Straight talk with ... Otto Yang and Patrick Miller

Abstract

Even with a recent influx of research money into biomedical research, competition for grants is unlikely to ease off any time soon. For example, researchers submitted about 20,000 applications for the $1 million 'challenge grants' offered by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). The agency originally announced it would fund just 200 of these grants, meaning only a tiny fraction applicants will succeed in obtaining them. Otto Yang and Patrick Miller have experienced firsthand the challenges of writing and reviewing research grants. Yang, an immunologist at the University of California–Los Angeles School of Medicine, has served on multiple NIH grant review panels. In 2005, he authored the Guide to Effective Grant Writing: How to Write an Effective NIH Grant Application. Miller, who currently runs a Chicago-area company that provides grant writing workshops and resources, published the book Grant Writing: Strategies for Developing Winning Government Proposals. Yang and Miller (pictured above left to right) shared some of their grant writing tips with Kirsten Dorans.