“Talk to your program officer” is an oft-repeated recommendation to scientists engaging with the NIH grants progress, however when and how to engage this person can be confusing. The NIH has an excellent guide to staff available, which I’ll explain along with some additional context.

Program Officer or Scientific Review Officer?

Step 1 is figuring out who you actually want to talk to. Many people use the term “program officer, or PO” interchangeably with “scientific review officer or SRO”, but they are different people with different roles and responsibilities. The official duties of the SRO include reviewing applications for completeness and compliance (not scientific merit), ensuring fair and unbiased evaluation of grant proposals, and providing summary statements for applicants. The PO’s duties include developing research and training initiatives and writing NOFOs for those initiatives, providing scientific guidance pre- and post-award, and monitoring progress. In broad terms, the PO is more of a generalist than the SRO. If you have a submitted grant, you want to work with the SRO. If you have not yet submitted the grant, you want to talk to the PO, and probably the SRO as well.

How to contact your PO or SRO

The contact information for all SROs is included on each study section’s website. The contact information for POs is a bit more scattered, but this listing is a good starting point. You can also look at the staff directory page of each funding institute. Please realize that these people are very busy, and they get frustrated when contacted with questions that are easily searched online, or can be quickly answered by your University’s office of sponsored research. Google around and ask colleagues before contacting a PO. That said, never procrastinate on reaching out. You want to initiate contact at least 2 weeks and ideally a month before any deadlines.

Once you have the name and email of who you want to contact, you should draft an informative email explaining your situation and what you need help with. Have an informative subject line, not something vague like “question for you”. Open with a succinct and direct statement of what you are requesting. If you want to have a call with them to discuss aims, state that. If you think your application went to the wrong study section say that. Then include all pertinent information.  If you have not yet submitted a grant, the email should include either an abstract or specific aims for your proposal, the NOFO you plan to apply to, and your intended study section. If you have already submitted your proposal, include the submission number, grant number, and any other relevant details. Conclude by thanking them for their time, and include your contact information. 

Why contact a SRO after receiving your summary statement?

Having a grant come back “not discussed” or with a low score is disheartening. While your reviewers and the SRO do provide you with a written summary of their thoughts on your proposal, these often lack context and it can be difficult to determine what specific issues were. This is where requesting a call with your SRO can be incredibly informative. While they cannot talk about anything confidential, they can give you their impression of how the discussion of your proposal went, and help you identify key things to focus on when you resubmit your proposal. They also might recommend refocusing your work and submitting a new proposal or point you towards a different better suited funding mechanism. To initiate this process, contact the SRO as described above with the request to discuss the outcome of your grant review and how it can be improved. It’s worth getting your ego in check to learn from your prior submission to make your next submission the best it can be.