Principal Investigator (PI) Guidelines for qualifying as a university grants principal investigator (PI) are provided by the OSU Office of Research. PI status is automatically granted for many titles including: professor, associate professor, assistant professor, research professor, research associate professor, research assistant professor and instructor.
Guidelines for Research Staff, Visiting Faculty, and Postdoctoral Researchers
Directors, Associate Directors, and Assistant Directors are not automatically granted PI status, but may request PI status for projects directly related to the mission and responsibility of their office. In addition, visiting faculty, postdoctoral researchers, or research staff seeking funding for fellowships, dissertation support, and/or grants also qualify for PI status but need to apply before they submit their proposal so that an ePA-005 can be submitted.
The request for PI status requires submitting a letter to the University Senior Associate Vice President for Research – Jan Weisenberger. A request letter on department letterhead (from the dean, a chair or director) and the approval of the EHE Associate Dean for Research, Natasha Slesnick are required. Here is a PI Request Template to follow in developing the letter.
Send the letter needing Natasha Slesnick’s signature to Toni Brown with the CV. Toni will get Natasha’s signature and forward to the OSU Office of Research. Using DocuSign as a routing mechanism works well.
Guidelines for Students
Students must also have PI status to submit proposals to external funders.
In certain cases, the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) will be able to automatically grant limited PI status if the student has a certain title AND if the student is applying for a fellowship or similar grant type that provide training AND where the sponsor requires the student to be named PI or co-PI.
Titles Include:
- 4874 – Graduate Supplemental Fellow
- 4875 – Graduate Fellow
- 4894 – Graduate Research Associate
- 4905 – Graduate Teaching Associate
- 6504 – Post-Doctoral Researcher
- 7968 – Student Assistant
- 4869 – Graduate Admin Associate
- 4873 – Graduate external Fellow
- 4895 – Grad Research Assoc-GS Match
- 4908 – Graduate Trainee
- 6500 – Postdoctoral Fellow
- 7969 – Student Associate
If the student has a different title than those listed above and if the call doesn’t require the student to be named PI or co-PI, Limited PI status must be requested via a letter to the OSU Office of Research. Here is a Limited PI Request Template student version to follow in developing the letter.
Send the letter needing Natasha Slesnick’s signature to Toni Brown with the CV. Toni will get Natasha’s signature and forward to the OSU Office of Research. Using DocuSign as a routing mechanism works well.