Pre Award- Instructors

Program Instructors

Jose Alcaine, PhD, MBA, CRA

Dr. Jose Alcaine currently serves as the director of research services and as an affiliate assistant professor within the Department of Foundations of Education for the School of Education.  Alcaine also serves as an adjunct instructor for VCU’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs and has served in that capacity since 2017.  He is also the faculty advisor for LaunchPAD, a VCU graduate student group made up of School of Education doctoral students. 
Alcaine brings extensive experience in higher education and research administration to include both pre-award and post-award administration to his role as research coordinator in the VCU School of Education. He is involved in the school's research development, proposal preparation and submission, and in faculty and graduate student professional development programming.
Alcaine previously worked for the VCU Office of Research, where he gained wide-ranging experience and institutional knowledge of VCU activities and research efforts. Before coming to VCU, Alcaine gained extensive experience in higher education and research administration at Tulane University in his hometown of New Orleans, where he worked in support of academic, research and clinical faculty as well as doctoral fellows in the School of Medicine.
Alcaine holds a Ph.D. in public policy and administration from VCU’s Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs. He also holds the designation of Certified Research Administrator (CRA) granted by the Research Administrators Certification Council (RACC), a national accrediting body in the field.
Alcaine is active in service to SOE and VCU through leadership positions in committees and other campus groups. He is also active in professional organizations and societies and has been involved with national level groups including Society of Research Administrators International (SRAI), National Organization of Research Development Professionals (NORDP), Pi Alpha Alpha (PAA) Public Affairs National Honor Society, American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), and Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM).

William Helmrath, MSM, CRA

Will is an experienced senior research administrator with over 10 years of experience in the field. He started as a grants manager at the Wyss Instituted for Biological Inspired Engineering at Harvard University in 2012 where he primarily supported DARPA projects and served as the institute’s effort coordinator. In 2015, he moved into a hybrid central office role in the Office of Sponsored Programs at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture supporting proposal preparation and submission, outgoing subawards and agreements with TN state agencies and Oak Ridge National Laboratories. In 2019, Will joined the Tickle College of Engineering at UT-Knoxville as a research coordinator focusing on pre-award proposal and research development and working on college research metrics and benchmarking data for strategic planning. Moving back to the Boston-area in 2021, he rejoined the Harvard-community as a senior research administrator in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. In addition to being a pre-and post-award grant manager again, he is involved in local and school-wide research administrator training efforts and onboarding new faculty investigators into the department. Will earned a MS in Research Administration Management from Emmanuel College and joined SRAI as a member in 2012 and has been a Certified Research Administrator since 2013.

Courtney Hunt, PhD

Courtney Hunt is currently the Program Director for Strategic Initiatives at the Houston Methodist Academic Institute. She has 9 years of research development and experience at R1 research institutions and academic medical centers, and is Distinguished Faculty for SRAI. Courtney earned her PhD in neuroscience from the University of Oklahoma Health Science Center.

Kimberly Pratt, MA, CRA

Kimberly Pratt is currently the Sponsored Programs Manager in the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs at Ohio University. She has more than 15 years of previous research development and administration experience at higher education, medical and educational research institutions, specializing in the pre-award phase. She is also the immediate past president of the Midwest Section and Distinguished Faculty for SRAI. Kimberly earned her B.A. and M.A. in history from Ohio University and is a certified research administrator.