About Our Staff
Sheryl Soucy-Lubell
Sheryl is the director and editorial coordinator of the IRS unit. She has a PhD in Ecology and Evolution and is responsible for coordinating the activities of all team members – including faculty and staff – during proposal development. She edits technical writing or writing about specialized subjects and is able to critically review many scientific elements of the proposal.
Email: slslubell@ucdavis.edu
Phone: (530) 754-7725
Demet Candas Green
Demet is an editorial coordinator. Working with proposal development teams (faculty and IRS staff), she organizes the editorial tasks for proposals. She prepares checklists, production timelines, and templates of standard proposal components. She critically reviews and edits technical and scientific content of proposals. She has a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology, and trained as a post-doctoral scholar at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center before she joined the IRS team.
Email: dcandas@ucdavis.edu
Phone: (530) 754-7788
Sarah Messbauer
Sarah is the coordinator of grantsmanship programs at IRS. Through managing professional development initiatives such as the NSF CAREER proposal workshop and mentor program, she provides UC Davis faculty with the information and resources they need to increase the number and success of external funding proposals. She also provides proposal review services for small and medium grants, such as NEH Summer Fellows applications and NIH R01 program. Sarah has a PhD in Ethnomusicology from UC Davis.
Email: smessbauer@ucdavis.edu
Phone: (530) 754-0188
Meg Sparling
Meg, the funding opportunities coordinator, identifies funding opportunities that are relevant to UC Davis researchers, and shares them through weekly funding announcements. She coordinates the internal selection process for funding opportunities that impose campus limits on applications. Meg also provides assistance to researchers in developing proposals, and works with administrative units to coordinate interdisciplinary research teams and align them with funding resources. She has a PhD in English from UC Davis.
Email: msparling@ucdavis.edu
Phone: (530) 754-7738
Sean Tibbitts
Sean is the training grants analyst & coordinator. He works with faculty and staff on training grant applications and renewals, gathering data, filling in tables, creating timelines, providing templates and coordinating effort. He splits his time between the Office of Research and Graduate Studies, where he is part of the Analysis and Policy unit. Sean has an MS in Math from the University of Utah and a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of North Texas.
Email: smtibbitts@ucdavis.edu
Phone: (530) 752-2610
Erin Watkins
Erin has over 10 years of experience as a copy editor. In her role as senior editor with the IRS unit, she reviews project narratives with an eye to flow of logic, language usage, grammar and punctuation. Her edits are dual-purpose, aimed at creating consistency across all proposal components and helping each writer express their ideas clearly and concisely.
Email: ecwatkins@ucdavis.edu
Phone: (530) 754-7828
Rachel Whitcombe
Rachel is the research development coordinator. She provides essential services to support the activities and programmatic needs of the IRS team in its mission to support UC Davis researchers in the development of grant and contract proposals for extramural funding.
Email: rwhitcombe@ucdavis.edu
Phone: (530) 752-9196