You Received Your NIH Summary Statement — Now What?

The Summary Statement, the official record of the peer review process for a grant application submitted to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is key to understanding why an application scored well, whether it is likely to be funded, and, if not, whether a revised application should be resubmitted. It provides insight into the strengths and weaknesses identified by reviewers and serves as a roadmap for next steps.

For many faculty members, particularly those new to NIH submissions, interpreting the Summary Statement can be challenging. This seminar will explain the components of an NIH Summary Statement, how to identify critical reviewer concerns, and strategies for addressing those concerns in a revised application and discussing them in the Introduction section.

Speaker

Kirsten Nielsen

Professor of Microbiology and Immunology

Kirsten Nielsen  is a professor of microbiology and immunology in the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine. Since 2010, Nielsen has maintained continuous funding through National Institutes of Health R01 grants and other NIH funding mechanisms. She also served on NIH Center for Scientific Review study sections for 14 years.

Drawing on her success in securing research funding, Nielsen has mentored faculty in grant development and led proposal development workshops and programs at Virginia Tech and the University of Minnesota School of Medicine.

Nielsen earned a doctorate in botany and plant pathology from North Carolina State University in 2002. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular genetics and microbiology at Duke University, where she worked through 2007. Nielsen is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and serves as an academic editor for several microbiology research journals.