Hello,
I am an Associate Professor in an R2 institution and I recently got $850K grant as lead PI from NSF program that required I need to pair with an expert in the program's field. That expert (co-PI) need to be from a different institution but cannot be a lead PI and only can get sub award from the lead institution (which is my institution) where the lead PI (myself) is affiliated.
We worked hard during the proposal preparation and somehow managed to put a competitive proposal and got the NSF grant in September 2022.
While with the help of my student, I gave my best towards the proposal preparation, I would not have got the NSF grant, without the help of the expert (who is from a reputed R1) . The expert (Co-PI) sounded excited that we got the award when the award was announced.
Unfortunately, since mid-September, the expert (Co-PI) is not replying to my emails for my request for the meetings and the project is standstill for last 2 months. I am not sure what is the issue. If there is any issue from my end, unless he communicates I will not know it. In order for me to execute the project successfully, I need the support from the expert (Co-PI). Without the expert (Co-PI's) support, it is going to be a tough task to deliver the deliverables promised in the proposal.
Since I dont have much experience dealing with a large sized grant as PI involving sub-awards, I am not sure how the sub-award will happen given that the expert (Co-PI) from sub-awardee institution is non communicating at all.
Please advise how to handle this issue.
Have you called them? More emails is usually not going to get a different response in situations like this.
Ask them to return the subaward and let your program director know. Your collaborator will magically start cooperating.
I think the best starting move would be to call. If no response for, say, 10 days, call the PD and ssk for advice.
RPs suggestion is rather draconian, but you might have to do that. Let the PD guide you on that sort of thing.
Ruralguy, for people that operate in a competitive grant environment, trust me it is really frustrating to have a weak link in your project team. The work that the weal link does not do falls on others and others need to do it without actually having any money to support additional students, etc.
If you do not really care about getting the work done, then I agree: you have a lot of time to give several opportunities to the weak link of your team to get their stuff done. If you want to get the work done though, you give a couple of opportunities. If the weak link does not reply, you need to take drastic actions.
Funding is to the institution, not to an individual. You might reach out to the co-PI's grants office and/or department chair before escalating it to the PD. Maybe the co-PI is having a medical crisis?
You will have to come up with a protocol for project management with the your collaborator. That is normal, so don't feel sheepish about having the conversation about what should be in that protocol. Talking with the collaborator is the best way to develop this, then follow up with a written version of what you agreed to.
You will also need to take on the senior role for this project even though your collaborator is more senior in other regards. They probably have a bunch of other projects, so clear goals and timelines on this one will be very helpful to them.
I have been on both ends of this relationship and these are things I appreciate in either role.
RP (and all),
I just meant that strong-arming is *always* a solution of last resort. A competitive grant environment (or any other!) is not cart blanche to be a jerk. Several people have offered solutions that are considerably less adversarial, and I believe most of these posters are in competitive grant environments (though you'd have to ask them to be sure).
Being a jerk about it isn't going to help the OP, since it sounds like the co-PI's contributions are critical to the grant.
Quote from: Ruralguy on December 01, 2022, 06:06:59 AM
I think the best starting move would be to call. If no response for, say, 10 days, call the PD and ssk for advice.
RPs suggestion is rather draconian, but you might have to do that. Let the PD guide you on that sort of thing.
Thank you. Today, I made a call and left a voice message. I also followed it up with an email.
Quote from: Liquidambar on December 01, 2022, 07:12:38 AM
Funding is to the institution, not to an individual. You might reach out to the co-PI's grants office and/or department chair before escalating it to the PD. Maybe the co-PI is having a medical crisis?
Thanks for the suggestion. I left a voice message to the Co-PI... If I dont hear for a week, I am planning to reach to their grant office person who was dealing during our submission.
Quote from: AJ_Katz on December 01, 2022, 04:38:35 AM
Have you called them? More emails is usually not going to get a different response in situations like this.
Thanks for the suggestion. Today, I called and left a voice message. Hoping for a response.
I am meeting with the post-grant award manager this evening and will it be a good idea to bring up the issue (of sub-awardee investigator not communicating ) to them. If so, please advise how I should steer the conversation.
Quote from: sambaprof on December 06, 2022, 09:00:26 AM
I am meeting with the post-grant award manager this evening and will it be a good idea to bring up the issue (of sub-awardee investigator not communicating ) to them. If so, please advise how I should steer the conversation.
I do not understand why this matter needs to be so complicated or sugar coated, if you like. The matter is simple: you gave money to someone under the assumption they will do X. They do not do anything and you will be in trouble since you are the lead PI. Either this person needs to start doing stuff or you will pull their sub award.
Just ask the grant manager for advice. Best to just listen to what they have to say.
Yes, at some level, it comes down to what RP says, but as Mleok says, if your grant depends on this person, its to your benefit to bring them back into the fold rather than scare off or punish.
Also, there might be extenuating circumstances (serious illness or death in the family of sub-awardee, etc.).
But if it comes down to pulling the sub-award, you want to have first pursued every other reasonable option and also figured out how to do the scholarship with other collaborators. You don't want to come across as a crass bully, but a person who acts reasonably, rationally and compassionately.
Quote from: Ruralguy on December 06, 2022, 11:06:06 AM
Just ask the grant manager for advice. Best to just listen to what they have to say.
Yes, at some level, it comes down to what RP says, but as Mleok says, if your grant depends on this person, its to your benefit to bring them back into the fold rather than scare off or punish.
Also, there might be extenuating circumstances (serious illness or death in the family of sub-awardee, etc.).
But if it comes down to pulling the sub-award, you want to have first pursued every other reasonable option and also figured out how to do the scholarship with other collaborators. You don't want to come across as a crass bully, but a person who acts reasonably, rationally and compassionately.
That's correct. There might be extenuating circumstances and that's why grants can always be extended. The problem I see here is that the sub-awardee does not respond at all and it looks like they have not responded for several weeks (or even months at this point). Even if there was a health issue going on, I believe someone from the sub-awardee's university should have reached out to let the PI know. At least, that's what I would have asked my university to do and that's also common sense professional etiquette. The fact that the sub-awardee has failed to communicate (in any way, directly or indirectly) with the PI is a big red flag in my opinion and that's why I am talking about pulling the sub award. We can all argue about how well we work with our grant collaborators or whether they deliver on time or about the quality of their work, but in this case it seems like there has been no communication at all (absolutely nothing). At least, our collaborators do "something" (bad or good, sufficient or not enough). And as a very famous person in my field has told me when I asked about words of wisdom after so many years of them being in academia: "the most important thing in academia is to do SOMETHING".
I just got off of the Zoom meeting with my grants manager from our research office. She suggested me to email (and copy her) the Sr. Grants officer of the collaborator's institution and who is the admin contact in the agreement and explain the situation and seek their input on this.
Some odd advice in this thread.
This is an NSF grant, not a contract to do work on a certain timeline. Sure the subcontractee submitted a SOW, but I'm gonna guess that it was boilerplate stuff and the real agreement is private between you and them.
At this stage, the award has only been going for a few months to lead institute, and subcontractee probably did not get access to the money until very recently if at all yet.
If someone goes totally dark, it usually means they are going through something difficult. You should try to have some grace here.
My first plan of action in this situation would be to just carry on with my work and wait until the co-PI re-emerges (while continuing to email/call once a week or whatever. But it sounds like you need this person to respond in order for you to get started on your work? In that case I would (aside from calling/emailing directly) talk with mutual acquantances and see if anyone has talked to the co-PI recently. I suppose a grant admin at their uni is fine if you don't know any faculty there. But you could also just cold email someone you know they collaborate with (or in similar field at their uni) and ask if they have seen them around recently.
My prediction is this will work out fine, probably the co-PI is dealing with something tough and they will eventually find the time and courtesy to get back in touch.
I also want to point out that I can relate to your frustration, have been here before, and it may very well be that this is not the right collaborator for you in the long run. But too early to tell for now.
I'm sorry, but around age 50 I developed a "no a-hole" rule. I don't want to be one, and I don't want to be around them, or vote for them.
If it means maybe losing academic standing, or losing money or whatever, I can live with it. But I don't to be a jerk or promote jerk-i-tude.
So, maybe the number one rule of academia is to just get crud done (and published, funded, etc.), but the number one rule of life, other than rudimentary survival, is to not be a jerk, even if being nice might delay a publication. I know plenty of decent people who publish a lot.
Quote from: Ruralguy on December 10, 2022, 06:06:24 PM
I'm sorry, but around age 50 I developed a "no a-hole" rule. I don't want to be one, and I don't want to be around them, or vote for them.
If it means maybe losing academic standing, or losing money or whatever, I can live with it. But I don't to be a jerk or promote jerk-i-tude.
So, maybe the number one rule of academia is to just get crud done (and published, funded, etc.), but the number one rule of life, other than rudimentary survival, is to not be a jerk, even if being nice might delay a publication. I know plenty of decent people who publish a lot.
This attitude is curcial to satisfaction. Soon you discover that there are a bunch of delightful and productive people who follow the same principle.
In addition. when you do run into conflicts wiht Aholes (and it is unavoidable), colleagues and leaders tend to defer to you.
Quote from: sambaprof on December 06, 2022, 12:17:33 PM
I just got off of the Zoom meeting with my grants manager from our research office. She suggested me to email (and copy her) the Sr. Grants officer of the collaborator's institution and who is the admin contact in the agreement and explain the situation and seek their input on this.
The email to the Sr. Grants officer in the collaborator's institution did the trick. The collaborator emailed me the next day and suggested that we have a Zoom meeting. I had Zoom meeting with him earlier this week. The collaborator said sorry that he could not reply because he was very busy with a multi million dollar grant submission last month... We had a good conversation and we are planning to meet every week starting second week of January and I am hoping to ensure this momentum going...
Quote from: sambaprof on December 13, 2022, 07:24:15 PM
Quote from: sambaprof on December 06, 2022, 12:17:33 PM
I just got off of the Zoom meeting with my grants manager from our research office. She suggested me to email (and copy her) the Sr. Grants officer of the collaborator's institution and who is the admin contact in the agreement and explain the situation and seek their input on this.
The email to the Sr. Grants officer in the collaborator's institution did the trick. The collaborator emailed me the next day and suggested that we have a Zoom meeting. I had Zoom meeting with him earlier this week. The collaborator said sorry that he could not reply because he was very busy with a multi million dollar grant submission last month... We had a good conversation and we are planning to meet every week starting second week of January and I am hoping to ensure this momentum going...
That's good news! But really, I never buy that someone is too busy to reply to an important email, even if that reply is "I'm so sorry I'm too busy to get to this right now but I will get to it by X date". That literarily takes a minute to do. So, yes, see this collaboration through for the good of the grant and your career, but unless this proves to be a utterly out of character for this person, make it the last collaboration and find someone more responsive.
Quote from: Puget on December 14, 2022, 06:51:24 AM
Quote from: sambaprof on December 13, 2022, 07:24:15 PM
Quote from: sambaprof on December 06, 2022, 12:17:33 PM
I just got off of the Zoom meeting with my grants manager from our research office. She suggested me to email (and copy her) the Sr. Grants officer of the collaborator's institution and who is the admin contact in the agreement and explain the situation and seek their input on this.
The email to the Sr. Grants officer in the collaborator's institution did the trick. The collaborator emailed me the next day and suggested that we have a Zoom meeting. I had Zoom meeting with him earlier this week. The collaborator said sorry that he could not reply because he was very busy with a multi million dollar grant submission last month... We had a good conversation and we are planning to meet every week starting second week of January and I am hoping to ensure this momentum going...
That's good news! But really, I never buy that someone is too busy to reply to an important email, even if that reply is "I'm so sorry I'm too busy to get to this right now but I will get to it by X date". That literarily takes a minute to do. So, yes, see this collaboration through for the good of the grant and your career, but unless this proves to be a utterly out of character for this person, make it the last collaboration and find someone more responsive.
Sorry to say, but your collaborator's explanation sounds like BS. He basically said that the grant you have together is small money for him (or not enough money for him to care about answering your emails).
The lack of response until you basically brought in "the law" does seem strange, or even if explicable, not entirely appropriate. Its hard to say whether this should be the last of your collaborations. I think it depends on how well your plan for meetings goes and whether the collaboration produces anything you both deem worthwhile to yourselves.
I would say to stay positive yet vigilant.
I had the same issue with one of my Co-PI before (we are in the same institution but he is located on another campus and has a shared (big) lab on the main campus). He never responded to my emails/calls, he never attended the PIs virtual meeting. He wanted to send his Ph.D. student to the meeting to just report to him what is going on in the team. and once I said you should attend the meeting as a Co-PI, not your student, he wasn't happy (he literally said he is not interested in this topics any more!). We hired an MS student from his department (sponsored by this grant) and he kicked him out of his lab (he said to the student I hired a new grad student and I need your desk ). I talked to his department chair but it didn't get better. Anyway, long story short, the rest of the Co-PIs and I managed the grant without him and we submitted a larger proposal to NSF and replaced him with another Co-PI and we got funded!
It is tough, I had to do his portion with the help of M.S. student. Professional commitment and responsibility are key factors for building research relationships and collaboration.
Congregations on your new grant.