Every year the University of Cincinnati, NIOSH-funded Education and Research Center (ERC) hosts a Research Capacity Building Workshop. This year’s workshop was on August 10-11, 2026 with a virtual prerequisite course held earlier in May. 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 15 attendees consisting of PhD students, postdocs, medical residents, and junior faculty from the Air Force Institute of Technology, Bowling Green State University, Central State University, Murray State University, Purdue University, University of Cincinnati, and Western Kentucky University. Participant research interests were a wide range of topics including behavioral sleep medicine, genomics, emergency response, aviation safety, total worker health, healthcare administration, acoustic metamaterials, environmental health, and epidemiology.

On day one, Dr. Burr Zimmerman from Urban Venture Group consulting, led sessions on overview of government grants and contracts, agency perspectives, finding and assessing funding opportunities, and grantsmanship strategies, tips, and tricks. There were also a couple of group activities where attendees broke into small groups to discuss their specific research topics from the one-pagers they submitted earlier in the year as a prerequisite.

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, Associate 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
  

In the afternoon, the participants were grouped together into interdisciplinary teams and worked to prepare a practice proposal with a hypothesis, specific aims, approach, and to incorporate all group members’ research backgrounds. This activity was meant to demonstrate how interdisciplinary research teams are developed as well as to practice writing questions and aims. The proposal topics developed by the groups were;

• Indoor Infiltration of Wildfire Smoke: Characterizing Indoor Air Quality and Human Health Impacts
• The 24-Hour Firefighter: Sleep Time and Sedentary Behavior as Predictors of Occupational Musculoskeletal Disorders
• Translating Recollections into Assessments of Contaminant Exposure (TRACE)
• Promoting Agricultural Safety and Health for a Resilient Farming Community

The groups then presented their proposals and then practiced peer review by scoring each other’s presentations based on the NIH scoring criteria. The instructors also evaluated the practice proposals and provided feedback as well as advice from their proposal writing experiences. Finally there was some time for general questions and discussion before the workshop concluded.

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