Principal Investigator Certification

In April 2006, the National Institutes of Health announced a change in business process to replace the principal investigator signature on grant applications, progress reports, and prior approval requests with an institutional compliance requirement. The change requires each institution to secure and retain the PI signature as part of the institutional review/approval process. To meet the requirement, the Sponsored Projects Office developed a form, the “NIH Principal Investigator Assurance Certification Form.” The form must be submitted to SPO with all NIH applications, progress reports, and prior approval requests. The form is available at http://www.spo.berkeley.edu/Forms/UCForms.html.

The benefit to investigators is that with this change, NIH has eliminated the PI verification step in the eRA Commons. Instead, once an application package has been successfully submitted through Grants.gov, all errors corrected, and the application assembled by the eRA Commons, PIs and SPO staff will have two business days to review the application. If everything is acceptable, no further action is necessary. The application will automatically move forward in the process after two business days. If, however, it is determined that the some part of the application was lost or didn't transfer correctly during the submission process, SPO staff will have the option to “Reject” the image and submit a Changed/Corrected application.

NIH made five separate announcements related to this change in the April 7, 2006 NIH Guide: a general announcement of the new requirement, change in business process for the eRA Commons verification, changes to the PHS 398 Application and Instructions, changes to the SF 424 (R&R) Instructions, and changes to the PHS 2590 Noncompeting Progress Report Forms and Instructions.

NRSA Fellowship Certification

On October 14, 2008, NIH announced a change regarding the signatures of the applicant (individual fellow) and sponsor(s) as a part of Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) PHS 416-1 grant applications, certain post-submission information, PHS 416-9 progress reports, and post-award prior approval requests for individual fellowships. The change requires each institution to secure and retain the individual fellow and sponsor(s) signatures as part of the institutional review/approval process. This change in business process for individual fellowships now brings them in line with the similar business process change for principal investigators instituted in 2006. This business process change applies to all competing applications prepared using the PHS 416-1 application for submission/receipt dates in December 2008 and thereafter. The change will apply to all progress reports for continuation support submitted for submission/receipt dates of December 1, 2008 and thereafter.

To meet the requirement, the Sponsored Projects Office has developed a new form, the “NIH NSRA Fellowship Assurance Certification Form.” The form must be submitted to SPO with NIH PHS 416 fellowship applications, progress reports, and prior approval requests. The form is available at http://www.spo.berkeley.edu/Forms/UCForms.html.

The NIH Guide announcement of this change and other changes to PHS 416 are available at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/WeeklyIndex.cfm/10-17-2008/.

Questions

Please contact the SPO research administrator assigned to your department with any questions.