Federal research agency cuts biosecurity review to two days

Tighter budgets and growing workloads left a federal agency reviewing biosecurity research grants by hand, one spreadsheet and repository search at a time.

The agency was evaluating biosecurity research grants. Staff spent three weeks reconciling spreadsheets, searching NIH RePORTER and PubMed, and mapping collaborators by hand. By the time findings were compiled, opportunities for collaboration or risk mitigation had already passed.

Slow data work left blind spots in program performance, funding alignment and partner vetting, while smaller teams had less capacity to track outcomes. Every extra day spent gathering data was a day the mission stalled.

Dimensions replaced the manual steps of the review with automated data import, pre-linked publications and a single dashboard for grants and collaborators.

With AI-driven normalization and network analysis, the agency now sees grant data, linked publications and collaborator networks on a single dashboard. Analysts can focus on anticipating biological risks and shaping policy instead of wrangling data.

1. Import and normalize funded projects
   Grant data is imported automatically and normalized, replacing manual exports and reconciliation in grants systems.
2. Link publications to grants
   Research outputs arrive pre-linked to funded projects, so staff no longer query several repositories one by one.
3. Map collaborators and risk
   Integrated author and institution profiles replace manual affiliation reviews and support oversight of research partners.
4. Assess policy impact in real time
   Real-time dashboards replace pulling metrics by hand from two to three separate platforms, so policy impact is visible at once.
5. Report from export-ready dashboards
   Reports are built from export-ready dashboards instead of custom manual builds, cutting the step from days to roughly one to two hours.

The same biosecurity grant review that once took three weeks now delivers evidence-backed insights in two days, with grants, publications and partners in view.

• 3 weeks to 2 days: biosecurity grant review, now delivered with evidence-backed insights
• 15–20 days to 1–2 days across all five review tasks, about 90–95% time saved
• 1–2 days to about 1–2 hours to identify funded projects, via automated import
• 3–5 days to instant: linking research outputs, since publications are pre-linked
• 3–4 days to instant: mapping collaborators and risk with integrated author and institution profiles

What it means: Analysts spend less time gathering data and more time anticipating biological risks and shaping policy. The agency can align funding faster and oversee its research partners more closely, a step forward for national biosecurity resilience.

Measurement note: Source: Digital Science’s manual-versus-Dimensions comparison for a federal agency; no period.