Our NSF GRFP Proposals
Our team has been lucky enough to have good success with the NSF GRFP. Below you will find several freely available examples of the research statements submitted by lab members. These are great examples for anyone writing a neuroscience, neuroengineering, or biomedical engineering proposal.
Example 1
Lauren Iskander joined the lab in the fall of 2025 as a PhD student in Biomedical Engineering. She submitted her GRFP as a senior while completing her degree in Chemical Engineering at Villanova. In this case, she wrote her proposal completely independent of the work in the Gonzales Lab, and she also did not have any input from me (Prof. Gonzales). It’s an ambitious, well-grounded proposal aimed at studying neurogenesis during Alzheimer's disease. I should also note that Lauren also had an outstanding academic and research track record as well, including a co-authored publication.
Here’s what Lauren says about how she crafted this proposal:
Writing the GRFP proposal gave me the opportunity to bring together ideas from all of my different research experiences and turn them into something completely my own. While applying to the GRFP, I was working in a few different labs at once. My work in Dr. Benjamin Sachs' lab focused on neurogenesis, my work in Dr. Marco Bonizzato's lab was focused on deep brain stimulation for spinal cord injury rehabilitation, and my work in Dr. Jacob Elmer's lab was focused on cell engineering and gene therapy. I wanted to show that I could synthesize knowledge across those areas to ask a new question. I tried to approach the proposal creatively and ambitiously, while still being realistic about what experiments were actually feasible.
My GRFP writing process helped me practice thinking independently both as a scientist and as an engineer. It also helped me develop several important skills including identifying gaps in the literature, developing my own research direction, and learning how to clearly disseminate and communicate my science. Although I didn't really know it at the time, it was an extremely beneficial exercise to undergo before starting a PhD, and honestly, I had a really fun time writing it.
Example 2
Thaissa Peixoto joined the lab for summer research in 2024 and returned as a Biomedical Engineering PhD student in the fall of 2025. Her application is an interesting case-study. She applied twice, and submitted the same research idea in both applications. The second attempt was funded. She submitted her first application while a senior completing her degree in Electrical Engineering at Johns Hopkins. She submitted her second application while a first-year PhD student in our lab.
These ideas were inspired by work in our lab and combined her undergraduate research background as well. In my mind, her award was a no-brainer. She had an outstanding track record, and her research proposal seemed a perfect blend of her previous expertise and the unique capabilities of my lab to create a totally new research direction. Both submissions were supported by her preliminary work in our lab in the summer of 2024. She also had a co-authored publication highly relevant to the application. In her second submission, she included slightly more preliminary data. From my perspective, the main thing we tried to do in the second attempt was make the work more relatable from a clinical/applications perspective. We didn’t emphasize this very much in the first application. The NSF is supposed to support basic science with technically no need for wider translatability or applications to humans. However, in her first round of reviews, it was clear the reviewer’s just didn’t get a good sense of the broader implications of the work.
Here’s Thaissa’s take on what made this application ultimately successful:
It would be untrue to write this as if I have a real sense of why my second application was funded and the first wasn’t. I know that it is a lot of luck involved. However, there are a few concrete differences I can easily point to that drove my second one apart from the first and in my opinion, made it stronger. I hope this might be helpful to someone.
I want to credit a huge change in my mindset going into take 2, to our BME Director of Graduate Studies, Dr. Kenny Tao, who shared his experience as a reviewer. He encouraged us to tell the reviewer what was important, and assume they are on a beach somewhere over winter break attempting to review all these proposals. They are potentially not combing through or not even deeply pondering the allusions to impact and hints of merit you are cleverly sprinkling in for them. He told us to write exactly what you want them to write in their review.
Here are some changes I made that follow that advice:
Example 1. Concept Intro
2024 Unfunded submission: “Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is a long-supported method of delivering electrical pulses to stimulate fibers which go afferently to the brain.”
2025 Funded submission: “Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) offers a powerfully simple, yet unexplored route for improving clinical BCIs.”
In the introduction of this concept, the first reiterates known facts, and the second integrates the “why” of my proposal. In the second, I tell you that I am doing something “unexplored,” that it is “simple,” and what it could impact in a single sentence. These are all things the reviewer could copy and paste directly in their review. It offers a route of understanding and engaging more deeply with what you read next, now that you know what I am aiming to do and why. The first introduction leaves me asking, “okay, so what?” A “long-supported method” leaves the reader waiting and waiting for why they should care. What could the reviewer write after reading that?
Example 2. Background Motivation
2024 Unfunded: “In addition, BCI speed still lags the natural human behavior by 2-5x on tasks such as typing and speech generation [1]. Currently, there exist two primary approaches for streamlining this learning process and improving BCI performance.” FIVE sentences explaining each approach and why they are lacking
2025 Funded: “Independent real-world use requires months of training and lifelong effort. Current approaches attempt to engineer away this burden through better decoding algorithms, while the fundamental gap remains: the neural mechanisms that enable learning to control a BCI are largely unknown.”
In my second attempt, instead of wasting a paragraph describing previous work, I used the space to, again, naturally build the question that my proposal aims to answer. The reviewer doesn’t need to read your literature review. They are trying to figure out what is important and why, quickly. They won't be offended if you just answer that question. Again, I imagine someone saying “so what?”
Example 3. Broader Impact - Closing Sentence
2024 Unfunded: “This would change how we think about the routes for control and learning in brain-computer interfaces spanning across the entire field of rehabilitation.”
2025 Funded: “By closing the gap between basic neuroscience, real-world application, and community engagement, I aim to ensure the tools we engineer restore not just function, but independence.”
My feedback from the first submission was very clear in that: my broader impact was unclear. Reading my closing sentence of each proposal, you may get a sense of what the reviewers came away with. If I had to guess (which I do and am), my first submission feels like justifying the need for my question whereas the second justifies the need for my answer. This project matters because of what real people can use it for when I’m done, not because the entire “field” is going to change.
In summary, get to your point quickly. Spend your newfound space on your aims and broader impact. Be bold with your project and literally bold stuff! Happy GRFP writing!
Example 3
Hailey Edelman joined the lab in the Fall of 2024 as a Biomedical Engineering PhD student and submitted her GRFP in her first semester as a PhD student. At the time, there was still a choice between submitting as a first or second year student. We chose to submit an application because of her very strong academic record, extensive research experiences, and co-authored publication. Hailey is a slightly different case than the others because she joined our lab through the BME program, but her undergraduate degree is in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology. I think her application does a nice job of blending neuroscience and engineering by crafting a proposal using brain-computer interface approaches to study neurodegenerative diseases. Hailey was a honorable mention. However, I would honestly read this as a funded application. Her cycle was unfortunately the year that GRFP awards were slashed by half (followed by an additional 500 awards announced at a later point, focused on CS/data science/AI proposals). On any other “normal” year, Hailey almost certainly snags an award.
