Michelle Gaugh

Michelle Gaugh has more than 16 years of professional experience in research project management, presentation and public speaking, scientific and technical report and grant writing, project planning, team building and project evaluation. Her background includes 7 years’ experience in the design and implementation of both industry-sponsored and investigator-initiated HIV clinical trials at the University of Rochester, and 9 years as a Senior Research Associate in Synergy’s Research and Evaluation Division. Ms. Gaugh served as the Deputy Project Director for the Department of Education (ED) study titled Identification and Evaluation of Best Practices for Early Childhood Learning, 21st CCLC, and has been the project director of the Education Technical Assistance and Support Services (EDTASS) Full Service Community Schools (FSCS) and Technical Assistance (TA) Initiative, since September of 2016. As project director, Ms. Gaugh has been responsible for providing thorough review and assessment of all FSCS grantee APR and ad-hoc data submissions. Ms. Gaugh has worked closely with ED to develop a process to review and analyze all quantitative and qualitative data contained in annual performance and ad hoc reports submitted by multiple grantee cohorts and identify grantee challenges in fulfilling program requirements. In addition to this process, Ms. Gaugh has developed methods for aggregating disparate grantee data measures to provide comprehensive summary cohort and individual grantee progress reports to ED each year. Based on identified grantee challenges, Ms. Gaugh developed and continually revises and optimizes a new data reporting structure and guidance for current and newly awarded FSCS program grantees to facilitate the collection and submission of data that the U.S. Department of Education requires under GPRA and on program level measures that are required during program performance reporting.

Since September of 2011, Ms. Gaugh has served as task lead for technical, scientific, and data management activities on the Research Support Services for NIDA AIDS Research Program (ARP) project. In this role, Ms. Gaugh developed an AIDS Research Projects Portfolio Database to organize all aspects of NIDA AIDS-funded research and provide rapid responses to requests for summary data and graphical representations previously unavailable to NIDA ARP staff. In addition to providing a unique organization of ARP-managed research projects, Ms. Gaugh developed methodology to allow the database to incorporate data from the NIH RePORTER system, linking NIDA project information extracted from NEPS with project abstract and search term data and providing search by topic and term functionality unavailable in existing NIDA/ NIH systems. Using the portfolio database and NIH data sources including QVR, SPIRES, iTools and RePORTER, Ms. Gaugh designed and implemented a portfolio analysis process to evaluate the impact of NIDA ARP–managed research, and to identify trends in funding and ensure that all new ARP-issued Funding Opportunity Announcements invite project applications that meet the new high-priority areas for National Institutes of Health HIV research and avoid unspent funding at the end of each fiscal year.