Dear Research Faculty,

The "Stay Home. Work Safe." order has now been in place for a little over three weeks and has been extended until the end of this month. Governor Abbott is expected to issue an executive order today outlining how and when Texas businesses will reopen, and we will be watching this closely. To prepare for this possible reopening, we have started to discuss in our office what opening the campus would mean for research labs.

We are also monitoring closely new funding opportunities. Federal agencies issue nearly daily new announcements. The NIH is particularly active in issuing new opportunities. More about NIH opportunities is below. McAllister & Quinn recently held a webinar on federal priorities and funding opportunities related to COVID-19, which I mentioned in my April 14 email. If you missed it, both the presentation and related FAQs are available on the UH Research & Innovation Teams site.

NIH Funding Opportunities

We are starting to see new application opportunities and not just opportunities for current grantees, as mentioned in my April 14 email. I would like to highlight two Notices of Special Interest (NOSI), one regarding the Availability of Administrative Supplements and Urgent Competitive Revisions for Research on the 2019 Novel Coronavirus and the Behavioral and Social Sciences (for active grants: NOT-OD-20-097), which was issued last Monday, and the other for Development of Biomedical Technologies for Coronavirus Disease 2019 - COVID-19 (for new applications: NOT-EB-20-007, and for active grants: NOT-EB-20-008), which was issued last Friday. Both are also posted on our COVID-19 Funding Opportunities page. I would also like to encourage you to check the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts for new announcements. Simply select “Active Funding Opportunities” and “Coronavirus” as the search term, and you can subscribe to receive weekly updates.

Faculty Café on Funding Opportunities

Next week, we are starting the 50-in-5 Faculty Café sessions on University Research Explained. The first online session, scheduled for Monday, April 20, 1 p.m.–2 p.m., will be on “Identifying Grant Opportunities Using PIVOT and GrantForward.” The second online session is scheduled for Friday, April 24, 1 p.m.–2 p.m. to learn about available funding opportunities in response to the coronavirus crisis. Registration is also open for the April 24 session.

Mastering the Craft of Research

We are continuing with our series “Mastering the Craft of Research” on Tuesday, April 28, 11 a.m. – noon. Professor Bruce Race, director for the Center of Sustainability and Resilience (CeSAR) will be interviewed by professor Patrick Peters, director of the Graduate Design/Build Studio regarding research trends in architecture and sustainability. Please join us for this event. 

Office of Management and Budget Memoranda

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has published close to a dozen memoranda so far to address the coronavirus crisis. We publish links to the most relevant ones on the Additional Resources page. We are following one most closely: OMB M-20-17 Administrative Relief for Recipients and Applicants of Federal Financial Assistance Directly Impacted by the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) due to Loss of Operations. It was published by OMB on March 19, 2020 and gave federal agencies broad flexibility with a number of administrative actions on grants, such as application deadlines, no-cost extensions, admissibility of costs, the use of grant funding to charge salaries and benefits when no work is performed, etc. A number of agencies, including NIH, NSF, DOD, NASA, and DOE (energy), have implemented M-20-17, and you can find the links to each implementation on the Additional Resources page.

Best regards,

Amr Elnashai, FREng  
Vice President for Research and Technology Transfer