• Assistance in locating funding opportunities, building campus or industry partnerships, and early career assistance in navigating sponsored research at UC San Diego. Please contact Miriam Holtzman (mholtzman@ucsd.edu) to make an appointment.
  
  
• Grant Writing Workshop (GWW) for the School of Physical Sciences
  This workshop is designed to support faculty — particularly early-career faculty — as they develop their grant proposals over a 10-week period, with the goal of completing or nearly completing a proposal ready for submission by the end of the workshop. Participants meet weekly to discuss different components of their grant proposal. This provides an opportunity for peer feedback, as well as guidance from more experienced faculty. Although the GWW in Physical Sciences was inspired by the successful grant-writing course in Health Sciences, which focuses exclusively on NIH R01 grants, this new initiative accommodates a broader range of funding opportunities, including other NIH grants as well as NSF and other agencies.
  
  The overarching goal of this workshop is to create a supportive and collaborative space where faculty can refine their research ideas, receive structured feedback, and overall strengthen their proposals. For the first GWW offered in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Spring 2025), the Associate Dean for Research and the SPS Principal Research Analyst organized the course as well as participated to provide additional feedback and input. Please contact Vicki Grassian (vhgrassian@ucsd.edu) to set up a GWW for members of your department.

Support for multi-PI, multi-institutional, collaborative proposal submissions to federal and state agencies, and to foundation and other private sponsors. This also includes center-type proposals.

Services include:

• Proposal Coordination 
  • Develop checklist of required proposal documents
  • Create timeline for proposal development with due dates for necessary milestones
  • Organize planning meetings with key collaborators
  • Communicate with team members and monitor progress toward milestones
• Grant Writing Assistance
  • Assist in the conceptual development and writing of proposal elements such as vision statement, resources description, and plans for management, education, outreach and data sharing
  • Evaluate proposal drafts for clarity of vision, representation of stakeholders, integration across thrusts, and alignment with funding program goals and agency guidelines
• Critical Review
  • Coordinate a "red-team" review in which a panel of independent experts review the final draft of the proposal and provide critical feedback on the proposal's strengths and weaknesses based on the merit review criterion for the opportunity
  • Organize a "mock site visit," if applicable, in which all members of the proposal present an overview of each component to a panel of reviewers in preparation for a site visit by the funding agency
• Content Development
  • Assist in development of tasks/milestones and a deliverable-based budget, if applicable
  • Data analysis of institutional metrics
  • Connect with examples of previously funded proposals
    

The Office of Research and Innovation’s Research Development team includes an excellent graphic designer, I-Hsun Wu. Graphic design services include figure review and feedback, figure refinement, and summary figure consultation and production. Learn more about requesting services on the Research Development Resource Library webpage (SSO login required using @ucsd.edu not @health.ucsd.edu, etc.).

Support to enhance the visual impact of proposals, making them more engaging, persuasive and easier for reviewers to understand. Services include the creation of graphics that contribute to a stronger, more competitive submission, such as:

• Improved clarity and persuasion through visual aids like charts, graphs and infographics to simplify complex information, making it more digestible for evaluators.
• Highlight critical information using graphics to emphasize important data and key points.