How to check a researcher's grants and funding history before you reach out

Step 1Open the Funding tab

Open the researcher's profile and click Funding. Two lines at the top count the awards and add up their amounts by currency: Led by this researcher, where the funder names them as principal investigator, and Credited in their papers, everything their papers acknowledge. Below, each award shows its title, amount, agency, program code, dates, and how many of the researcher's papers credit it, and a PI badge marks the ones they led.

Read the credited total with care. It adds up every award credited in the person's papers, including their co-authors' grants and large center or training grants, so for someone with many collaborators it's far more than they've raised themselves. The led total is the closer measure, and the award rows are where the useful detail is.

Step 2Read the program codes

The code after the agency tells you what kind of award it is. For NIH:

• R01, R21, R35: research grants, usually led by one lab.
• U01, U19: cooperative agreements, often with several groups.
• P30, UL1, T32: center, institute, and training grants, which many people credit.
• R41, R42: STTR Phase I and Phase II. R43, R44: SBIR Phase I and Phase II.

To find one kind, type its code in the program box, for example R01, and click Filter. Several linked works on one award mean it's central to their work. One linked work on a center grant usually means a shared facility or a co-author.

Step 3Open an award to see who led it

Led by them shows only the awards where they're the principal investigator. Click an award to see its window: the funder, the term, the amount, the source of the record, and the Principal investigator, the person the funder named as the lead. If it's the researcher whose profile you're on, the award is theirs. If it's someone else, they worked on or alongside it.

In the example, the researcher is the principal investigator on an NIH STTR Phase II. That's the strongest sign there is that they've led small-business work before and know the paperwork.

Step 4Look for small-business awards

Click SBIR and STTR to see only small-business awards: R41 to R44 at NIH, and SBIR and STTR Phase I or Phase II at other agencies. A Phase I followed by a Phase II for the same project means the work met the agency's bar to continue.

Some awards show only their code, because the funder's record isn't on file. The code still tells you the program. In the example, NIH:R41HL134418 is the Phase I that came before the R42 above.

Step 5See who else is on the award

Open award page shows everyone on Helikon whose papers credit the award, with their organization and how many papers each. For a small-business award, that's often the university team and its partners in one list, here a second university and a co-investigator at the lead lab.