How to work each of the three tools, in full. Pick a tab, everything under it is reference for that one page.
Every row is a researcher (or, for DoD, a single award) that recently received federal grant money AND shows real evidence of light microscopy work in the funded proposal itself. Both halves matter. Grant money alone is not a lead, and microscopy interest without new money is not a lead either. What we are looking for is money plus timing.
The list covers a rolling 12 months and refreshes itself early every Monday morning, before the workday. Each refresh re-pulls NIH, NSF, and DoD, re-scores everything, and adds the new week on top. The line under the three big numbers tells you exactly when the data was last pulled and how many researchers are in it right now.
It is deliberately not every federal award. Awards under $100,000 are dropped unless they are instrument-purchase awards, electron and cryo-EM work is out of scope entirely, and anything that does not clear a real buying-signal bar never appears. If a researcher you know well is missing, the most likely reason is that this year's award text gave no microscopy signal, not that they were skipped.
Click anywhere on a row to expand it. The expanded panel shows the full grant title (linked to the agency's own page for it), the funding institute or NSF directorate or DoD awarding branch, the NIH activity code, how many qualifying grants this person had and the combined total, and a complete line-by-line breakdown of where every point came from.
CRITICAL is not "a very high score", it is a different kind of lead and it skips scoring altogether. It means the award itself is an instrument-purchase award that names light microscopy equipment. The money is already committed, the buyer is choosing a vendor right now rather than in a year, and they are free to buy any comparable system, not only the one written into the proposal. Four things reach this tier:
All four only qualify when the text names real light microscopy: a specific vendor or model, or a strong technique. A passing mention of "core facility" or the bare word "microscope" is not enough, deliberately, because that used to promote electron microscopes, microCT scanners, and an ultrasound system into this tier.
STRONG means a score of 35 or more, or a named vendor or model plus a serious imaging technique. Real, demonstrated microscopy capability and fresh money, without the "buying right now" certainty of Critical.
MODERATE means a score of 16 or more, or a named vendor with at least 10 points, or one strong technique, or a named imaging facility. Worth a look, especially in your own territory, but the evidence is thinner. Expect more judgment calls here.
The grant's title and abstract are scanned for four kinds of language. Every match adds points, and the total is the score. Expand any row to see the exact arithmetic for that lead, term by term.
Four rules shape the result, all of them added to fix real false positives:
The two New PI badges are the ones to watch. Both mean fresh money and no incumbent vendor, and both are time-sensitive, because every other vendor is chasing the same newly independent researcher.
Leads are grouped into Monday-start weeks by when this tool found them, not by when the grant was awarded. Each lead still shows its true award date in its own column.
The two differ because agencies publish an award's record well after the award itself, so a lead can surface in this Monday's pull having been funded a month ago. Grouping by award date used to file those into an old, collapsed week nobody reopens. Now everything a run turns up lands together in that run's week, and a week stops changing once it has closed.
The newest week is open when you arrive and older weeks sit collapsed beneath it, so the page reads like this week's batch with history underneath. Each week header shows the number of leads, the split by tier, and the share of that week already reviewed by the team. Initial backlog at the bottom holds everything found before weekly tracking began; it is one historical batch, not a week. Expand all weeks and Collapse all at the bottom switch between browsing everything and resetting to just the current week.
Every row asks you one question first: Good fit or Bad fit. Good fit means worth pursuing and unlocks Contacted underneath it, which marks that you actually reached out. Clicking Contacted a second time clears the row back to untouched, and asks you to confirm first because it erases who marked it and when.
Bad fit is for a lead you have looked at and rejected: already a customer, the wrong kind of lab, the money clearly spoken for. The row stays on the page but fades into the background so it reads as handled, and clicking Bad fit again brings it straight back if you change your mind. Nothing is ever deleted.
Use both buttons generously, and Bad fit especially. A rejected lead marked is far more useful than one left blank: it stops a teammate spending the same twenty minutes reaching the same conclusion, and it is the only way this tool ever learns what a bad lead looks like. Marking Bad fit counts as work in the weekly reviewed figure, exactly like Good fit does, so there is no reason to avoid it.
The first time you mark anything you will be asked for your first and last name, which is then remembered in this browser. It is a label, not a login, and it exists so the row can say "Contacted by Dana Whitfield" to everyone else. Status is shared and live for the whole team, one status per lead, so if a row is already marked, someone is on it.
Once a lead is marked Contacted, one more question appears underneath: did they write back? Answer it with the thumbs up or thumbs down. It takes a second, it is a fact rather than a judgment, and it is the only way anyone can tell whether the leads this tool finds are any good.
If you tap thumbs up, a second question appears: was it a real prospect? That one only ever shows on leads that actually replied, because on a lead that ignored you it would be a guess. Tapping a lit thumb again clears it, so a wrong tap costs nothing.
Leads you contacted more than two weeks ago with nothing recorded get an Awaiting result flag, and the Awaiting result filter collects them in one place. The Monday email counts them too. Two weeks is deliberate: mark a lead silent too early and a slow but genuine reply gets recorded as a dead end.
These answers are what will eventually show whether Critical leads really do outperform Moderate ones, and whether the scoring needs changing. That takes a few months of real answers to mean anything, which is exactly why it is worth recording them now.
Draft Customized Email researches the person and writes a first draft for you. It searches PubMed for their recent papers, finds their lab or faculty page, reads what it finds, and then writes a short note grounded in that specific work. You will see each step tick past while it runs, which usually takes 20 to 45 seconds. Available on NIH and NSF leads.
First it asks how technical the email should read. Straightforward is plain language with no jargon, safe to send with no preparation at all. Informed is the default: one specific paper and one real imaging question, about what you would know after reading a single abstract. Technical engages with how the work was actually done and names the imaging method, so only pick it if you are comfortable backing that up with your own knowledge in a qualification or discovery meeting. Your last choice is remembered for next time.
What comes back has three parts. The For your reference box at the top explains why the email is framed the way it is, and is never part of the email. The draft itself sits in an editable box. Below it, Sources used lists the papers and pages it actually read, so you can check the details before you send anything.
The email is written to open a scientific conversation, not to pitch. It asks a real question about their work, never mentions a product, and closes by asking for a short meeting, remote or in person. That is intentional, it is what earns a reply from a researcher.
Nothing is ever sent for you. Use Copy, paste it into your own mail client, and edit it so it sounds like you. Check every specific claim about their research first. The draft is saved, so the button becomes View Draft and reopens the same email instantly later, and Regenerate writes a fresh one from scratch at the same depth.
There is one saved draft per lead and the whole team shares it, so the stamp above the email says which depth it was written at and who ran it. If a colleague drafted it at a depth that is not right for you, Rewrite at writes a new one at the level you pick, which replaces the saved copy for everyone.
Having access to the dashboard signs you up automatically for a short digest sent right after each weekly refresh, no button to find or form to fill in. It names every new Critical lead individually, tells you how many new leads landed in total, and reminds you how many leads from the past 30 days nobody has reviewed yet. Every lead is announced exactly once, so a lead that arrives late still gets its turn and nothing is silently skipped.
Every digest has an unsubscribe link at the bottom that takes effect immediately. If you unsubscribe and change your mind, the sign-up prompt is one click away from this same guide on the grant leads dashboard; nothing about your access changes either way.
The Feedback button, in the header of the grant leads and faculty pages, opens a board the whole team can see. Post a bug or an idea, and upvote anything already there instead of re-posting it. The number on the button is how many items are on the board. Popular requests rise to the top, which is the point, it beats everything routing through one person verbally.
Access is by work email. A company address is recognized straight away. Anything else creates a request that is reviewed by hand, and you will get an email if it is approved. Your session lasts 30 days in that browser, so signing in again occasionally is normal and not a fault. Signing in on any of the three pages carries over to the other two.
Scores and tiers come from the grant text as the agency published it, so an odd-looking lead usually traces back to an odd abstract. Expand the row first, the evidence breakdown almost always explains it. If it still looks wrong, or a researcher you expected is missing, post it on the Feedback board with the name and institution. Genuine false positives are how the scoring gets fixed, several of the rules above exist because someone reported one.
Every row is a researcher who started a faculty post in the last 12 months. It is the early half of the same pipeline as the Grant Leads tab, not a separate product: a new hire normally gets a startup package with equipment money in it a year or two before their first funded grant shows up over there. Working a name here means reaching them while the money is still unspent and before any vendor relationship exists.
It is deliberately not every new faculty appointment in the country. A row only appears when the researcher published the move themselves, on their ORCID record or in their own post, so the list is small, recent and verifiable rather than large and inferred.
Click anywhere on a row to expand it. The expanded panel shows the full research focus, the ORCID record, the department and title in full, every source link, and why the row cleared the bench-research check.
Which one you would rather have is a judgment call about your territory, not something this page decides for you. That is why hire type is shown next to the name, not scored or ranked, and there is no equivalent of the grant page's tier here.
The ? Hire types button in the filter bar, on the New Faculty page itself, opens a shorter version of this, color matched to the filter chips, for a quick check while you work the table.
The focus tags come from what each person actually publishes on, never from their department name. A psychology department can house an imaging neuroscientist and an oncology department can house a health-services researcher, so the department alone is never used to accept or reject anyone.
The difference between the two source dates matters for timing. An ORCID start date is usually reported late, so the job began before we saw it, sometimes by months. A post can run the other way: someone announcing in August that they join next January is dated August here, and their startup money does not exist yet. Open the post before you write to anyone you are treating as urgent.
The dark bars group rows by month, using that same signal date, so the page reads like the hire history it would show if it had been running all along. The catch: because an ORCID start date is usually reported late, a brand-new lead can land in a collapsed bar from months back that most people never scroll to. A row with only a year on record (common for older ORCID appointments) gets its own "Sometime in [year]" bucket rather than a guessed month.
That is what the NEW tag on a row is for: it marks anything found in roughly the last 30 days, independent of which month bar it displays under, and a collapsed bar with a fresh row inside also shows an "N new" count on its header so it does not have to be opened on faith. A lead found recently still carries its own NEW tag no matter which month it lands in, so a late-reported hire from months back is never invisible just because its bar is collapsed. Inside a bar, the freshest signal date still sorts to the top.
Good fit and Bad fit are the first call on every row: worth pursuing, or not. Contacted unlocks once you choose Good fit, and means you have actually written to them. A hire you mark Bad fit fades into the background rather than disappearing, and one more click brings it back. All of it is shared: your name goes on the row so nobody works the same hire twice. Clicking Contacted a second time clears the row back to untouched, with a confirmation first, because that throws away who marked it and when.
The three figures at the top of the New Faculty page are the same measures the Grant Leads tab shows, read against this dataset: how many first-faculty-job hires are still untouched, how many hires arrived in the last 30 days, and how much of the newest batch the team has worked.
Door-to-Door is a lookup, not a list. Type a PI's name, an institution, or both, and it pulls that person's active NIH-funded projects straight from RePORTER, whether or not they show up anywhere on the Grant Leads or New Faculty tabs. Use it before a cold visit, when a name comes up in conversation, or any time you want a read on someone the automated lists have not flagged yet, because their award is not recent enough or the abstract text alone did not clear the scoring bar.
An active NIH award is not a requirement to get a profile here, on purpose. Sales cycles on capital equipment run long, and building the relationship before the money exists is often the whole point of a door-to-door visit. If nobody has a current NIH-funded project for the name you searched, this tool automatically checks PubMed for that person's own published work instead and still builds a profile from it, tagged No current NIH funding found so you always know which kind of read you're looking at.
There is no tier, no score, and no team queue here. Nothing you look up is tracked as a lead the way the other two tabs track Good fit, Bad fit and Contacted. It exists to answer one question on demand: what does this specific person's public work say about their imaging needs.
Enter a PI name, an institution, or both. Either alone is a valid search. If more than one person matches an active NIH award, you get a pick list with each candidate's institution and current project title so you can tell them apart before committing to one. A search that turns up nothing at a named institution offers to retry on the institution alone, in case the name was slightly off.
When nobody has an active NIH award for the name you entered, this tool falls back to a PubMed search on that person's name (and institution, when you gave one) before giving up. That fallback can only ever return one best guess, not a pick list, because PubMed has nothing like RePORTER's structured institution matching to tell two same-named people apart. It's a real, evidence-grounded profile, just a less certain identity match than the NIH-funded path, worth keeping in mind for a common name. A search that finds nothing in either NIH or PubMed is a genuine dead end, not a bug.
Picking a match first loads a quick reference card, right here on this page: the grant project's own abstract and up to two recent publication abstracts, pulled straight from NIH RePORTER and PubMed with nothing added. It is meant to feel instant and costs nothing to generate.
Generate Prospecting Profile is the deeper option. It reads the same source material and has Claude write an actual assessment: what the science is, how central imaging is to it, and what it implies about instrumentation needs. You'll see each step tick past as it runs, unless someone already generated this exact PI's profile in the last six months, in which case it comes back instantly for you too. That is a cache working quietly behind the scenes, not a shared list: it saves the repeat NIH/PubMed/Claude calls if two reps happen to look up the same person, but nobody can see that a profile already exists until they search for that PI themselves.
Every claim in a profile is required to trace back to a specific grant abstract or paper Claude actually read; anything it cannot support that way is left out rather than guessed. Equipment findings work the same way but against a wider net: Claude does a quick, live search for the lab's website and the full text of a few of their papers, and only reports an instrument that's written explicitly on a page it actually opened, with a Source link to that exact page next to it. Finding no equipment is a normal, honest result for most labs, not a sign the search failed. The sources it used are listed at the bottom of the card, so you can check the details yourself before you rely on any of it.
A No current NIH funding found tag under the name means there was no active NIH-funded project to build this from, and everything in the profile comes from that person's own PubMed publications instead. It is not a mark against them: the scoring reads the science exactly the same way either way, and a great imaging fit with no funding yet is still a great imaging fit, just one where the money isn't in hand today. Treat it as relationship-building context, not a signal to skip.
Every profile is rated high, medium, or low confidence, but the card only speaks up about it when the answer is low: a banner says plainly that the evidence was thin, rather than padding out a guess. No banner means medium or high, and needs no second look. Low confidence is common for a brand-new PI with little published yet, and it's worth expecting more often on a No current NIH funding found profile for the same reason, since an early-career or newly independent researcher is exactly who is most likely to have both no grant yet and a thin publication record. Treat that profile as a starting point for your own judgment, not a verdict.
Generate Outreach Email, right here on this page, uses the same drafting engine as the Grant Leads tab. Pick a depth first: Straightforward is plain language safe to send with no preparation, Informed is the default and engages with one specific paper, and Technical names the actual imaging method, so only choose it if you can back it up yourself in a follow-up conversation. See the Grant Leads tab above for the full explanation, it is the identical choice and the identical email, just reachable here for a person who has no active lead driving them onto that list.
The list under the search box is personal: the last ten people you have looked up, newest first, so you can reopen a card without searching again. Nobody else can see it, and you cannot see anyone else's, unlike the fit and Contacted marks on the other two tabs. That is separate from the six-month cache above: a profile can come back instantly because someone else generated it first, without that person's search ever showing up in your list, or yours in theirs.
Same sign-in as the rest of the site, see the Grant Leads tab above for how that works. Signing in on any of the three pages carries over to the other two.
Built by Jared Evatt, for the whole team.
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