As previously announced, Emory University is implementing the use of the Cayuse 424 system for submission of electronic grant applications to federal granting agencies, including proposals to the National Institutes of Health. The system was intended to replace the use of Adobe form kits downloaded from grants.gov. since the implementation of Cayuse 424 in February 2011, use of the system has been voluntary – grant applicants have had the choice to submit via Cayuse 424 or via the Adobe form kits. to date, Emory has successfully submitted numerous applications through the Cayuse system and experienced the system’s many benefits:

1. Immediate identification of Grants.gov and federal agency validation issues while an application is being prepared. Users see an error list while the application is being created. As the application is being developed, the list of errors decreases as information is entered. This allows users a very high degree of certainty that the application will not encounter system errors that will affect submission. This is extremely important for NIH applications, due to NIH’s decision to eliminate the current 2-day window for correction of system or validation errors.
2. Increased data entry efficiency: institutional data will pre-populate and will not need to be entered onto each individual application, as is currently the case. Investigator data, once initially created, will also be available to automatically populate rather than being manually entered. the system also allows proposals to be copied and/or transformed from one announcement to another.
3. System-to-System submissions, such as those undertaken through Cayuse, have been less affected by Grants.gov slow-downs, or complete shut-downs, around heavy grants deadlines.

Based on the successes of the system to date, the number of staff who have already received training, the positive feedback on the system received from campus users, and the benefits of the system noted above, effective for grant deadlines on and after June 5, 2011, use of the the Cayuse 424 system will be mandatory for all federal grant applications for which it is available. All applications for the June 5th NIH R01 deadline must be submitted using the Cayuse 424 system.

As we move toward mandatory use of Cayuse 424, please note the following:

1. Detailed information on the system can be found on OSP’s website here
2. Instructor-led training for the system is being provided by OSP. The training schedule can be found here. To register for one of the scheduled training sessions, please contact cghicks@emory.edu. We welcome all campus users, faculty, and staff to attend training. Additional training sessions will be added to this schedule and Cayuse training will become part of our ongoing educational series classes.
3. While Cayuse 424 is available for the vast majority of federal grant programs (>97%), there may be a few programs for which Cayuse 424 cannot be used. For those programs, applicants will continue with the current practice of downloading Adobe application packages from Grants.gov and will follow the procedures described here. In addition, Cayuse is not currently replacing the NSF Fastlane system. Proposals to the National Science Foundation my be submitted using either Cayuse 424 or Fastlane, as available in each system.

Cayuse Submission Process

OSP automatically has access to all applications created in the Cayuse 424 system from the moment they are created. To ensure appropriate coordination with departments, OSP will employ the following process.

1. Upon receipt of an EPEX record from the final school signatory, OSP analysts will keep in contact with the department by either phone or e-mail to indicate that they have received a routed proposal record. At this time, they will inquire as to the finality of the record in Cayuse.
2. Throughout their review, as they usually do, OSP analysts will keep in contact with the department and PI to confirm again that, after review, the document is in final form and ready for submission to the agency.
3. The file will be provided to the appropriate Emory authorized official (an Assistant Director, Associate Director, or Director) for final review and submissions.
4. Immediately after submission, the submitting official will notify the department and PI of the submission via e-mail. The PI (or anyone with permissions to the proposal) can also log into Cayuse to view the status of the proposal and see that it has been submitted.

For questions on the Cayuse 424 implementation process and timeline, please contact Holly Sommers at hsomme2@emory.edu. Please submit all other questions through psgrants@emory.edu