comes through their drawing. You do need to strike some balance because we've been dinged in the past. What's the preliminary data? It's the chicken and the egg roll, right. Cutting edge high risk research project with a little tiny bit of preliminary data. We need to strike a balance between those two things. It needs, needs to be like right time, right moment two in order to get the kicker word. I'm convinced of that. Finally, just articulating why you've been rejected from the federal sponsor is great, but I can't do that. It's not necessary. But we need to really make the pitch about why it would not be viable for Sp to fund this. And it might behoove you to talk to the program officer or if possible, you can get something in writing from the program officer that says, yeah, your project looks great. I think it would be difficult to get it through because it seems a little higher risk. That would be equally acceptable if we get a quote from program officer and it's good luck with that. But if that's possible and the light shines down on you and that happens, that would be amazing to include in a concept paper order, full proposal as well. So at this point, we'd like to open it up to any questions that you guys have. Hi, Dan. Hi. So let me see if I have this right here. Followup, put in preliminary date, any concept because the concept papers being judged by UD. Well, we've actually we've never held anybody back. All the concept papers that have always gone because we've never had more than eight. So Kek has always seen every concept paper that has been submitted to the research office. It's if you're invited for the full proposal. Okay. So concept paper. Nobody at UDE except for me, where you share it with, is going to see it before we sent it to Ke. Probably we usually do, they do the decisions about who goes forward after we get feedback from Ke. I see. Oh wow. Okay, maybe you have a chance, you have a chance to beef up your concept paper for that. Over the summer before they did that limited submission. I see. So the internal panel read, Yeah. Carefully, preliminary data for the concept paper. But if you were lucky enough to get invited for the application, then you kind of would need something to beef up what you're saying. Yeah. And especially if you're invited for phase two, phase two proposals, you know, 15 to 20 pages of just the narrative. There might be like 70 pages of appendices that you would want to include. So yeah, you could definitely send a lot of information if you're invited to the phase two application for sure. And the first pass, usually 55 pages or maybe it might be six is what the limit is for that. And I don't think they want an extensive pendency. I think you could have a couple of things there but not a lot. Thanks. Sure. I'm happy to give specific questions. I'm happy to answer them over the next few weeks or even over the summer if you're interested in going up for the phase one proposal. All right. Any other questions? Scott or Caroline Scott, I have a question regarding these, the medical stream, the research needs to really be inclined towards medical benefits or it's interesting because occasionally we send something in the science and engineering track and they come back and should go in medical. Because we submitted one in 2021 that went to phase two and it was doing just because we didn't have a medical trait. And looking into at least last two years of funding, very rarely they would have funded anything which has fundamental signs. That's my only issue with Ke is they're broadly categorizing medical which should include, according to them because, yeah, I certainly won't qualify submitting anything to engineering, but medical is such a broad thing. At least their understanding. I don't know whether you guys have more perspective on that because that's clearly because we've sent into things in science and engineering that were kicked into medical and medical that we kicked into science and engineering. I just feeling that they get the concept papers and oh, he should do that like that colleague should do that because he has experienced in that area. Then I don't that's how I feel about how they divvy it up, to be honest. But yeah, I don't I don't have any words of wisdom for you, I think. Yeah, Yeah, it's interesting. Actually, you know, writing that one page says when you submit the five page versus the 20 page, it is hard. But yeah, reverse peeling the onion, throwing stones and engineering to medical and that. Yeah. Anyway, it's, it's hard to get a sense for what they, what they're looking for. We've asked them for advice in the past too and they're given about which tracks. That's something they should go into. One more question, we summit this one page, E.g. And again, it's not in the purview of you guys in terms of where it's going to land. But would we get any help from research office in terms of if we have to make to the likings of Ke in terms of warnings at times or. Sure. I'm even happy to read everybody's concept paper before they go in and can give you some advice before before we submit them in late June, I was going to also chime in to agree that before the concept papers go to Ke, we can certainly give them a once over both the research development team and Scott after they go into Ke. And we have to make a decision. We wouldn't be able to assist in any of the until the age of the concept papers. Yes. But yes, there once we get the feedback from Ke and we have to make a decision, that's when our hands are off. And individuals within the university will then be responsible for deciding who to put forth in which track. So and then they then the first phase one isn't due until November 1, So we have plenty of time to then work with the selected individuals to then after the decision is made, to work with those proposals before it goes into ke for phase one. Thank you again. The window for our meeting with Kek is usually July 1 through mid August. But we'll try and schedule that as early as we can. And we've usually been able to do it within the first two weeks of July. We've been lucky enough to have that happen. But the sooner we can get it into them, the sooner we can make a decision, the university to make a decision about which one goes forward and the sooner that you guys can start working on an application. Because November a lot of time, but November comes quickly as you know, in the full semester beta. See you have your hand raise. Yeah, I'll be honest, I'm still confused with the phase two versus phase one. Is the phase two invited only from successful phase one? Yes, We'll tell you whether they're like a larger budget or something. Okay? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll tell us which ones move forward and there's not that much time. I guess they get you get them early November. Usually we here like at the end of December, early January. And then you get basically have six weeks to take it from phase one to phase two. So you have six weeks to take it from five pages to 15 or 20. So go back, Sorry, I'm still confused. So a preliminary proposal and then a full proposal, okay? Okay. So to get the, let's say the award, like to get the 1.2 million dollar, you have to submit a phase two, right? Because that's the full application, is that what you mean? Yes. Yeah, you can't get you can't get funding with a phase one only. Oh, okay. Okay. I see. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Sure. Yeah. This is the word the terminology that Kc uses, so I sort of spit that back out at you. But yes, that's sort of a preliminary proposal is what they're looking for for November 1. Any other questions? Question just came in. Does phase one and phase two both need preliminary data? Yeah, if you're putting in phase one, you definitely need to keep it in phase two. If you have a specific example, Dan, we can talk offline two because I'm curious about what the preliminary data is now. Like I don't know what form it would come in because I may change my mind based on that. We can talk offline about that. Any other questions about the program and the application? Awesome. I'm not seeing anything else come in. So I'm going to take that as that was a great presentation, Scott and there's no more questions. Thank you everybody for being with us today. Big shout out to Scott who's actually on vacation and skill was with us today. So we really appreciate your dedication here. As I said, this is our last workshop of the semester, but we will be back in the fall with our annual research orientation. And then we'll be kicking off our fall series, being the lookout for some more topics for the research community in the coming months. Thanks so much, everybody. Have a great afternoon. Great, thank you.
2023 Research Workshop: Keck Foundation
From Jennifer Roth May 31, 2023
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