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Our values

Decades of Research Administration Experience

Chris Harker was a researcher, faculty member, and lab director at Oregon Health & Science University was frustrated by the lack of connectivity between research administration processes and proposal submissions.  In 1994 Chris developed his first Public Health Service (PHS) grant application software, Grant Slam, in his living room and soon after formed Cayuse. Cayuse’s Grant Slam software formed the basis for an electronic research administration (eRA) grant submission system. 

In 2002, Chris received a Small Business Innovation Research  NIH grant to create and commercialize an eRA system. Cayuse became the first vendor to successfully communicate system-to-system with Grants.gov through Cayuse Proposals (originally called Cayuse 424.) Eight years later, Cayuse licensed the RAMSeS system and commercialized the platform making it available as a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering, branded Sponsored Projects.

Today, that spirit of discovery, of recognizing a gap and then driving to find a solution is the essence of Cayuse. It’s what drives us to empower organizations to conduct the life-changing research that benefits everyone–it’s why we have given our all to building the Cayuse Research Suite.

The story behind “Cayuse”

The Cayuse Native Americans resided in the Columbia Basin in the Pacific Northwest and called themselves the Tetawken, which means “we people.” Cayuse is derived from the French word “Cailloux,” or “Rock People,” which is what French-Canadian trappers and fur traders called the tribe due to the rocky environment where they lived in northeast Oregon. Today, the Cayuse tribe is part of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla which includes the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla, tribes. Cayuse is also the name of an unincorporated town on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.