Developing Your Ideas

• CLAS Financial Support
• Center for Faculty Development Grants
• Colorado Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute
• Office of Research Services

The Office of Research Development and Education (ORDE), a component of the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Colorado Denver, serves as a resource for faculty on both campuses providing services designed to increase the University’s competitiveness in terms of receipt of funding for federal, state, and private sponsors. ORDE can help you:

• Know what to look for when reading agency proposal guidelines
• Search for research sponsors
• Discover the projects sponsors have funded in the past
• Strategize with you about elements of proposal development, funding sustainability, contacting program officers and other topics
• Learn about important proposal tips for new investigators
• Locate videos about the NIH review process, tips for investigators new to NIH and the CDMRP grants program - all available from the ORDE Resources webpage
• Identify pages on the NIH website that are vital to principal investigators
• Sign up to receive automatic funding announcements based on your research interests
• Find the best fund searching databases available to UCD faculty
• Review funding opportunities that target new/junior investigators

For more information or to register for classes or assistance, please visit the ORDE website.

You can also start a search using the SPIN portal of the InfoEd system.  If you create an account on the SPIN site, you can create and save searches.  Some search tips are:

• Keep your search terms to a few words as possible.  This will help to focus the search.
• A SPIN search will automatically search for all forms of entered words.  If you type in test, it will look for test, tests, tested and testing.  You can disable this by inserting a plus sign (+) before the search term.
• A search can be passed through an integrated thesaurus, potentially expanding the terms being searched.  For example, a search for cancer can be expanded to carcinogens, chemotherapy, tumors, oncology or other cancer related terms.  Insert a tilde (~) before each term you want passed through the thesaurus.
• Using the word or between words and phrases will yield a search with records containing one or the other word of your phrase
• Wrapping terms in double quotes searches for records containing the exact phrase
• Inserting a minus sign (-) before a term removes a term from your search.  For example if you typed in Scientific -Research; your search would yield records with the word scientific and not research.
• Appending an asterisk to a term invokes a wildcard search.  If you put in Scient*, the search would result in all records containing "scient" and any suffix.
• Wrapping terms in angled brackets (<>) searches for records containg the words and ranks results by the proximity of the words to each other.

Faculty can access the SPIN search tool at the InfoEd log in (choose "Find Funding" at the top after you log in.  Students can access SPIN at http://infoedglobal.com and choose SPIN at the top. As mentioned above, Faculty can also schedule an appointment with ORDE for guided assistance as well as setting up notifications of funding opportunities.

As you search for funding for your research, you may come across a variety of funding mechanisms. Some mechanisms are grants, some are contracts and some are gifts. It is important to understand the type of funding you are seeking to assure CU Denver’s compliance with:

1. Sponsor/donor terms and conditions,
2. Federal costing and reporting standards,
3. IRS and State of Colorado reporting requirements,
4. Proper recovery of institutional costs, both direct and indirect, and
5. Adequately monitoring the nature and extent of research across departments and colleges.

Different mechanisms may need to be processed in different ways through CU Denver. Further, the type of mechanism is important as this can impact how you track, document and report on your projects. The table below should help you get to the right person for the right type of funding. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact the CLAS Research Services Senior Professional.