Written by: Jessica Bloomer

Every year the University of Cincinnati, NIOSH-funded Education and Research Center (ERC) hosts a Research Capacity Building Workshop. This year’s workshop was held on June 12-13, 2025. The workshop was held virtually this year as it had to be re-scheduled on short notice with little time to make travel arrangements. The ERC hopes to hold a follow-up in person event to do the more hands-on activities and that the virtual attendees may have missed. The workshop is an important piece of the ERC’s Pilot Research Project Program because it helps prepare individuals to write a research proposal by presenting information on sources of funding, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) processes, preparing the application including the budget, and aligning research priorities with federal grant administrators.

There were 21 attendees consisting of PhD students, medical residents, and junior faculty from Eastern Kentucky University, Jackson State University, Purdue University, University of Cincinnati, West Coast University, and Western Kentucky University. Some of the participants’ research interests included public health, occupational health nursing and medicine, biomonitoring, industrial hygiene, and speech-language pathology.

On day one, Dr. Burr Zimmerman, founder of the Urban Venture Group, led six sessions on the purpose of government grants and contracts, agency perspectives and priorities, how to search for funding opportunities, how to assess and pursue a funding opportunity, obligations when receiving an award, grantsmanship strategies, tips, and tactics.

Day two was lead by Elizabeth Kopras, a senior research associate in the UC College of Medicine who presented on writing a research proposal, IRB, and showed examples of proposals and RFAs. The other day two sessions included;

• Peer review and proposal scoring process: Amit Bhattacharya, PhD, CPE, Professor, Environmental & Public Health Sciences, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine
• Grant writing for early career scientists: Arun Jose, MD, MS, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine, University of Cincinnati; Director of Pulmonary Hypertension, Cincinnati VA Medical Center
• Leveraging team science and grant writing: Megan Johnstone, PhD, Clinical Research Director, Leukemia and Drug Development Lab, Division of Hematology/Oncology

 Thank you to the presenters and panelists for making this a valuable workshop for our attendees.