2025 Federal Administration Transition Information & Resources - This will be updated as new information is available.

Stanford
Office of Research Administration

Sponsor Accounts & Guidelines

Most sponsors have both general guidelines/instructions for preparing proposals as well as program or funding opportunity specific guidelines.  When preparing proposals you need to find, read, and follow both the specific program or funding opportunity guidelines as well as the sponsor's general proposal preparation guidelines/instructions.  

Additionally, many sponsors, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF), require investigators to register for sponsor accounts in order to submit proposals.  Below are several of the most commonly applied to sponsors, their general guidelines links, and information about registering for sponsor accounts.

Questions?  Concerns? Contact the  Client Advocacy & Education team.  We're here to help!

Department of Defense

Department of Energy eXCHANGE Portals

There are several instances of eXCHANGE within DOE with the EERE and ARPA-E ones being the most commonly seen examples at Stanford. These are each separate Funding Opportunity Announcement systems, but they do share a common user account.  Applicants can self-register for a DoE eXCHANGE account and can use the same account information to login and submit to announcements in any system.  When you click on of the below or other DoE eXCHANGE new user regsitation pages, you will be redirected to an external site to first create a new Login.gov account (required for DoE system access - more information about Login.gov is below). You can also use an existing Login.gov account if you have one. Upon completion, you will be directed back to eXCHANGE to complete the registration process.  Note that Reviewers still need to apply and be approved within each system.  

  • ARPA-E New User Registration (Applicant, Admin, or Reviewer)
  • EERE New User Registration (Applicant, Admin, or Reviewer)
  • [Clean Energy] Infrastructure New User Registration (Applicant, Admin, or Reviewer)
  • NETL New User Registration (Applicant, Admin, or Reviewer)
  • OCED New User Registration (Applicant, Admin, or Reviewer)

Department of Energy Portfolio Analysis And Management System (PAMS)

Investigator and institutional official (IO) registration within PAMS is a two step process that begins here.  Department administrators can also request PAMS accounts, but most actions related to submitted DoE proposals and subsequent awards must be completed from either the investigator's PAMS account or an IO's PAMS account.

  1. Create an individual account for yourself. This account should not be shared with any other user.
  2. Affiliate your account to your institution i.e. to Stanford. Each account can be associated with one or more institutions.

Grants.gov/Workspace

  • Stanford does NOT use the federal Grants.gov proposal preparation platform Workspace.  Rather, Stanford, and 150+ peer institutions, use Cayuse Proposals (S2S) which is a system-to-system solution to prepare and submit federal applications to the Grants.gov portal.  If a funding announcement advises applications must be prepared in Workspace and/or Grants.gov, prepare the application in Stanford's Cayuse*.  

    • *For submissions to the National Science Foundation (NSF), Stanford strongly recommends registering with and using Research.gov.  (more information below) and strongly does NOT recommend applying to the NSF through grants.gov/Cayuse.

  • Stanford Cayuse User access is granted by submitting a HelpSU ticket to the SeRA Support Team.  Once access is granted, Stanford's Cayuse system can easily be accessed from SeRA. 
  • Stanford Cayuse Resources and User Guides

Login.gov

Login.gov is a secure sign in service used by the public to sign in to participating government agencies. Participating agencies that require multifactor authentication (MFA) to access their portals, such as the DoE, NIH, and NSF will ask you to create a Login.gov account to securely access your information on their website or application.  You can use the same username and password to access any agency that partners with Login.gov. This streamlines your process and eliminates the need to remember multiple usernames and passwords.  Individuals e.g., researchers and research administrators self-register for a Login.gov account on the Login.gov website.

NASA NSPIRES

To submit a research proposal to NASA, individuals and the organizations with which they are affiliated must be registered in NSPIRES. Institutional officials (IOs), investigators, and administrators may register at any time here.  As part of registering for a NASA NSPIRES account you will be prompted to select an organizational affiliation.  Once you select Stanford as your organization, one of Stanford's NASA organizational points of contact within the Office of Sponsored Research will be prompted to review and approve your affiliation.  This typically occurs within 1-3 business days.

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

  • To be able to submit to the NIH applicants need to first be registered with an NIH eRA commons account.  Administrators can also register for an NIH eRA commons account and be delegated access to their PIs' accounts by the given PIs. 

    • Please submit a HelpSU ticket to the SeRA Support Team by clicking HERE, to request an NIH eRA commons account and/or for Stanford roles to be added to your existing account if you were registered for one at a previous institution.

    • Individuals in the School of Medicine may alternatively request an NIH eRA commons account and/or for Stanford roles to be added to your existing account if you were registered for one at a previous institution by contacting the RMG Grants Help Desk by clicking HERE.
  • Stanford non-SoM NIH applications are prepared and submitted through Cayuse.  SoM NIH submissions can be submitted through either Cayuse or the NIH ASSIST platform, whichever the submitting PI and department prefers.

National Science Foundation (NSF)

  • To be able to submit to the NSF applicants need to first self-register for an NSF account at Research.gov , affiliate their account with Stanford, and request the account role type of PI.  Stanford uses Research.gov to submit applications to the NSF.  Stanford strongly does NOT recommend applying to the NSF through grants.gov/Cayuse.

    • Administrators can and are encouraged to self-register for an NSF account at Research.gov , affiliate their account with Stanford, and request the account role type of Other Authorized User (OAU).  Once an administrator has an NSF account affiliated with Stanford with the OAU role any Stanford PI with an NSF account will be able to add the administrator as an OAU to a PI's application to allow the administrator to assist with its completion.  Click for step-by-step instructions for how a PI can grant or revoke OAU access to an NSF research.gov application once they have initiated it. 

    • Note: Multifactor authentication (MFA) is required to sign into Research.gov as of Oct. 27, 2024. If your NSF account is affiliated with your Stanford email, you can easily mutlifactor authenticate and login to Research.gov using the Organization Credentials option.  From the Research.gov login screen, under Organization Credentials, first begin to type Stanford University into the organization drop-down list selector, and then select Stanford University as your organization once it displays as an option.  Second, click Sign in Using Organization Credentials.  You should then be fully logged into Research.gov without the need to enter any further credentials. For more NSF login information, see Dear Colleague Letter (NSF 25-011) and the MFA options overview. Users can also visit the new About Signing Into Research.gov page for how-to guides, video tutorials, and FAQs.

Research.gov Orginizational Credentials Login for Stanford University

The last day to submit new proposals in FastLane was January 27, 2023.  Applicants should use Research.gov to prepare NSF proposals.  Again, Stanford strongly does NOT recommend using grants.gov/Cayuse for submissions to the NSF.

proposalCentral

  • Many non-federal sponsors use proposalCentral as their proposal preparation and submission platform.
  • Applicants and administrators can self-register for proposalCentral accounts by clicking HERE
  • Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Questions?  Concerns? please contact the Client Advocacy & Education team.  We're here to help!