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Significant updates to the RAMPART tool now available to Penn researchers

May 20, 2025

We are pleased to announce that RAMPART – the Risk Assessment Model for Proposal and Award Rapid Testing – has been updated in two key ways since its initial release in late April. As a reminder, this tool was developed by faculty in the Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM) and staff from several PSOM and University teams and is available for optional use by all Penn faculty, trainees, and staff interested in understanding the level of risk their grant proposals and awards may face in terms of not being reviewed, not being funded, or having funding withdrawn.

The major updates to the tool, which have now been implemented, are:

  1. The risk assessment model is now based on terms appearing significantly more commonly in grants that have been closed than in grants that remain open. This is a far more evidence-based approach than the initial list of terms, and has resulted in greater accuracy in identifying risk. The team will continue to monitor the national landscape of closed and open grants and update the risk model accordingly, but we anticipate that future changes will be incremental rather than a change in approach.
  2. An option to receive suggested alternatives to selected blocks of text that, if used, are predicted to reduce the grant’s risk. Investigators may select text blocks of up to 300 words with their mouse and receive 5 alternate wordings that strive to preserve the scientific premises and approach. If the user chooses alternate text, the overall risk calculation will update automatically and users may also edit the alternate text blocks manually to ensure scientific accuracy.

Again, we wish to emphasize that this is a tool that Penn investigators may choose to use or not use entirely at their discretion. The information investigators submit through this tool will not be shared with any entity outside the University. Penn IDs and the text submitted through the tool for evaluation are stored for up to a month to help the RAMPART development team – including two PSOM faculty and limited staff in Penn Medicine DnA, ISC, and the Office of the Vice Provost for Research – debug any issues that are encountered and improve the user experience going forward.

Please disseminate these tool updates to your investigators and inform them that there are now several ways to access the tool:

  1. Go directly to the RAMPART tool and log on with their PennKey credentials.    
  2. Access the RAMPART tool via PennERA. We have added this direct link through PennERA to provide investigators an easy method for screening scientific information they enter into PennERA.