postdocs – The Early Career Voice

Conquering the K99 (Part 2)

March 16, 2021March 15, 2021 Jennifer Kong, PhD

Greetings postdocs! Are you thinking about applying for a K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award? Here are ten tips to help you get started.

Make a submission timeline and apply sooner rather than later

To apply for a K99, an applicant must not have more than four years of postdoctoral research experience. Surprisingly, determining your postdoctoral start date is not trivial. Generally speaking, the clock begins when your degree was conferred (a date documented by your university). Recently, the NIH released two notices indicating that an applicant can apply for a one-year extension on their eligibility window due to childbirth (NOT-OD-20-011) or a two-receipt cycle extension due to disruptions caused by COVID-19 (NOT-OD-20-158). In deciding when to apply, you need to do the submission math to ensure that you provide yourself enough time to resubmit your application if required. There are three times a year (or cycles) in which you can apply. The review process is long, and you must account for a gap cycle between the initial submission and resubmission. For example, if you apply for a K99 in the first cycle, you will not get your score and comments back in time to resubmit in the second cycle. The earliest you will be able to resubmit your application is in the third cycle.

Make a checklist

The K99 is a beast of a proposal. In the end, my K99 application was 87 pages long. But, fear not. The trick is to divide and conquer. First, go to the NIH Grants and Funding website and download the application guide. Then, to stay organized and motivated, make a checklist of all the items you need to prepare. Here is the checklist I made below.

*Items that you will need to gather from others.

Create and adhere to a writing routine

Establish a writing routine to avoid panic writing and sleepless nights. Specifically, create a list of writing rules for yourself. Determine when you will write, where you will write, and the conditions under which you will write. To build accountability, share your writing plan with others and establish artificial deadlines to ensure you stay on track to complete your application on time. For more writing routine ideas, check out the article “Ten simple rules for scientists: Improving your writing productivity” (Peterson et al., 2018) for inspiration.

Sketch out your research plan before you write your specific aims

In writing a K99, one of the most intimidating tasks is to develop a research plan that is that the magic combination of significant, innovative, and feasible. In coming up with a plan, start early, create rough outlines, discuss your unrefined ideas with other scientists (i.e., friends, lab members, and mentors), and then edit as needed until you have a solid plan. Once you have a solid plan, then begin writing your specific aims. In preparing your research plan, avoid nested aims, where one aim’s success depends on another aim’s success. Also, focus on hypothesis-driven science where any outcome (positive or negative) is informative. Avoid writing yourself into experimental corners and dead ends.

Identify the NIH institute that is right for you

The NIH consists of 27 different institutes and centers. To determine which institute to apply to, use the NIH RePORTER Matchmaker tool to find the institute that is the best match for your research. If there are multiple options available, look up the published success rate of an institute’s K99s and consider picking the institute with the higher success rate. Alternatively, choose the institute where your mentor has already successfully applied to and received an NIH grant.

Contact your institute’s program officer

After you write a solid draft of your specific aims, contact your institute’s program officer. What is a program officer? Each NIH institute has program officers responsible for a set of grants (Ks, Fs, or Rs). Throughout the application process, the program officer is your primary NIH contact with whom you discuss materials regarding your grant’s content. The program officer makes significant funding decisions, including if your grant fits within the scope of the institute you are applying to. Thus, it is important to contact them sooner rather than later. Before you write the rest of your proposal, check in with your program officer to ensure that your grant matches the institute. You don’t want your grant to get rejected because of a poor fit.

Gather an excellent scientific mentoring team

One of the joys of the K99 writing process is that you have the opportunity to submit six letters of support. Use this opportunity to initiate collaborations and build an incredible scientific mentoring team that will help you execute experiments and provide mentorship for the long uphill climb that is obtaining a faculty position.

Don’t forget that the K99 is a transition grant, so let your training potential shine through

A common mistake is that people overstate their early postdoctoral accomplishments, elaborating on all that they have already learned and executed. Singing your praises is excellent, don’t take it out! However, don’t forget to include plans that beautifully elaborate on all the learning the K99 will fund and how this additional knowledge will elevate your science. Remember, the K99/R00 is a transition award. The K99 is supposed to be the training period that prepares you for the R00 independent phase.

Plan ahead and carve out the time to prepare a solid application

My mentor told me that time is your most precious resource. The K99 requires a lot of time and planning to execute well. If possible, put your experiments on hold and commit focused time to prepare your application. In addition to communicating with your program officer at the NIH, initiate early communications with the individuals at your university/institute that will help you prepare your budget and potentially other components of your grant.

Talk to others

Regardless of how much you read and how thoroughly you go through the application materials, you will have questions as you prepare your application. For these questions, your most powerful asset is your mentor and your postdoc peers that have already applied, so seek their advice. The process is long and hard, but regardless of the outcome, the exercise of writing the grant will help you think more deeply about your science and facilitate new collaborations.

Good luck and happy writing!

References

Peterson TC, Kleppner SR, Botham CM (2018) Ten simple rules for scientists: Improving your writing productivity. PLoS Comput Biol 14(10): e1006379. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006379

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Conquering the K99 (Part 1)

February 18, 2021February 16, 2021 Jennifer Kong, PhD

Greetings postdocs! I wanted to share my experience with postdoc fellowships and grants for this month’s blog. As a postdoctoral researcher, I applied to over 15 grants and fellowships. Getting funding as a postdoc is difficult, and I did not receive most of the grants I applied to. However, my research proposal improved with each subsequent application, and I eventually found success first with an American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellowship (thanks AHA!) and later with a K99 Pathway to Independence Award. Over the past two years, I have been a grant-writing coach and in the next few blogs wanted to share the many things I learned about applying for NIH funding.

What is the K99/R00?
The K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award is an NIH career development award that supports up to five years of research. The five years consist of up to 2 years of mentored postdoctoral training (K99) and 3 years of independent support that funds your brand-new laboratory (R00).

Who is eligible to apply?
Unlike most NIH grants, both US citizens and non-US citizens (with a research or clinical doctoral degree) are encouraged to apply! Typically postdocs have four years (after degree conferral) to apply for a K99. However, postdocs can request extensions for numerous reasons, including medical issues, disability, family care responsibilities, and natural disasters. Recently, the NIH released two new notices that allow postdocs to apply for a one-year extension for childbirth (NOT-OD-20-011) and a two-receipt cycle extension for disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic (NOT-OD-20-158).

Should I apply?

If you are eligible and have any inkling that you want to pursue a career in academics, then go for it! In my experience, postdocs often build a wall of concerns that delay their application process. Let me address a few of the most common concerns I have heard here:

“I don’t have a chance at getting a K99 because I do not have a first-author postdoc publication yet.” You don’t have any chance of receiving a K99 if you never apply. While it is true that having multiple publications will likely strengthen your application and that some reviewers are overly critical of a lack of publications, I have met postdocs that received a K99 without a first-author publication. Do not disqualify yourself! It is better to apply without a first-author publication and address this issue in your resubmission instead of applying late and not giving yourself sufficient time to reapply.
“I don’t have enough preliminary data to write a K99.”
The K99/R00 is unique in that it is a transition grant. The research you propose to do for your K99 must have a substantial training component that will elevate your science-self. Thus, while the science is important, the NIH is looking to fund people, not projects. The preliminary data’s sole purpose is to convince the reviewers that your project is feasible. Instead of worrying about gathering more preliminary data, refocus this energy towards building a strong team (aka. your scientific committee) that will function as the foundation of your training plan.
“NIH success rates are low. I don’t think I’ll get it, and it’s not worth trying.”

Compared to other grants and fellowships, the K99 success rate is relatively high (~24% in 2019, with significant variability depending on the institute). Admittedly, preparing a K99 does take a lot of time. However, there are many benefits, even if you don’t get the award. First, it’s an excellent exercise in thinking deeply about your research. Second, it’s great practice for writing NIH grants. Lastly, in organizing your scientific committee, you have the potential to gain additional mentors and build real collaborations that can help you and your research succeed.

In my next blog, I will cover how to get started writing a K99, so stay tuned!

Identifying Your Transferable Skill Set

March 11, 2019March 28, 2019 Jacqueline Leachman

Finding a job in this current market can be described as a nearly impossible, and scary, task. Particularly, for us PhD students and postdocs looking to score a faculty position at a research institution. While the number of PhD recipients is on the decline, the number of faculty members retiring, contrarily, is not. So, what do we do?! After all of these years of hard work and training, are you telling me that I may not be able to #SecureTheBag? Well, the good thing about having a doctorate degree is that there are a lot of other potential jobs outside of academia – government, industry, non-profit, the list goes on and on. However, how are we to apply to these jobs when we have spent years of being sculpted for academia? Transferable skills are skills obtained during one job that have the ability to be transferred to others. Recently, I attended a workshop completely focused on teaching and providing tools on how to identify one’s transferable skills.

Before the workshop, I was aware that transferable skills existed, but I was not entirely sure of the methods by which one identifies said skills, yet alone the ones that I “supposedly” had. However, after a few minutes of thinking and finally understanding how to identify my transferable skills, I was able to come up with a good sized “beginners list” of skills that I have picked up during the short duration of my PhD training thus far.

The first task and skill I developed that is translatable (and one that applies to most PhD students) is wanting to throw in the towel on writing my dissertation, but persevering through regardless. I haven’t begun to write my dissertation, however, I have spent many nights, early mornings and weekends at the lab bench and most certainly have been ready to give it all up to get my life back. Nevertheless, here I am still working hard to get great data. The attributes developed during this time are perseverance, patience, determination and confidence. Ultimately, this means that I am self-motivated, determined, not easily discouraged, and dependable in high-pressure situations. Performing assays in the lab is something routine that almost every biomedical researcher will encounter, but this is not something that I would brag about when applying to a government position. Instead I could say that through learning how to troubleshoot different assays, I have picked up excellent critical thinking skills that have made me adaptable and able to find multiple ways to approach a problem.

Ultimately, from this discussion I was able to come up with a substantial list of translatable skills (such as the aforementioned), along with effectively disseminating ideas, communicating science to a non-scientific populations, public communication skills, and many more.

Can you think of a list of transferable skills that would make your applicable for a non-academic position?