# Setting up your Research Interests

{% embed url="<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRAF5vhRbqs>" %}

**Research Interests are central to how Atom works.** &#x20;

We use researcher's research interest to not only match new and upcoming grants in the [personalized grant emails](/ai-powered-tools/email-funding-alerts.md) but also to match grants on the [For You](/understanding-the-dashboard/how-the-dashboard-works.md#for-you) page of the dashboard and in [Deep Research](/ai-powered-tools/deep-research.md).

After setting up your profile, we use a researcher's previously published papers to generate a few initial research interests.&#x20;

<mark style="background-color:yellow;">⚠️</mark> <mark style="background-color:yellow;"></mark>*<mark style="background-color:yellow;">Note: these can be removed if it is on work you aren't looking for grants on by hitting the</mark>* <mark style="background-color:yellow;"></mark><mark style="background-color:yellow;">-</mark> <mark style="background-color:yellow;"></mark>*<mark style="background-color:yellow;">button.</mark>*

Additionally, researchers can add additional research interests using the + button. Researchers can add as many research interests as they like and we will provide grant suggestions for all of them.

<figure><img src="/files/W8mkdSjYxwRwlp0hvu2V" alt="" width="563"><figcaption><p>Enter additional research interests</p></figcaption></figure>

## Semantic Matching

Unlike typical platforms where a researcher can only include a few keywords, **Atom also allows researchers to input full paragraphs of text as research interests.**&#x20;

This means research interests can be anything from the title or abstract of a paper, a paragraph from a researchers website describing their current work, to even parts of previous grant proposals. &#x20;

<mark style="background-color:green;">📣</mark> <mark style="background-color:green;"></mark>*<mark style="background-color:green;">Tip:</mark>* *<mark style="background-color:green;">Often, adding a full paragraph instead of keywords provides substantially better matching. You can always update these in the future.</mark>*

## Updating Research Interests <a href="#accessing-settings" id="accessing-settings"></a>

You can update your research interests at any time to keep your grant recommendations relevant and tailored to your work.

### **Manually Adding or Removing Interests**

1. Navigate to the **Research Interests** page from your account menu.
2. To **add** an interest, click the **➕** button.
3. To **remove** an interest, click the **➖** button.

<figure><img src="/files/yrRXw2kyGwmChIZF4OC8" alt=""><figcaption><p>Updating research interests</p></figcaption></figure>

### **Generating New Interests with Atom AI**

1. On the **Research Interests** page, click **Generate with Atom AI**.
2. Atom AI will scan your profile and suggest additional research interests based on your work.
3. Review the suggested interests. To add any of them, click the **➕** button next to each interest you’d like to keep.

<figure><img src="/files/Q1bG7eONkvP3r2qcJND4" alt=""><figcaption><p>Adding generated research interests</p></figcaption></figure>

*<mark style="background-color:green;">**📣 Tip:**</mark> <mark style="background-color:green;"></mark><mark style="background-color:green;">You can mix and match - manually add your own interests while also using AI suggestions to discover new areas you may not have considered.</mark>*


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