Proposal FAQs

UPDATED July 2021:  New form pages for the Bio Sketch and Other Support will required for submissions due on or after January 25, 2022. 

• For submissions due before January 25, 2022, NIH is encouraging but not requiring the use of the new form pages.
  • If you want to use the new form pages in advance January 2022, they can be found here:  New Bio Sketch, New Other Support
  • If you want to continue to use the existing form pages, they can be found here:  Current Bio Sketch, Current Other Support

UPDATED January 2023:  Bio sketches and current and pending support lists can be created in SciENcv or using NSF's Adobe PDF fillable forms until October 2023; thereafter, SciENcv will be the only NSF-approved format.  The current PDF template for the Bio Sketch can be found here, and the Current and Pending Support can be found here.

Yes. Since the Principal Investigator (PI) is responsible for the overall fiscal, technical and administrative management and conduct of an award, there are guidelines governing who may serve as a PI or Co-PI. Generally, PI status is limited to those with full-time faculty-level appointments. Visiting faculty, adjunct faculty, postdocs and graduate students should not be listed as PI or Co-PI. Some funding mechanisms that are intended specifically for students and postdocs, such as NIH K-series or F-series applications, require that the student or postdoc be named as PI, but they must supervised by a mentor or sponsor of PI-eligible rank who is also named in the proposal. Exceptions may be considered with the approval of the department chair and the dean.

We must receive your complete and final proposal at least four full business days prior to your due date or we cannot guarantee the proposal will be submitted on time. The earlier you get the proposal documents to us, the more time we have to review for accuracy and compliance with sponsor guidelines. Also, keep in mind that sponsor portals become very sluggish and even crash on high-volume deadline days. So, our best advice is to submit your proposal documents as early as you can.  

In general, PIs with eight-month appointments in the Dietrich School should limit effort committed on sponsored projects to four calendar months per year.  Overcommitments can result in the need to either cost share effort using School funds or to request prior approval for a reduction in effort from the sponsor. NSF also has a sponsor-specific policy limiting the amount of salary that senior personnel can charge across all of their NSF grants to two months per year. Anything above two months must be approved in the submitted proposal budget.

A statement of work is a brief description of your role on a project.  It will most commonly be needed when you are a subawardee on a proposal being led by another institution.  At the proposal stage, the SOW serves as the “proposal” document in PERIS, i.e. to differentiate Pitt’s portion of the proposal from the lead institution’s full proposal narrative.  At the award stage, the SOW will be incorporated into the subaward agreement between Pitt and the lead institution as documentation of the work that Pitt is contractually obligated to perform on the project.  

In most cases, no. Most sponsors do not require an approval protocol to be in hand at the time of proposal submission. But since the approved protocol is required before an award account can be created, and for many sponsors before they will even issue an award, you should not wait until you find out that you have been selected for funding to start work on your protocol application. 

Yes, if you are the PI. University of Pittsburgh policy mandates that all faculty members serving as PI must contribute some level of effort to that project to provide necessary supervision/administration.

The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) requires that student applicants submit their proposals individually through their own Research.gov accounts. NSF GRFP proposals do not need to be routed through the Dietrich School Sponsored Projects Administration office, the Office of Sponsored Programs, or PERIS.