General Layout for 4th year ORP

Overview. The goal of the ORP is to have students come up with an independent research proposal. Your ORP should focus on a big picture problem in chemistry. You should pull from multiple areas outside of your area of expertise (synthesis, catalysis, electrochemistry, photochemistry, chemical biology, polymer/materials) to address a contemporary and unsolved problem. Each specific aim should be independent on each other (this will be one of the metrics we will use to assess the ORP). The scope of the project should be that of a postdoctoral fellowship – something that can be accomplished in 2-3 years by one postdoc.

Specific Aims PreORP. You must first submit a one-page, single spaced description of the Specific Aims of your proposal (see formatting requirements below). Consider it an executive summary of your planned proposal. It should include significance (how it fits into the broader field and how it advances the field), innovation, and summary of research plan broken up into 2-3 specific aims. The aims should all focus on solving the problem you laid out, but should be independent of each other (e.g. if Aim 1 fails, Aim 2 is still feasible). This must be approved before writing the full proposal.

An excellent guide for writing specific aims can be found here.

ORP. Once your Specific Aims are approved, you must submit a max 12 page double spaced proposal (see formatting requirements below). It should contain the following sections: Significance, Innovation, and Research Plan. The research plan should be broken up into each of your specific aims, and should describe how you will accomplish them. At the end of each specific aim, you should describe potential problems and how you will address them. Include a concluding paragraph indicating what will be accomplished if the proposal is successful.

Formatting requirements: Times New Roman, Arial, or Helvetica. Font size 11 pt. Margins 1 in. Font color: black. Total length of document: Maximum 1 page single spaced for Specific Aims PreORP; 15 pages max double spaced for ORP. Alignment – Justify (i.e. straight edges like in journal articles). Figures should help to communicate the ideas in the proposal. Use ACS 1996 Template in Chemdraw.

Saving Files

For the ORP document: Last Name_ORP Year
For the ORP Prep Proposal: Last Name_PreORP Year
For the ORP Resubmission: Last Name_ORP Year_Resubmit#

Example: WilkersonHill_ORP2020 for the first draft  and WilkersonHill_ORP2020_Resubmit2 for the resubmit

 

4th year ORP Grading Rubric

Each proposal is reviewed by two faculty members who are not the student’s advisor. Anonymized feedback is returned to students within two months of submission. Proposals are graded Pass or Fail. A failed proposal may be revised and resubmitted up to one month after student notification.

Student name:

Proposal title:

Overall Impact

Reviewers will provide an overall impact score to reflect their assessment of the likelihood for the project to exert a sustained, powerful influence on the research field(s) involved, in consideration of the following three scored review criteria.

 

Overall Impact  Write a paragraph summarizing the factors that informed your Overall Impact score.

Scored Review Criteria

Reviewers will consider each of the three review criteria below in the determination of scientific and technical merit, and give a separate score for each.

1. Significance

Strengths Weaknesses

 

2. Innovation

Strengths Weaknesses

 

3. Approach

Strengths Weaknesses

Final Ranking

_____ Pass

_____ Fail