COEUS® is an MIT-developed application for acquiring and managing sponsored program awards. COEUS® provides three major pre-award and post-award information management modules:

• Proposal Development -- build a proposal
• Proposals -- query master data for all proposals submitted to sponsors by the Institute (Institute proposals )
• Awards -- view information about awards and changes to awards, from notice of award through closeout; access awards by award number, investigator, Profit Center, title, sponsor, and WBS cost element number.

COEUS® also stores information about:

• Cost sharing
• Underrecovery of Indirect Costs
• Subcontracts
• Money and project periods (end dates)
• Billing information
• Prime Sponsor
• Award contacts ("Rolodex")
• Award reporting requirements (financial, technical, property, patents)
• Award terms and conditions
• Award approval requirements (equipment, foreign travel, subcontracts)
• MIT rates -- Facilities and Administration, Employee Benefit, and Allocation

Proposal development module

The Proposal Development module provides a tool for MIT investigators and administrators to create a full proposal, then route it to obtain proper approvals -- all from the desktop.

The Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) submits the approved proposal over the Internet as an electronic document interchange (EDI) file to agencies that accept EDI.

COEUS® can also generate printed proposals for agencies that do not accept electronic documents.

Proposal access is set up by each unit using proposal roles. Roles can be set up as restrictive or nonrestrictive. A user who has not been assigned the appropriate role cannot view or modify a proposal being created or routed for approval.

Institute and departmental business rules are set up within COEUS®. The rules are then used by COEUS®, not only to validate proposal, but to set up proposal routing maps -- ordered lists of approvers and alternate approvers, with no unnecessary reviews included. Special reviews can be routed automatically and obtained in parallel.

Budget creation windows allow convenient entry of proposal costs, personnel salaries and distribution, and other required information.

Narrative windows permit users to import Word and PDF documents into COEUS®. Viewing and update access can be assigned for each document.

Proposal abstracts and investigator information -- bibliographies, project activity lists, publications, most recent degrees -- are stored by department and by proposal, in Word and/or PDF format.

Information stored in the Proposal Module forms the basis of the online Current and Pending Support Report. This report is a valuable timesaving tool when sponsors require that prospective investigators disclose all other sources of funding.

Users can export the Current and Pending Support Report in a variety of formats and modify it to conform to sponsor requirements. For example, for further customization in Microsoft Excel, users can export both the COEUS® report and its column headers by selecting the "Excel-with-headers" export option.

The enhanced Award Module in COEUS® 3.5 lets users query awards by a number of values, such as Award number, Investigator, Profit Center, Title, and Sponsor.

Screen tabs on award windows make information more accessible. A single screen provides sponsor terms and conditions, reporting requirements, sponsor contacts, and comments associated with the project.

COEUS® 3.5 lets users keep multiple award and proposal windows open.

As more departments begin using COEUS® and providing feedback, OSP and the IS development team will roll out new and improved functionality.

Templates are already in the works for merging Excel worksheets into formats required by various sponsors.

Also under development is COEUS® Online, a Web interface that will simplify proposal reviews and approvals.

Getting help

For assistance or a demonstration of COEUS®, or to set up a first-time user account, contact coeus-help@mit.edu