Curvita FAQ
What is Curvita?
Curvita is an application that integrates with the existing information systems on your campus to work as a single hub for managing faculty, staff, and departmental data through our intuitive web-based interface. This compiled data can then be leveraged in numerous ways, including the creation of personal documents (CVs, websites) and support documents for sponsored research applications (NIH biosketches, T32 Data Tables, P30 CCTG Summaries).
Why was Curvita developed as a product?
Curvita was developed as a software solution for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to solve a problem found at many colleges and universities: their data was being kept in separate systems without the ability to link it all together in a single centralized system. Curvita is that system: it unlocks the power of your information.
Who is SciMed Solutions?
Durham, NC-based Scimed Solutions is a web application development firm, specializing in the educational, research, and scientific fields. Though many of our custom applications are developed to fill a particular role for a client, there are also applications (like Curvita) which develop into products that can serve a larger market.
What kind of data does Curvita gather?
Curvita helps manage basic biographical information, departmental and program affiliations, education, employment, publications, research projects, advising, intellectual property, courses taught, public service, funding sources, degrees awarded, and more. Curvita can also store any custom data that you would like to track.
How does Curvita interface with our current systems?
Curvita can interface using XML Web APIs, direct database connections to any SQL data source, automatic transfer of tabular data files using SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol), or any customized import that needs to be created to meet your needs. If you already have systems in place to store or track some of the data that Curvita compiles, it can interface with these systems daily or weekly by pulling, pushing or synchronizing data so that changes made in one system are visible in both.
What if we already have systems of record storing for some of the data types you store in Curvita?
For those data types, Curvita can be set up so that it only acts as a collector of data while still retaining all its reporting and analysis value. It can automatically import data from other campus systems and will take any changes on those systems into account.
What kind of reporting can be accomplished with Curvita?
Curvita generates individual CVs and biographical sketches, administrative reports, marketing reports and data tables for grant submissions. Any campus web sites used for reporting can also tap into Curvita as a data source.
What other ways can you input data into Curvita?
To help you rapidly import CV data, we supply Microsoft Excel templates with tabs that correspond to the profile categories in Curvita. If you have a substantial data set in another format that you'd like to migrate into Curvita when you go live, we can also write scripts to do that migration for you.
How do I enter bibliographical data into my Curvita profile?
You have the ability to search multiple publications databases for articles that you would like to associate with a profile. Curvita has integrated access to several databases including Pubmed and ISI. If you are already managing your publications in another program such as EndNote, you can utilize our Excel template to bring these publications into your Curvita profile.
What formats are available in Curvita to export my CV?
Curvita can output your documents as Microsoft Word files or PDFs. The layout of a CV/Biosketch can be selected from any of the following styles to eliminate formatting hassles and hangups:
| SUPPORTED FORMATS |
| Generic CV format |
| NIH biographical sketch (multiple historical versions) |
| NSF biographical sketch |
| Custom formats defined by your university |
You can also add layouts for internal documentation, review, or any other purpose, and the publications listed in your documents can also be presented in multiple citation formats.
Once my data is stored in Curvita, is there any way to get it all back out?
Yes. At any point in time, your entire profile can be exported as a comprehensive Excel workbook, allowing you to leverage the data in any way that you like. In addition, your university's system administrators can be given read-only access to the entire Curvita data source for any backups or direct reporting that they would like to perform.
How do Faculty and Staff access their profiles?
Curvita’s web-based interface is accessed via a dedicated web address, and can be integrated with existing authentication systems (such as Shibboleth) to allow users to securely use their existing login credentials.
Can I assign maintenance of individual or department profiles to someone else?
Yes. Curvita gives you the ability to assign editing privileges to other users. You can either retain final approval, or grant final approval to a trusted staff member.
What are the Curvita Grant Application Modules?
We know that submitting proposals for NIH grants is a tremendous undertaking. Gathering updated CV and demographic information for participating departments, faculty, and students is difficult in and of itself; but taking that data and compiling it into support documents and data tables is what makes grant application extremely time and labor intensive. It is common for biosketches and data tables to comprise well over 50% of the total content in a grant application, and this is where Curvita’s Grant Application Modules excel.
Based out of a single dashboard page, the modules use the CV data already stored in Curvita and walk you through the steps required to create your training grant tables with visual progress indicators. Instead of dedicating weeks or months to submitting one training grant application, Curvita streamlines this process so that you can go after more training grants and increase your chances of success with new grants and the all-important retention of existing ones, all while saving large chunks of time and effort for both faculty and staff alike.
The completed NIH Training Grant Tables can be exported as Word or PDF documents for insertion in or upload to your full grant application. To keep a record of this application with all of the accompanying material, Word, PDF, or scanned documents can be uploaded to Curvita for long-term storage and access.
Are NRSA T32’s the only grants that Curvita generates documents for?
Curvita offers additional NIH Training Grant Writer Modules to assemble data for other types of grant proposals, including a newly-released module for P30 CCSG grants. We are always looking for new ways At Curvita, we are happy to work with you to meet any of your needs.
What are the software requirements to run Curvita?
| SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS |
| Windows Server 2003 |
| Apache 2.2+ |
| MySQL |
| Ruby on Rails |
What are the options for hosting Curvita?
Option 1: Curvita can be installed on a physical server located at your IT center on a Windows 2003 machine of your choosing.
Option 2: Curvita can be installed on a Windows 2003 Virtual Machine.
Option 3: SciMed can remotely host Curvita on one of our centralized servers.
What are the server requirements needed to operate Curvita?
Server requirements differ based on the size of your institution, number of users, and the amount of data you plan on interfacing with Curvita, but currently, our minimum requirements are:
| HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS |
| Intel Xeon E5506 2.1 GHz Processor |
| 4GB of RAM |
| 7200 RPM Hard drives |
| 250GB of Disk Space |
Does Curvita work with HR systems that are already in place (e.g. Peoplesoft, SAP, and Banner)?
Yes, Curvita can interface with many different HR systems through direct database connection, XML API, or automatic file transfer.
What is the benefit to linking Curvita to our HR system?
With a direct interface, changes made in the HR system are automatically carried over to faculty member's Curvita profile. All of the documents that are generated from that profile (biosketches, CVs, departmental websites) will then be up to date and correct without any additional effort required.
We already have a grant management system (e.g. Coeus, Cayuse, Community of Science, PeopleSoft Grant Management, etc) -- How does Curvita differ?
Many of the profile management features in Curvita are not present in these systems. Beyond profiles, Curvita is the first and only software that generates both biosketches and data tables for NIH grants. No matter what grant management system you currently use, Curvita will work alongside it to add tremendous efficiencies to the application process.
The university already has a home grown solution to manage faculty profiles. Can Curvita still help?
Yes, in one of two ways. First, if Curvita has features that supplement your existing systems, those systems can act as data sources. Second, if you're considering a wholesale replacement, there are many advantages of going with Curvita. We have invested the development time to make Curvita a stand-alone product that seamlessly integrates with the sytems on your campus to provide the best profile management system possible. While some homegrown solutions are adequate, they typically require large amounts of ongoing IT support and do not provide the intuitive interface that makes Curvita so easy to use. By making it easy for faculty and staff to update their profiles one time in one place, and then leveraging that data in a variety of ways, Curvita provides benefits that far outshine homegrown systems with far less long-term cost.
We are only interested in Grant systems that link directly to grants.gov. How does Curvita fit into this workflow?
Curvita’s Grant Application Modules automatically format data tables and biosketches into the prescribed NIH formats, so all that’s needed is to copy/paste or upload the documents generated by Curvita into your full grant application.
How can we encourage our faculty to keep their information up to date in the Curvita system?
Because Curvita is the single site of entry and editing, it actually makes faculty life easier. Instead of continually fielding staff requests for information or being asked to update their data for multiple sites, they (or their staff) can easily maintain their profiles on Curvita and make the information available to others without requiring an interruption in their daily work.
How much does Curvita cost?
Because Curvita integrates with any number of systems at a given institution, there are a number of elements that need to be considered in order to give an accurate price quote. We invite you to contact us to schedule a demo of the software and to talk about what goals you are trying to accomplish. After that meeting we can quickly provide a quotation for you as well as options for software support.