• Monthly Meetings for Research Administrators: Research Administration and Compliance Forum
• Research Advocate Now Online Only
• RAC Offices to Close During the Annual Campus Winter Break
• NIH Shifting Major Submission Deadlines
• NIH Offering Web Training on Grants.gov on December 5
• New Grants.gov System in 2007
• AAAS Summarizes Current Status of FY 2007 Federal Budget
• NIH Non-Competing Awards Under the Continuing Resolution
• USDA CSREES Requires Grants.gov for 2007 NRI Program
• NIH Brochure for PIs on Animal Use
• SPO Provides Guidance on ProposalCENTRAL
• New Law Requires Searchable Web Database of All Federal Awards
• OMB Watch Launches Fedspending.org Funding Database
• Procurement Services Hires Supplier Diversity Administrator

The Research Administration and Compliance Office (RAC) is sponsoring a new monthly meeting for campus research administrators. Each meeting of the RAC Forum will focus on topics of interest to the research community, such as grant management issues, human subjects protection, and animal care and use. All meetings will also include brief updates on current issues from managers within RAC. All campus staff and faculty are invited.

Well over 100 campus staff attended the inaugural meeting, held on October 17, which was focused on Grants.gov. Slides from the first meeting are available at http://rac.berkeley.edu/meeting/agendaOctober2006.html.

The next two RAC Forum meetings will be held on November 14 and December 12 in the Alumni House. The November 14 forum will include presentations and discussion of issues related to financial conflict of interest and cost transfers.

Upcoming agendas and meeting schedules for the RAC Forum are available at http://rac.berkeley.edu/racforum.html. Notices will also be sent out by email. If you have suggestions for future topics or wish to be added to the mailing list, or if you know of other staff who would like to receive meeting notices, please contact Shelley Sprandel at spore@berkeley.edu or 2-8122.

The Research Advocate newsletter is no longer distributed as a printed publication. The newsletter will continue to be published online in both html and PDF at http://rac.berkeley.edu/ra/list.html. The PDF version can be printed to read offline.

The Research Administration and Compliance Office will be sending a notice to email list subscribers when each issue is available. If you are not already on the mailing list, you can be added by sending email to nthan@berkeley.edu. (If you are receiving limited submission notices and policy notices from SPO and RAC, you are already on the list.)

We will be exploring new ways of keeping the campus informed of the latest news and funding information. We welcome any comments and ideas—call or send email to Shelley Sprandel at 2-8122 or spore@berkeley.edu.

The Office for the Protection of Human Subjects, Animal Care and Use Committee Office, and the Sponsored Projects Office, along with the Research Administration and Compliance Office, will be closed during the campus energy curtailment beginning Monday, December 25, 2006, through Monday, January 1, 2007.

SPO Proposal Submission

• Proposals with deadlines during the campus shutdown should arrive at SPO by Friday, December 8, 2006.
• Proposals due at agencies in early January should be at SPO before Friday, December 15, 2006.

ACUC Protocol Submission

• The deadline for protocol submission for the December 6, 2006 is Monday, October 30, 2006.
• The deadline for protocol submission for the January 24, 2007 meeting is Friday, December 15, 2006.

CPHS Protocol Submission

• The deadline for protocol submission for the December 1, 2006 CPHS-I meeting is Monday, November 6, 2006.
• The deadline for protocol submission for the December 8, 2006 CPHS-II meeting is Monday, November 20, 2006.
• The deadline for protocol submission for the January 12, 2007 CPHS-I meeting is Monday, December 4, 2006.
• The deadline for protocol submission for the January 19, 2007 CPHS-II meeting is Monday, December 11, 2006.
• Please note that if your study was given full board review last January and approval will expire before January 12, 2007, you must submit your renewal application in time for review at a December 2006 CPHS meeting.

Beginning in January 2007, the National Institutes of Health will move major standing receipt dates for grant applications away from the first of the month to avoid days with the highest submission volumes at Grants.gov. Note that some applications are due earlier** than before. The new ‘spread out’ receipt dates will apply to both paper and electronic applications. Programs with special receipt dates continue to be due on the specific dates listed in the announcement.

NIH announced the changed receipt dates in the October 6 NIH Guide: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-07-001.html. The announcement provides the following chart of all funding mechanisms and receipt dates.

To help prepare extramural applicants for the upcoming transition of R01s to electronic submission in February 2007, the National Institutes of Health is holding an online training event on December 5, 2006.

To register for the free training, go to http://era.nih.gov/training/esub_120506/. The presentation is targeted towards research administrators, new and experienced investigators, postdocs, trainees, and anyone who will be applying for an NIH grant electronically.

Berkeley staff and faculty should also use FormFiller and FormChecker, available at http://www.spo.berkeley.edu/Procedures/grantsgov.html.

The September meeting of the Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP) included a presentation by Grants.gov representatives who announced news about the move to a new contractor for the system. The contract with Northrup Grumman is terminating, and a new contract has been awarded to Anteon Corporation. The transition is scheduled to be completed by October 31, 2006. The Macintosh viewer for PureEdge is scheduled to be finished by October 31, and deployed in November 2006.

Anteon plans to replace PureEdge (also known as the IBM WorkPlace Forms) with Adobe Forms by April 1, 2007. Adobe Forms is a cross-platform system that works over any platform or device without requiring any new software or plug-ins. There will be a transition period in which Grants.gov will be able to receive both PureEdge and Adobe forms.

Anteon also plans to switch to a Google search appliance for improved searching of grant applications and web site content. A third planned improvement is that Anteon will be establishing a more flexible and robust architecture able to support higher peak processing levels.

The FDP presentation is available at http://thefdp.org/Meeting_September2006.html.

The federal fiscal year 2007 began on October 1, but Congress was far from finishing the federal budget before breaking for the November elections.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has issued a report on the current status of the federal budget for the next fiscal year. The report, October Summary Report on R&D in FY 2007, is available at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/.

Excerpted from AAAS:

"Even if Congress approves all the proposed increases for selected research programs, offsetting cuts in other research programs mean that the federal investment in basic and applied research is almost certain to fall in FY 2007 within a stagnant domestic budget. But the total federal research and development (R&D) portfolio is a different matter; because the rapidly growing defense budget allows for substantial increases in DOD weapons development to an all-time high, the total federal R&D portfolio will increase in FY 2007."

The National Institutes of Health has announced that, until its final fiscal year 2007 federal budget appropriation is approved, non-competing NIH grant awards will be funded at a level "below that indicated on the most recent Notice of Award (generally up to 80% of the previously committed level)." NIH "will consider upward adjustments to these levels after the final appropriation is enacted, but expects institutions to monitor their expenditures carefully during this period." NIH adopted the same policy last year when the FY 2006 budget appropriation was late.

NIH does not have a FY 2007 budget yet because Congress did not pass the NIH appropriation bill before recessing for the November elections. NIH and other agencies are being funded through a continuing resolution, operating at FY 2006 funding levels.

The October 6 NIH Guide announcement is available at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-07-004.html.

Investigators planning on applying to USDA Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES) programs should begin working on applications early and read program announcements and guidelines carefully.

Among other changes, CSREES is requiring Grants.gov for many programs, including the National Research Initiative (NRI) Competitive Grants Program.

CSREES issued the Request for Applications for the NRI program in September (http://www.csrees.usda.gov/funding/rfas/nri_rfa.html). NRI supports research in the biological, environmental, physical, and social sciences relevant to agriculture, food, the environment, and rural communities, and funds research, extension, and education grants addressing key issues of national and regional importance to agriculture, forestry, and related topics. In FY 2007, CSREES anticipates having approximately $181 million in funding to support 34 different program areas. Each program area has a different deadline. More information is available from the CSREES web site (http://www.csrees.usda.gov/fo/funding.cfm).

NRI applications must be submitted via Grants.gov by close of business, 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time, on the program deadline as indicated. SPO provides campus resources and information on Grants.gov at http://www.spo.berkeley.edu/Procedures/grantsgov.html.

The NRI program has mandatory funding limits for all applications. Applicants are strongly encouraged to read the entire program description and contact the appropriate CSREES National Program Leader for additional information relative to their program(s) of interest. CSREES will return applications without review that exceed program funding limits, do not meet FY 2007 priorities, or do not follow formatting guidelines (e.g., PDF attachment requirement, page limitations, margin size, and font size).

Another change is that in FY 2007, eleven NRI programs will require a letter of intent: Managed Ecosystems, Soil Processes, Bioactive Food Components for Optimal Health, Biology of Weedy and Invasive Species in Agroecosystems, Plant Genome: Applied Plant Genomics Coordinated Agricultural Project, Plant Biology: Gene Expression and Genetic Diversity, Plant Biology: Environmental Stress, Plant Biology: Biochemistry, Plant Biology: Growth and Development, Improving Food Quality and Value, and Biobased Products and Bioenergy Production Research. The letter of intent will be reviewed by CSREES, and invitations to submit a full application will be issued by the National Program Leader. For these eleven programs, applications submitted without prior approval of the letter of intent will be returned without review.

The National Institutes of Health Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare has published a new brochure for investigators on their responsibilities under PHS Grants Policy and PHS Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals.

What Investigators Need to Know About the Use of Animals is available online at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/olaw/InvestigatorsNeed2Know.PDF or in Word at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/olaw/InvestigatorsNeed2Know.doc.

Printed copies are also available from the campus Animal Care and Use Committee Office by calling 2-8855 or by sending email to acuc@berkeley.edu.

The Sponsored Projects Office has published a quick reference for Berkeley investigators and staff using proposalCENTRAL at http://www.spo.berkeley.edu/Procedures/proposalcentral.html.

ProposalCENTRAL (https://v2.ramscompany.com/) is a web-based grant management service for proposal submission and review that includes 20 participating nonprofit, state, and private grantmakers, offering 140 grant programs. Participating grantmakers use proposalCENTRAL services for the application and review process. Participants include the American Cancer Society, the American Lung Association, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and some UCOP programs.

The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (S. 2590) has become Public Law 109-282. The law requires that the Office of Management and Budget create and maintain a single, searchable web site database with information on all federal awards. The site is to be fully accessible by January 1, 2008 with all fiscal 2007 data.

The new law also requires that OMB establish a pilot program by July 2007 for reporting of subawards, making sure data is disclosed in the same way as for direct federal awards. Entities providing subawards, including colleges and universities, will be required to publish subaward data on the web site by January 1, 2009 or at the end of the two-year pilot, whichever comes first.

OMB Watch has launched Fedspending.org, a free, searchable database of federal government grants and contracts.

The site's "frequently asked questions" explains differences between Fedspending.org and the new database required under Public Law 109-282.

For instance, FedSpending.org is available right now, while OMB has until January 2008 to put up the new site. OMB's site will have a broader scope of information and cover all federal spending. The OMB database will include awards posted within 30 days of being assigned, but FedSpending.org will only be updated every six months. The OMB database will also be expanded by 2009 to include subawards.

Procurement Services has hired Karen Woo as the new Supplier Diversity Administrator, reestablishing the campus Supplier Diversity Program (formerly known as the Small Business Development Program). Karen will work with campus departments to develop the small business subcontracting plans required for federal contracts over $550,000, and with SPO staff to submit the plans.

In addition, Karen will help to increase campus purchase activities with local and small businesses, including businesses owned by women, minorities, and service-disabled veterans. She will also develop a vendor resource database to help departments find small businesses from which they can make purchases. Contact Karen at 2-0406 or kwoo@berkeley.edu. For more information, visit http://businessservices.berkeley.edu/HtmFiles/PurchOpsSmBusAdmin.htm.