Once a proposal is received at NOAO Headquarters, it must be processed. A team of NOAO staff members prints the proposal, reviews it for any corrections, imports it into the proposal database, attaches any supporting correspondence, such as letters from thesis advisors, assigns a TAC panel member as lead reviewer, copies it, and prepares it for shipment to the members of the TAC panel to which it has been assigned. The whole process takes about two weeks. Panel members have 2-3 weeks to read and grade proposals before the panels meet. With five separate panels reviewing the regular proposals, no panelist received more than 100 proposals to review.
During processing, we found 18 proposals with figure problems that we corrected. Most of these were submitted by e-mail rather than on the Web. A dozen proposals contained LaTeX errors, which we caught and fixed. In another 14 proposals, we made small changes at the request of the principal investigator, and we changed the science category on a comparable number so that the proposal would be grouped with others proposing similar programs. Finally, we repaired the LaTeX template on a half dozen proposals in which the investigators had tinkered with instrument and telescope names or acceptable date ranges in the Observing Run Summary Table.
The NOAO Proposal Team