National AI Research Institutes Proposal Support

Spotz Scientific provides strategic advice on funding opportunities, red-team review of drafts and pre-proposals, scientific computing expertise for project teams, and institutional down-selection support. The work focuses on helping applicants clarify program alignment, strengthen technical and management narratives, anticipate reviewer concerns, and improve the overall coherence of a complex, multi-investigator research proposal.

Begin as early as possible after identifying the funding opportunity, ideally before the research vision, team roles, and work plan are fixed. Early engagement allows time to test opportunity fit, identify gaps in expertise or scope, and develop a clear narrative. Draft review is most productive when reviewers have enough time to provide feedback before the submission deadline.

A red-team review is an independent, critical assessment of a draft proposal from the perspective of potential reviewers and program stakeholders. It examines responsiveness to the opportunity, technical clarity, research significance, feasibility, collaboration structure, and likely questions. The goal is to surface weaknesses, inconsistencies, and missed opportunities while there is still time for the team to revise.

Yes. Spotz Scientific reviews both pre-proposals and full proposals. Pre-proposal support helps teams communicate a compelling, responsive concept within limited space, while full-proposal support can assess the integration of research plans, team structure, technical details, broader impacts, and required components. Each review is tailored to the stage and instructions of the funding opportunity.

Yes. Services are designed for research institutions, universities, national laboratories, faculty support offices, individual investigators, and scientific computing teams. Institutional leaders can also use down-selection assistance when an opportunity limits the number of submissions. The consulting approach is especially relevant to teams pursuing federal research funding in computational and scientific computing fields.

Dr. Spotz brings particular experience with the DOE Office of Science, Advanced Scientific Computing Research program office, and NSF Computer and Information Science and Engineering directorate. Support is especially suited to scientific computing proposals, including DOE Early Career Research Program and NSF CAREER applications, as well as other opportunities where computational research and federal priorities must be clearly connected.

Standard consulting is billed at $250 per hour. A premium rate of $300 per hour applies when review materials are provided fewer than two weeks before a Notice of Funding Opportunity deadline. Starting early helps preserve time for a substantive review, team discussion, and meaningful revisions rather than limiting the engagement to last-minute edits.

Yes. Dr. Spotz can serve as a team member on research projects where his scientific computing background is relevant. His experience includes applied mathematics, high-performance computing, scientific machine learning, data analysis, modeling and simulation, and climate modeling. This option enables teams to incorporate experienced computational perspective directly into their research planning and proposal development.