GrantOtter Tutorial

Sign Up & Log In

GrantOtter is a web app — no installation needed. Open it at grantotter.streamlit.app in any browser. You'll be greeted with a sign-in screen before accessing the app.

Creating an account

1. Click the Create Account tab on the welcome screen.
2. Enter your email address and choose a password (minimum 6 characters).
3. Click Create Account. You will be signed in automatically.

Signing in on return visits

1. Go to grantotter.streamlit.app.
2. Enter your email and password in the Sign In tab and click Sign In.

The GrantOtter sign-up screen — click the Sign Up tab, fill in your email and password, then click Create Account.

Generate Your Researcher Profile

GrantOtter builds this profile by searching the web — pulling from Google Scholar, PubMed, ORCID, ResearchGate, your institution's faculty page, NIH RePORTER, and public grant databases. The result is far more than a list of publications. It includes:

• Research expertise — scored areas with evidence and recent activity
• Financial parameters — estimated salary, F&A rates, fringe rates, and budget implications for proposals
• Grant suitability — readiness as PI vs. co-investigator, recommended mechanisms (R01, R21, K-awards, etc.)
• Active & past grants — funding history with roles and amounts where publicly available
• Collaborator network — frequent co-authors and key institutional partnerships
• Publication impact — citation counts, h-index, high-impact journals

Your name and institution are the only required fields, but filling in additional details significantly improves the profile — especially if your name is common (e.g., "John Smith"). We also strongly recommend completing two fields that directly improve your grant recommendations in the Match Grants tab:

• Developing Research Interests — areas you're actively moving into, even if you have few publications there yet. GrantOtter will prioritize these when ranking grants, so you get recommendations that match where you're going, not just where you've been.
• Areas to Avoid — research areas you do not want to see in grant recommendations. This filters out irrelevant matches so your ranked list stays focused.

How to do it

1. Open GrantOtter and go to the Generate Profile tab.
2. Enter your full name and institution (e.g., "Yuke Wang, Emory University"). These are the only required fields.
3. Optionally fill in Department, Rank, ORCID, and Google Scholar URL to improve accuracy — especially important if your name is common.
4. Optionally upload your CV (PDF, Word, Markdown, or plain text — up to 10 MB). When provided, the CV is treated as the highest-priority source of truth, and the AI fills gaps with web search. This is the fastest way to get an accurate profile.
5. Fill in Developing Research Interests (areas you're moving into) and Areas to Avoid (topics to exclude from recommendations). These two fields directly shape the grants you'll see in Match Grants.
6. Click Generate Profile. The AI will search the web and stream the profile live — this takes 2–3 minutes.
7. Once complete, review the profile and save it to your workspace.

Reviewing and updating your profile

The AI-generated profile is a strong first draft, but it's not always perfect. Before using it for grant matching or brainstorming, take a few minutes to review it and correct anything that doesn't look right. Profiles are plain Markdown files — any text editor works. Things to check:

• Expertise scores — the AI assigns each research area a score from 1–5. Adjust any that feel too high or too low.
• Missing or incorrect affiliations — verify your department, secondary appointments, and collaborating centers.
• Publication list — check that titles, years, and your authorship role are correct.
• Grant history — confirm listed grants and your role on each (PI, co-I, key personnel).
• Contact identifiers — make sure your ORCID iD and Google Scholar URL are correct.

How to update your profile

1. Go to My Workspace and find your saved profile under My Profile.
2. Click Download to save the .md file to your computer.
3. Open the file in any text editor (Notepad, VS Code, Obsidian, etc.) and review each section.
4. Make any corrections, then save the file.
5. Return to My Workspace, click Replace under My Profile, and upload the edited file.

Find & Add Collaborators

GrantOtter gives you three ways to build your team: use the AI chatbot to discover collaborators through your institution network, search the faculty pool directly by name or keyword, or add colleagues you already know.

AI Collaborator Chatbot

The chatbot is the most powerful way to find collaborators. Describe the expertise you're looking for in plain language, and the AI searches the institution network, identifies the best-matched faculty, and — crucially — tells you how you're already connected to each person through shared departments, centers, co-authorships, or institutional affiliations. This makes it easy to make a warm introduction rather than a cold outreach.

1. Go to the Find Collaborators tab and use the chatbot at the bottom of the page.
2. Describe what you're looking for in natural language — e.g., "I need a biostatistician with experience in longitudinal data and clinical trials" or "Who works on social determinants of health and has NIH R01 funding?"
3. The AI returns a list of faculty matches with expertise summaries and connection paths showing how you're linked through your institution network.
4. Save promising matches to your Potential Collaborators list in My Workspace — a holding list for people you're considering but haven't committed to yet.

Search the Institution Profile Pool

Prefer to browse directly? The institution profile pool lets you search by faculty name or keyword and read full profiles.

1. Open the Institution Profile Pool section in the Find Collaborators tab.
2. Enter a name or keyword in the search box (e.g., "Lin" or "health disparities").
3. Browse the results and click on a profile to read their full expertise summary, publication record, and grant history.
4. Save profiles to your Potential Collaborators list for consideration, or directly to Preferred Collaborators if you're ready to include them on a proposal.

Add a Known Collaborator

1. Use the Generate Profile tab to auto-generate a colleague's profile (enter their name + institution), or upload a profile file they've shared with you directly.
2. Save the profile as a Preferred Collaborator — preferred collaborators are used in grant matching and appear in team selectors across the app.

Brainstorm Proposal Concepts

Once you've found a promising grant, GrantOtter can generate 2–3 tailored proposal concepts aligned with the funding opportunity's priorities, your team's expertise, and realistic budget constraints — in minutes.

How to do it

1. Go to the Draft Concepts tab.
2. Select a grant document. The built-in grant repository covers federal, foundation, and institutional funding opportunities. You have two options:
   • Pick from the grant repository list, or enter a federal grant number directly (e.g., PA-25-131), or
   • For any other grant — private funders, international agencies — paste the full grant information as plain text directly into the grant document field.
3. Select the PI — this can be your own profile (My Profile) or any preferred collaborator profile. The PI doesn't have to be you.
4. Add Co-Investigators — select any additional profiles from your Preferred Collaborators list.
5. Optionally add Guidance: a short paragraph describing your angle, preliminary data, or any constraints. The more detail you provide, the more targeted the concepts will be.
6. Click Generate Concepts. GrantOtter produces 2–3 proposal concepts, each with:
   • A working title and central hypothesis
   • Specific aims outline
   • Innovation score and rationale
   • Estimated budget breakdown
7. Download the brainstorming report as a Markdown file, or use Save to Application to attach it directly to an application. Note: you need to create an application in My Applications first (Step 5) before this option appears.