A professor got a big NIH grant three years ago. Is it too late to ask about a position?

Not necessarily. Many NIH research grants run four or five years, so a three-year-old award can still have money for a student, and the lab may already be writing the renewal. Ask about the project rather than the grant, and mention the work you read.

Should I mention the grant by name in my email?

Mention the research, not the dollar figure. Saying you read about the project on the lab page or in a recent paper sounds informed; quoting the award amount back to a professor sounds like you are counting their money.

Do grants from companies or foundations show up in these databases?

Mostly no. NIH RePORTER and NSF Award Search cover federal awards. Foundation, industry and state money appears on faculty pages, in paper acknowledgments and in university news releases, so read those too.

I study humanities. Does following grants work for me?

Less directly. Humanities PhDs are usually funded by the department through teaching assistantships and fellowships, not by an advisor’s grant. The National Endowment for the Humanities does fund projects, and a professor with one may hire a research assistant, but your main lever is the program’s funding package.

Find Professors with Grants

Edyssy’s old slogan was blunt: to get a graduate assistantship, follow the money. A research assistantship is a line in somebody’s grant budget. Find the grant, and you have found the person who signs your stipend.

The box above searches the 50 grant records that survive from the 2014 site: 24 NIH, 13 NSF, 6 NAVY, 4 AF, 1 DOE, 1 DOD, 1 ARMY. They are a museum piece now, useful for seeing what a record looks like and which labs were funded a decade ago. For live leads, use the free federal tools below. They are better than anything Edyssy offered.

The tools that replaced us

NIH RePORTER

Everything the National Institutes of Health funds, searchable by keyword, investigator, institution, state and fiscal year. Filter to active projects, sort by start date, and you get a list of biomedical labs that just received money. Each record shows the abstract, the project period and the linked publications, which tells you whether the lab actually publishes on what it was funded to do.

NSF Award Search

The National Science Foundation’s database covers engineering, computer science, physical and life sciences, education research and the social sciences. Search by keyword or program, and narrow to awards with a start date in the last twelve months. NSF abstracts describe the project’s broader impacts, and that section often says outright that the award will train graduate students.

USAspending and agency portals

Defense, energy and space research money is scattered. USAspending.gov aggregates federal awards across agencies; the Department of Energy, NASA and the defense research offices publish their own award lists too. Coverage of individual investigators is patchier here, so expect to cross-check with faculty pages.

The acknowledgments section

Free, everywhere, underused. The last paragraph of almost every paper lists the grants that paid for it. If a professor’s three most recent papers thank the same award, that award is the engine of the lab.

Reading a record in five minutes

Field	What it tells you	Watch out for
Start date	New awards (last 6 to 18 months) are the best leads. Hiring often follows the money by a semester.	Continuation years of old projects can look new.
Project period	Three to five years of runway means a student can finish a good chunk of a degree on it.	A one-year record may be one slice of a longer award.
Amount	Bigger totals usually mean more people on payroll.	Equipment and instrument grants (look for “MRI” or “acquisition” in NSF titles) buy machines, not students.
Investigator	The name to write to, and sometimes co-investigators at other schools.	Centers and consortia list a director who may not supervise students directly.
Abstract	The specific aims. Quote the problem back in your email in your own words.	Abstracts are written for reviewers, years before the work. Check recent papers for where it went.

From record to email

A shortlist of eight to fifteen funded professors is plenty for one application cycle. For each, read the award abstract, then two recent papers, then the lab page to see whether current students are listed and how many are close to graduating. A lab with three fifth-year students and a new grant is about to have empty desks.

Then write. Keep it short, make it about their research, and say what you could do in the first semester. The sample emails show the format, and the four emailing tips explain why it works. If a professor answers that they have no funding, ask whether a colleague does. Professors know who just got funded down the hall.

One caution. A grant makes a professor able to hire; it does not make them obliged to. Admission still goes through the department, and many programs admit first and match students to labs later. Follow the money to find the right people, then apply through the front door like everyone else.

All 50 archived records

Every grant page that survived from the 2014 site, grouped by funding agency. Titles are kept as Edyssy displayed them.

Questions about grant hunting

A professor got a big NIH grant three years ago. Is it too late to ask about a position?: Not necessarily. Many NIH research grants run four or five years, so a three-year-old award can still have money for a student, and the lab may already be writing the renewal. Ask about the project rather than the grant, and mention the work you read.
Should I mention the grant by name in my email?: Mention the research, not the dollar figure. Saying you read about the project on the lab page or in a recent paper sounds informed; quoting the award amount back to a professor sounds like you are counting their money.
Do grants from companies or foundations show up in these databases?: Mostly no. NIH RePORTER and NSF Award Search cover federal awards. Foundation, industry and state money appears on faculty pages, in paper acknowledgments and in university news releases, so read those too.
I study humanities. Does following grants work for me?: Less directly. Humanities PhDs are usually funded by the department through teaching assistantships and fellowships, not by an advisor’s grant. The National Endowment for the Humanities does fund projects, and a professor with one may hire a research assistant, but your main lever is the program’s funding package.