Reach out to your Grant Administrator with any questions about the below message from the Office of Research Administation (ORA)
To: Department Chairs, Center/Institute Directors, Chief Administrative Officers, Vice Chairs for Research, Research Quality Officers, and Lead Research Administrators
From: Laurianne Torres, Associate Dean for Research Administration
Subject: Reminder re: Office of Research Administration (ORA) Staffing and Downtime over the Holidays
** PLEASE SHARE THIS MESSAGE WITH FACULTY INVESTIGATORS AND THE RESEARCH ADMINISTRATION TEAM IN YOUR UNIT **
As we near the holiday season, particularly Thanksgiving (and the day after) and the December/January holidays, the Office of Research Administration (ORA) will operate with a reduced staff to allow our team time to recharge. During this period, we ask that you plan as far in advance as possible as ORA may take a little longer than usual to reply to messages.
To help ORA respond as timely as possible to your needs, please plan based on the following:
| Thanksgiving Day and the Friday After | For transactions with sponsor due dates or request by dates BEFORE the Thanksgiving holiday, please submit in ready form to ORA by Wednesday, November 19. Otherwise, if it can wait, ORA will process the week following Thanksgiving (beginning December 1). |
| Last two weeks of December
|
For transactions with sponsor due dates between December 22 – January 2, please have submitted in ready-form to ORA by Monday, December 15 to ensure there is adequate time and staffing to respond to your needs. |
An important note about the NIH SBIR/STTR deadline. The standard due date for NIH SBIR/STTR (R43/R44) is January 5, so the submission deadline to NIH is Monday, January 5, 2026. The internal deadline is 8am on Wednesday, December 31, 2025. Because this deadline falls in the last two weeks in December when ORA will be operating with reduced staff and because these award mechanisms are usually complex and require careful institutional coordination before submission:
1. Please complete Intent to Submit no later than December 1, 2025; and
2. Please route a submission-ready application no later than December 15, 2025; if more time is needed, please submit a late waiver request so that ORA can plan for appropriate coverage to support these applications.
For anything submitted in the last two weeks of December that can wait until after the holiday break, ORA will be back up to speed with a full team on January 5, 2026, and will look forward to managing all pending issues at that time.
This has been challenging year in research at Duke. From everyone in the Office of Research Administration, we would like to say thank you for your continued partnership in support of Duke’s research mission and extend warm holiday wishes to you all!
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