September 30, 2013

Federal Government Shutdown: Lapse in Federal Appropriations

Federal budget appropriations provided under the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013 (P.L. 113-6) expire at midnight on September 30, 2013. It appears a federal government shutdown is unavoidable.

Federal agencies are now providing written procedures for shutting down and how the lapse of appropriations will affect new and existing grant, contract, and cooperative agreement awards.

See Impact of Possible Federal Shutdown on Sponsored Projects on the SPO web site for the guidance received from these federal agencies. SPO will continue to update this page as more information is provided.

September 17, 2013

NIH Invites Researchers to Test SciENcv, a Federal-Wide Researcher Profile Project

The National Institutes of Health has issued an invitation to researchers to test the beta version of the Science Experts Network (SciENcv). The new electronic system will enable researchers to easily assemble the information to populate an NIH biographical sketch (biosketch).

SciENcv is a cooperative project requested by the Federal Demonstration Partnership. Seven federal science agencies, including the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Smithsonian Institution, formed an interagency workgroup to develop the concept. SciENcv is being built by the NIH National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) under the direction of the workgroup.

The beta version will help researchers assemble an NIH biosketch by extracting information from NIH eRA Commons and PubMed. SciENcv will permit users to link their data to a persistent, unique identifier offered by ORCID.

More information on signing in to the new system, available documentation and help, and system features is available in the NIH Guide Notice, Availability of a Test (Beta) Version of the Science Experts Network (SciENcv).

Resources

September 10, 2013

PI Portfolio: Sign Up for a Demo

For principal investigators and research administrators, accessing and interpreting award financial data has been challenging and time-consuming.  PI Portfolio, a new reporting tool, will retrieve BFS award data in “real time” and provide investigators with a simple-to-understand view of budgets, expenses, and balances. PI Portfolio will be available to PIs and RAs beginning September 18.

PI Portfolio delivers the fund summary information important to PIs, along with all the transaction and personnel details RAs need. When a PI logs in, data for their active funds is automatically retrieved from BFS. RAs will be granted access by PI name or fund name/number. Everyone involved in a fund’s management can see the same consistently updated financial information on demand.

Sign up for a Demonstration

Training demonstrations -- open to all but particularly geared to RAs -- will walk through the features and data filters available in the Phase 1 release. Demonstrations are scheduled beginning September 12. Please reserve a seat at the session of your choice on the PI Portfolio Training Sign-up page.

Learn More about PI Portfolio

Watch the Overview of PI Portfolio video (9 min.) to see how the tool looks and functions, or peruse the User Guide on the PI Portfolio site.

PI Portfolio is just one of the integrated initiatives underway on campus to expand and enhance proposal and awards management systems. We’ll keep you informed as new systems and services become available. For now, plan to attend a demonstration of this new tool.

September 4 Research Advocate: PI Portfolio Financial Reporting Tool Launches September 18

September 04, 2013

PI Portfolio Financial Reporting Tool Launches September 18

UC Berkeley is launching a new financial reporting tool for principal investigators, the PI Portfolio, on September 18, 2013.

PIs will be able to log in to PI Portfolio to retrieve their active fund data automatically from BFS to produce reports. Research administrators will have access to support their researchers and will be able to customize fund reports for their purposes. PIs will be able to provide access to campus research collaborators.

Reference guides, the list of supported browsers, and other information and training is available on the PI Portfolio site. PI Portfolio is part of Cal Answers, an analytical tool to view centralized, integrated information from various campus systems.

Resources