Don't Show Me the Money; Show Me How to Get the Money

Melinda Adams

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, Honors College, and Office of the Vice Provost for Research and Economic Development will host four workshops dedicated to the art of nationally competitive grant writing. The series will be offered during 2015-16 academic year.

The first session will be held from 3-5 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 30, in Old Main room 523. Don't Show Me the Money; Show Me How to Get the Money!, will focus on grants available in the natural sciences. Scholars from three colleges with extensive experience in garnering federal and foundation support for their research will discuss tips and strategies for winning extramural funding.

"We are bringing together three fantastic researchers who are committed to interdisciplinary team-building in the natural sciences," said Jeannine Durdik, associate dean of Fulbright College. "They regularly mentor younger faculty members on how to navigate the complex world of applying to federal agencies and private foundations."

The workshops are patterned after a highly successful series offered last year and are designed to benefit faculty at every level — from recent graduates to advanced researchers. The 2015-16 series continues the initiative to address the needs of those seeking support in a hyper-competitive world of external funding.

Don't Show Me the Money will showcase faculty members Ralph Henry with the Department of Biological Sciences in Fulbright College, Fiona Goggin with the Department of Entomology in the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences and David Zaharoff with the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the College of Engineering.

To register, contact Debbie Power at dlpower@uark.edu or 479-575-3784 no later than 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 23. Seating is limited to 40 participants.

Please watch for additional information on future workshops in the series, which are scheduled for Friday, Oct. 23; Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016; and Tuesday, March 29, 2016.

Presenters

Ralph Henry serves as Distinguished Professor in biological sciences and at the Institute for Nanoscale Science and Engineering.  He holds the W.M. Keck Professorship and has developed an international reputation in the field of protein targeting, which has received continuous federal funding of about $3 million since 1998.  Funding sources include the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Health, Centers for Biomedical Research Excellence and Department of Energy.

His current Energy Department funding began in 2000 and has been competitively renewed four times.  Additional research efforts were supported by approximately $2 million from NIH and NSF and led to the issuance of three patents in which Henry is an inventor.  The patents represent intellectual property to support two Arkansas-based start-up companies, Boston Mountain Biotech (Fayetteville) and InterveXion Therapeutics (Little Rock).

Henry received a doctorate in biological sciences from Kansas State University and worked at the University of Florida as a postdoctoral fellow before coming to the University of Arkansas in 1996. 

Fiona Goggin is a professor in the entomology department. Her research focuses on the molecular basis of plant defenses against insects and nematodes, and she has been a principal investigator and co-PI on approximately $8.5 million in competitive grant awards, with more than $3 million in support to her lab.

She has funding from the National Science Foundation and the United States Department of Agriculture, and she has served as a grants panelist for both agencies. Goggin is currently the campus lead for the NSF-funded Plant Imaging Consortium, an interstate collaboration with Missouri to apply state-of-the-art techniques in bioimaging to the study of plant stress biology.

Goggin earned a Bachelor of Science in plant science at Cornell University and her doctorate in entomology at the University of California, Davis. She joined the University of Arkansas in December 2001. 

David Zaharoff developed novel delivery systems for cancer vaccines and immunotherapies while in postdoctoral fellowship at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.

He has successfully competed for more than $3.2 million in state and federal funds as principal investigator. He has won F32, K22, R15 and R01 grants from the National Institutes of Health and has served on 10 proposal review study sections for the National Institutes of Health, the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs and the Komen Foundation.

Zaharoff earned a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from the University of Illinois and a doctorate in biomedical engineering from Duke University. After a brief postdoctoral stint at Duke, he worked as a Cancer Research Training Award fellow and a National Research Service Award Postdoctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute. He joined the University of Arkansas in 2009.

Moderator

Jeannine Durdik has developed an international reputation in the field of immunology and genomic stability, which has received federal funding of about $4.3 million. Funding sources include the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, United States Department of Agriculture, American Cancer Society and the March of Dimes. She has also served on review panels at the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense. 

She received a doctorate in biological sciences from Johns Hopkins University and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington and at Brandeis before joining as faculty at the University of Colorado Medical School. She came to the University of Arkansas in 1994.