FYI Research:
Coeus adds cohesion to grant proposals

If you deal with grant proposals and awards, you might have used Coeus. And if you haven't used Coeus, maybe it's time to try this pre- and post-award management system designed to make your life easier. Coeus, named for the Greek Titan of intelligence, is one of the first cradle-to-grave award management tools in the nation, says Barbara Page, who oversees Coeus implementation at Carolina. The University licenses Coeus from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which created the software.

Coeus consists of several different modules that allow users to track award activity, create reports and more. In the not-too-distant future, you'll be able to use Coeus to route your proposals across campus electronically. And eventually you'll use Coeus to route proposals to sponsoring agencies electronically.

"Departments can use Coeus data to track activity of their faculty, for both projects managed by their department and those managed by other administering units," Page says.

In the Awards Module, users can see award dollars by account, by year, all proposals that are funded by a specific award, contact information for those managing accounts and projects, prime- and sub-account relationships and carryover dollars. "The Office of Sponsored Research enters awards directly into Coeus," Page says. "We now have all awards from 2001 forward, appropriately marked as `active' or `frozen.'"

For departments looking to assess grant performance, the Medusa Module allows users to view relationships of proposals to awards, and to easily navigate from in-depth core proposal data to award details, including dates and reporting requirements. Why Medusa? "Medusa's hair is an intertwining of snakes," explains Page, "much like the complex relationships of proposals to awards."

You can use the Current and Pending Support Report feature to see a list of all active projects by principal investigator or co-investigator. You can also find any projects that are still pending. You can print these reports directly from Coeus, or download them to Microsoft Excel.

If you want more in-depth reports, you can use Carolina's Finance Central web site to accesss Coeus Reports, which will allow you to examine data such as new dollars by fiscal year (from 2001 to present). Report categories include sponsor name, sponsor category, and investigators by both administering and appointing department.

"Coeus is very helpful," says Barbara Lyons, a Financial Analyst at the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. "I can pull up any study by an investigator, and be able to get the pertinent information that I need. I can look at studies that are pending, studies that have already been approved, and it's especially nice that I can learn things about accounts that were created before I was here. Basically, I can do a lot of things without having to call everybody on campus."

The Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center recently became the first campus unit to enter all proposal information into Coeus. "This is the first step towards departments and investigators using Coeus to electronically route throughout campus and, eventually, to funding agencies," Page says.

For more information about Coeus, including obtaining Coeus access, visit the Coeus web site at www.unc.edu/coeus/ or contact Barbara Page at barbara_page@unc.edu. Finance Central is online at https://www-s3.ais.unc.edu/frs/.

The Office of Technology Development helps Carolina faculty, students and staff develop and commercialize patentable inventions resulting from their research. In the first two months of 2004, the University executed two license agreements and had three U.S. patents issued.

A patent is a legal document granting inventors the exclusive right to prevent others from making, using or selling an invention for a number of years. A license agreement is a written contract granting permission for a person or company to use an invention under certain terms. For more information about OTD, go to research.unc.edu/otd/.

Provided by Research and Economic Development.
Editor: Neil Caudle. Writer: Jason Smith.
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