Career Development
Sean Ekins, PhD, DSc
CEO
Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Fuquay Varina, North Carolina
>: I will be the first to admit that I am not a ‘professional grant writer’. Having won grants for other people’s companies as a scientist/ employee and for companies that I have co-founded or founded myself I have seen first-hand the impact that such grants can bring in hiring people, developing technologies, (whether software, molecules, or in making other discoveries), building companies and enabling the creation of intellectual property. For many readers winning grants will also be important for your career. So, you will need to know how to write and submit grants repeatedly because you will likely have this weight on your shoulders at least metaphorically for the rest of your working career. It is almost inevitable that as an academic or a small business owner, you will need to write grants at some point in your career. Writing them though is not enough, what you also need to know is how to win grants. Your proposal must also stand out, it must connect with the reviewers in a positive way and make an impression. You therefore need to not only think about continually writing great grants you need to put it into practice and win them. Having written and won grants totaling close to $30M from the NIH and DOD over the past 18 years I can speak with some degree of authority and yet I feel I am still in ‘grant learning mode’. I will focus on small business grants (STTR and SBIR) and how these can be won to ultimately build companies and create intellectual property. This presentation will be split into sections:
1. What you need to do before you write a grant
2. The idea - how to come up with grant ideas
3. Go solo or collaborate on the grant
4. What the entrepreneur needs to know
5. The grant package
6. The main event – writing it
7. Why you need to edit the grant repeatedly
8. Knowing when you are ready to submit it
9. Post submission steps to win the grant
10. SBIR case studies