How to Use the Lab Leads Pro Database

When you open the database, you get a single-page interface designed for fast prospecting. No clicking through multiple pages or tabs. Everything is right in front of you.

• Search bar at the top for keyword, PI name, institution, or topic searches.
• Filter sidebar on the left with state, institution, agency, grant type, date range, and award amount filters.
• Results area showing grant cards with key info at a glance: PI name, institution, agency, award amount, and equipment tags.
• Sort options (relevance, newest, highest award) to organize results the way you work.
• Your subscription badge in the top right showing your plan and which states you have access to.

The search bar is the fastest way to find leads. It searches across grant titles, full abstracts, PI names, and institution names. Type what you sell and see who is buying it.

• Equipment types: "confocal microscope," "mass spectrometer," "sequencer," "flow cytometer"
• Research topics: "CRISPR," "Alzheimer," "proteomics," "single-cell RNA"
• People and places: Search for a specific PI name or institution to see all their funded grants.

Click the state dropdown in the filter sidebar to limit results to specific states. Select one or multiple states to match your territory.

• Your subscription determines which states you can access. You will only see data for states included in your plan.
• Select multiple states if your territory spans a region.

The agency filter lets you drill into specific funding sources. Select or deselect agencies to focus your search on the programs most likely to buy your equipment.

• Filter by NIH, NSF, DOD, DOE, NASA, VA, USDA, or CDC.
• NIH sub-filter: Drill into specific NIH institutes like NCI, NIGMS, NIAID, and others to get even more targeted.

The grant type filter lets you select specific activity codes. Some grant types are far more likely to involve equipment purchases than others.

• S10 grants are literal equipment purchase orders. These exist specifically to buy shared instrumentation. If you see an S10, someone is buying something.
• R01s in year 1 often have equipment line items as PIs set up or expand their research programs.
• New investigator awards (R35, K awards) mean someone is building a lab from scratch. They need everything.

Each grant in the results is a card you can expand to see full details. Here is what every element on the card tells you.

Certain grant types signal that a PI is either starting a brand new lab or transitioning to independence. These are flagged with colored badges on the grant card because they represent the single best moment to reach a buyer: when they need everything.

Click the star icon on any grant card to save it to your favorites. The star turns gold when a grant is favorited. Build a shortlist of the leads you are actively working without losing them in search results.

Viewing Your Favorites

Click the "★ Favorites" button above the results to toggle between all results and your saved grants. When active, the button highlights and only your favorited grants appear.

• Favorites persist across sessions. Log out, come back next week, and your favorited grants are still there.
• Use favorites as your working pipeline. Star the grants you plan to follow up on this week. Unstar them when you have made contact or moved on.
• Pro subscribers get enriched favorites. When you favorite a grant on a Pro plan, we run additional enrichment on that specific grant — deeper contact verification, office and building information, and expanded abstracts for grants from thinner data sources. The grant you care about gets our best data.

When a grant shows "Email available through source" instead of a direct email, it means the PI's email is on the original grant record. Click the "View source" link to go straight there.

Email Availability by Agency

Not all agencies publish PI emails the same way. Here is what you can expect from each source.

• NIH grants: We have verified PI emails for about 80% of PIs directly in the database. For the rest, click "View source" to go to NIH Reporter and hit the "View Email" button in the Details section. Takes about 10 seconds. But when you have 50 leads to work through, those seconds add up. That is why we pre-verify as many as possible.
• NSF grants: We pull PI emails directly from the NSF API. Good coverage.
• VA grants: PI emails available through VA and often through their university appointment.
• DOD, DOE, NASA, USDA, CDC grants: These come from USASpending data, which has shorter descriptions and less PI contact info. We provide the institution and sometimes the department, but email coverage is thinner. Use the PI name + institution to find them through Google Scholar, their university directory, or PubMed.

What If the Email Doesn't Match the Institution?

We pull PI emails from PubMed, NSF records, NIH FOIA data, and other public sources. Sometimes you will see a PI whose email domain does not match the institution listed on the grant. For example, a grant awarded to the University of Michigan but the email on file is from their previous position at Johns Hopkins.

This is actually a useful signal. It usually means the PI moved institutions recently. A professor who just moved is almost certainly setting up a new lab and buying equipment. Treat it as a hot lead, but verify their current email through the View Source and View Email process described above, or check their new university's faculty directory.