Event date: November 06 - 07, 2024
Event time: 10:00 - 13:30 CET on both days
Location: Online to be accessed via the EARMA website

Price: €450 + VAT

Registration: Registration for this boot camp is closed now as we have reached the maximum capacity, but we opened a new boot camp registration for February 2025. If you would like to register please follow this link. 
 

Workshop Introduction:

Join us for a hands-on two days online boot camp titled "Supercharge Proposal Writing at Your Institution," organised in collaboration between EARMA (European Association of Research Managers and Administrators) and Avi Staiman. This workshop will equip research managers, proposal writers, and academic staff with the latest AI tools and best practices to enhance their proposal writing capabilities. With the rapid advancement of AI, this boot camp aims to provide practical knowledge and hands-on experience to help you navigate the evolving landscape of research funding and collaboration.

Boot camp Schedule DAY 1

Part 1 (required): Introduction- AI tools in research (60 min) 

- Intro on AI for proposal writing 
- Sentiment analysis, solve your problem (GPT)
- What is a boot camp? Agenda overview.
 

Part 2: Grant Strategy & Trends (35 min group activity) 

Pain point: Researchers have topics they are interested in but don’t necessarily take into account which subject areas funders are interested in based on historic funding trends. 

- Trending topics (DimensionAI & GPT, Scopus AI)
 

Part 3: Ideation & Brainstorming Research Questions (25 min)

Pain point: Researchers sometimes have trouble coming up with new and innovative ideas for their next proposal.  

- Brainstorm strong research questions (Idea Factory)
- Critique research question (GPT)

Part 4A: Finding grant calls (25 min)

Pain point: It is one thing to have a good idea, but it isn’t always simple to see who is providing funding to support the research idea, including who is applicable and in line with your desired budget and timeline. 

- Research funding database (Scientify, Atom)
- Practice session + summarize

Session 4B: Finding Partners + call reading (40 min group activity)

Pain point: It can be challenging to keep track of all of the different calls. In addition, it is hard for researchers to know who might be a good potential partner for a joint project or consortium. 

- Connections between researchers (ResearchRabbit, Litmaps)
- Find partners for consortium (Global Campus)
- Call reading (GPT, Sample call) 
- Practice session + summarize

Part 5: Promoting (45 min individual activity)

Pain point: Many people try LLMs once and then give up when they aren’t satisfied with the results or receive an answer that isn’t accurate. Without knowing how to prompt properly, it is impossible to maximize the AI tools currently available to researchers.  

- Intro to research tools presentation (time permitting)
- Presentation- Ingredients of a winning prompt
- Prompting practice on ChatGPT, presentations

Boot camp Schedule DAY 2

Session 6: Writing & editing proposal (1.25 group activity)

- GPT privacy settings
- Step by step prompting to write Excellence, Impact, & Implementation sections 
- Sample proposal draft
- Practice session + share + summarize
- Generative structured writing (Jenni, SciWriter.AI)

Other tools: Granted.AI, Writing questionnaires (Survey Monkey)
 

Part 7: Proposal Review (30 min group activity)

Pain point: When reviewing our own proposals or those of our colleagues it can be hard to know if we are seeing the blind spots, filling all of the requirements and creating the best proposal possible to improve chances of funding. 

- Impact section of grants (Impacter)
- GPT as reviewer
- Practice session: Write step-by-step prompting using evaluation form (GPT) + summarize

Part 8: Research Integrity & Data Privacy- How can we use AI responsibly? (45 min lecture)

Pain point: AI tools can expedite issues of research fraud, bias and misinformation. It is challenging to understand best practices for when and how AI tools should and shouldn’t be used.

- Responsible AI Use
- Bias
- Plagiarism?
- Research integrity tools
- Data Privacy
- Discussion

Your trainer

Avi Staiman is the founder and CEO of Academic Language Experts, an author services company dedicated to leveling the research playing field for ESL scholars. He is also the co-founder of SciWriter.ai, the first co-pilot that helps researchers supercharge their writing with responsible AI.

Avi is involved in the scholarly publication community as a chef at Scholarly Kitchen, co-host of the New Books Network ‘Scholarly Communication’ Podcast, and a reviewer for Wiley’s Learned Publishing journal.  Avi is a thought leader on AI tools for research, running 'AI Tool-Up Tuesdays' where he taught 4300+ researchers how to use AI tools for research responsibly. He is a core member of CANGARU, where he represents the European Association of Science Editors in creating legislation and policy for the responsible use of AI in research. He has been a guest lecturer at NYU and the University of Tokyo. His essays have appeared in the Cambridge University Press Blog, The Scholarly Kitchen, and Times Higher Education.

Any queries?