SOAR Intensive R-Grant Writers Workshop

The “Successfully Obtaining an R” (SOAR) Intensive R Grant Writers Workshop with Mock Study Section is a personalized, intensive grantsmanship and mentoring program.

Success in obtaining extramural funding is highly competitive and will likely become even more so in the foreseeable future. Grantsmanship is recognized nationally as an important tool to increase funding of already scientifically meritorious proposals.

SOAR was started in 2016 as an in-person workgroup, and was converted to a virtual workgroup in 2020.

SOAR uses small group interactive grantsmanship coaching to craft a fundable proposal. It is led by senior grantsmanship coaches (Helen Yin, PhD, Anand Rohatgi, MD, MSCS and Helmut Kramer, PhD). Participants will attend six weekly two-hour VIRTUAL sessions in which they are engaged in peer review of each other’s target grant sections for that week. There are parallel clinical/translational and basic science work groups of five or six participants each.

The program culminates in a VIRTUAL mock study section. Clinical/ translational and basic science grants will be reviewed separately by mock study section members, using the NIH review format. The SOAR grant writers are required to attend to experience the simulated NIH peer review process.

Target Audience

UT Southwestern has many grant writing programs. SOAR is the most intense and is targeted at Assistant and Associate Professors conducting basic, translational, or clinical research who are actively writing their first R01 or equivalent grants for the target NIH submission cycle.

2025 SOAR Workshop Schedule for the Oct. 2025 NIH R01 Submission Cycle