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Summer is a great time for home improvement projects.  But let’s face it, these projects can be seriously dull.  The NIH All About Grants podcast can help you make the best use of your time.  The podcast is not flashy, but it is USEFUL.  I listened to nearly all of them two years ago as I stained my back deck, and they really helped me to learn more about the grant process.  They are the perfect speed and content for learning while you complete mindless, repetitive tasks.

Topics include the NIH’s inclusion across the lifespan policy, understanding biosketch requirements, and two brand new podcasts on the appendix policy and the post application submission policy. These 10-minute podcasts are not showy or overly dense.  They are simply highly-qualified people discussing topics beneficial to grant writers.

Can you get this information from other sources?  Yes.  However, this podcast is perfect to help you keep moving forward on your grant goals, even as you knock out that boring home improvement task.  It’s nice to hear this important information presented in a discussion format as if they were talking to you over a cup of coffee.  Each expert provides gentle reminders on areas that are confusing or difficult for new grant writers.

It’s been a great two years since I first listened to the All About Grants podcasts. I now have the external K that I was working toward.

Now I am knee deep in learning about compliance and aiming toward an R.  My deck needs a refresher.  I think this weekend I will grab some stain and queue up the episodes on “sharing in the research sandbox” and public access policy compliance. This way when I get the R, my deck will look great for the celebration party.

More by Julia Phillippi, PhD:

You MUST Read Dreyer’s English

Simple Steps to Validating and Managing Others: A Bedtime Story

Email: Do It Well

Our department in my former institution has a very strong track record of securing career development awards for PhD and MD trainees, both on the basic and clinical research fronts.  Aside from the strong science in the department and the substantial resources of the institution, the biggest contributor to the success of the trainees in these grants was experience. The mentors knew the elements to include in the letters and how to leverage their expertise in the research projects, the trainees had watched older trainees work through and revise applications, the administrators were familiar with the particulars of these unique grants, and our Chair had mastered the letter of support.  All these factors contributed to strong outcomes for our grant applications.  This has led me to believe that access to successful applicants, their mentors, and their applications is paramount to the success of crafting the grant. I was lucky to be in a department with this amount of experience in career development awards, but many trainees are not. Here are some strategies that were successful for us. As always, n=me and a few of my friends.

Determine whether you are a good applicant: During my time as a postdoc, I watched quite a few early career scientists obsess over whether they were a good applicant for fellowships and career development awards. Concerns ranged from not enough papers (there will never be enough), not enough preliminary data (again, never enough), to not enough time to write (still, never enough). When I submitted my application, I did not believe myself to be a good applicant either, but thought I would be by the re-submission. The review committee disagreed. The grant scored well, and my perception shifted. If you satisfy the eligibility criteria for the award (time after degree, mentored position, etc.), want to pursue a career in research but need additional training and mentored time, and your mentor and/or Chair is supportive of your application, then you are a good applicant. Let the review committee determine if you should be an awardee.

Examine successful applications: I cannot express how important it was for me to see people writing career development awards and read successful applications before I started. First and foremost, this gave me a very strong grasp of the amount of work career development awards entail. The science is, by far, the easiest part! Some institutions have grant repositories that you can access, which keep grants behind an institutional login, and include not only the application but the application review (“pink sheets”) as well. You can always read the summaries from successful career awards on NIH RePORTER. Do not be afraid to ask your mentors if they know of successful applicants who would be willing to share their grant with you. Some awardees are even generous enough to provide their submission and pink sheets, allowing you to learn from their excellence and address their missteps/oversights/omissions in your own application. If nothing else, you should systematically go through the program announcement and identify all the components you will need to complete your career development award application.

Identify a project: The goal of the grant is to develop your career, therefore while the science needs to be strong, the focus of the grant should be how the science, your proposed training, and excellent mentoring committee will move you to the next step of your career, i.e. an R01. The successful grants that I have seen leveraged the experience of their current mentor and utilized the expertise of additional mentors to grow away from their mentor’s research as the grant progresses. At the end of the career development award, you want to occupy your own research niche. Your mentor will, of course, write a very nice letter stating that they will not compete with you, but the distinction between your research programs must be obvious to the review committee.

Select the training: If you cannot identify a single area in which you require additional training, career development awards are likely not for you. Again, you are using this additional mentored time to develop the skills you need to be successful at the next level. Determine where you are deficient and take a class or attend a workshop. In my experience, these have ranged from biostatistics courses for us translational PhD types to workshops in molecular biology for the surgeon-scientists to translational cancer research conferences for basic scientists. Leverage the resources of your institution and professional societies and be specific. Review committees want to know you have thought about your career development plan and want to see it executed.

Identify a mentor/mentors/mentoring committee: For us PhDs, this part is fairly straightforward: we pick our postdoc mentor as the primary mentor and build a committee around where we need additional expertise. For MDs, there is a little more flexibility. Part of this process is introspection. Where are you weakest? Are you a surgeon-scientists doing a basic science project? Identify strong basic science mentors to support the mechanistic parts of your projects. Are you a PhD in a clinical department? Recruit an MD to keep the translational aspect of your studies in focus. Another point to consider is what kind of research do you want to do next? Will your mentors get you there? Your mentors must be committed to the mentoring roles you identify for them and their commitment should be obvious in their letters of support. Name recognition of your mentors will do you little good if the review committee fails to believe you can secure a Nobel laureate, clinical Chair, and the world’s greatest biologist for your mentoring committee meetings. Choose wisely.

Once you have confirmed your eligibility, examined grant requirements, and defined the mentoring/research/training program, it is time to write. In my next post, I will discuss my experiences and share the experiences of my fellow K99/R00 awardees, from start to R00 transition and a little beyond. K awards are weird awards, but the K99/R00 is a very odd beast indeed.  Stay tuned for more tales!

More Resources

Not that Kind of Grant Application: Tales of Waiting for Career Development Awards

Not that Kind of Selection: Tales of Picking Which Grants to Write

More Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Wrote My K

Proposed research project is feasible? Check. Timeline formatted? Check. Milestones added? Check. Now it’s time to break the work into manageable chunks, a process cleverly called work breakdown.

Breaking the work down enables you to spread your grant writing over time and still have a life. Work breakdown for writing a grant is a two-step process. The first step is creating work packages. These are the large “buckets” of work that need to be completed for the actual submission. Here is a schematic of the work breakdown structure. Within each bucket will be a number of specific tasks that will need to be done to “empty” that particular bucket. Creating the tasks is the second step and will be covered in next week’s blog.

The easiest way to create your buckets is to list all documents required for the submission. For NIH proposals, the Program Announcement (PA) or the Request for Applications (RFA) will have a list of the documents. Downloading the application package also works.

Once you have all documents (fillable forms, work you generate and place on the appropriate form) listed, verify the list by comparing it to the PA, RFA, similar recently submitted/funded proposals, and/or by having someone experienced in grant submissions review it with you. Make additions/changes as needed, then group the documents into logical buckets of work. Try to keep your number of buckets to ten or fewer if possible. These checklists for NIH K and NIH R show elements (required and possibly needed) for their respective proposals. Colors indicate one possible set of work packages (read: buckets), but feel free to create your own.

Your assignment:

• Decide what you will call each bucket. For example you may decide to group Specific Aims and Research Strategy into a bucket called “Body of Grant.” See the checklists (K, R) for additional examples. Notice that names of work buckets do not include a verb. They are not actions; they are a piece of work that needs to be done.
• Assign each bucket a color of sticky note and write the name of the bucket on the sticky note of the assigned color

Place the sticky notes in a blank column on your timeline.

Next Post: What’s in Your Bucket(s)?

Previous Posts:

1. #*@*! Plan Is Not a Four-Letter Word
2. Planning to Plan: Gathering Materials
3. Can You (Really) Do Your Proposed Study?
4. Researchers–Start Your Timelines
5. 500 Mile(stones)

…a deceptively simple question that can be interpreted in several ways.

For purposes of planning your proposed research study, answering the question (read: assessing feasibility) means looking at your idea from three perspectives—scope, cost, and time.

The scope of your project defines your project’s boundaries and outlines its major characteristics. A well thought-out statement of scope contains:

• Your idea and a justification for why you are proposing it,
• A list of the resources your project will need (includes equipment, supplies, space, people, etc.)
• The project’s constraints or limitations, and
• What the project will include and what it will NOT include.

The next logical question is what will your project cost? A rough estimate is sufficient. You will fine-tune costs when you develop the budget. Examples of costs include:

• Personnel (a later blog will discuss ways to predict personnel needs based on your study design),
• Equipment and supplies,
• Obtaining/storing specimens,
• Recruiting and retaining participants,
• Purchasing large sets of data,
• Experimental animals, and
• Lab tests

Here is a checklist of possible cost items for a proposal to the NIH. You will likely include similar items in budgets for proposals to other funding agencies.

The final piece of assessing feasibility is time. Again, a rough estimate is sufficient. How long will completing each major element–e.g., recruiting participants; conducting experiments, tests, interventions; completing interviews–of your research study take (weeks, months)? Can/will you do any or all elements simultaneously (in parallel) or complete one before starting another (in series)? How will the work play out along a time continuum? How much total time (years) will you need to complete the proposed study?

None of the three feasibility factors is unlimited and each one has implications for the other two. Scope, cost, and time exist in a dynamic relationship, and there is always tension among them. Changing one will affect one or both of the others. Think of a triangle with each side representing one of the factors. If you expand the scope (read: scope creep), time and cost are changed. If your proposal is funded for less than the actual costs, the scope will likely need to change to stay within budget. If you need to compress the time, you may need to add personnel, purchase supplies earlier than planned, or take other actions that will increase the cost.

Assignment designed to help you assess the feasibility of your project:

Imagine you are presenting your project idea to a panel of people who control the $$$. Either write a short document or develop a brief PowerPoint presentation that covers the following areas:

• What is your idea and what is your justification for proposing it? (1 paragraph each, or a single slide with key points)
• How many people will you need and why? (1 short paragraph or a single slide)
• What other resources (big ticket items) will you need? (Short list)
• Your rough estimate of the costs. (Single statement)
• Your best estimate of how much time you will need to complete the work. (Single statement)

Your document should be a single page, or if you choose to do a PowerPoint, it should be no longer than 3 slides. Use your document or your presentation to engage colleagues, co-investigators, experts, mentors, and other stakeholders in a conversation regarding feasibility. Note comments, concerns, and questions, and figure out how you will address them. Iterate until you feel confident your proposal is feasible.

Next Post: Researchers–Start Your Timelines

Previous Posts:

1. #*@*! Plan Is Not a Four-Letter Word
2. Planning to Plan: Gathering Materials

NIH information for grant authors prompts researchers to ask these questions as they describe innovation:

• Does the application challenge and seek to shift current research or clinical practice paradigms by utilizing novel theoretical concepts, approaches or methodologies, instrumentation, or interventions?
• Are the concepts, approaches or methodologies, instrumentation, or interventions novel to one field of research or novel in a broad sense?
• Is a refinement, improvement, or new application of theoretical concepts, approaches or methodologies, instrumentation, or interventions proposed?

[Acing Your Aims includes a checklist for whether your aims meet these goals.]

The translation of these answers into a grant section often falls flat in dense paragraphs of text. Consider these tips to produce a “novel” innovation section.

1) Quote NIH back to your reviewers and connect the dots.

Here’s a real example when told cohort methods are not innovative though no cohorts exist:

NIH evaluation criteria for innovation speak directly to the value of shifting “current research or clinical practice paradigms” using novel theoretical concepts, approaches or methodologies. Relatively neglected areas may be at a disadvantage if we don’t recognize the importance of laying the correct foundation. If a foundation is missing, as it is in research on fibroids and reproduction, then the novelty and value of a large, community-recruited prospective cohort is immense.

2) Bullet the key innovations to extract them from dense text format and better underscore the length of the list of new elements you are bringing to the science:

We will be the first to:

• Translate the use of an oscillation overthruster into clinical use.
• Create intermediate vector bosons from the annihilation of electrons.
• Extend this annihilation to the electron antimatter counterpart, positron.
• Travel through solid tumor matter.
• Achieve pineal tumor destruction in the eighth dimension.
• Disseminate this approach to guide research on other tumor types.
• Return funding to NIH because we’re just that good.

Verbs help convey the action even for Buckaroo Banzai.

3) Cite or provide brief excerpts from prominent texts or guidance from professional organizations that currently rely on incomplete information or biased study designs and methods. Go cautiously but it can be done gently:

Trusted sources and text books continue to report an association with pregnancy loss and support potential myomectomy to reduce miscarriage risk, in the absence of rigorous scientific evidence.[refs – case must be made in significance] This cohort will provide the largest prospective cohort to address the association of fibroids with miscarriage and has the potential to challenge an existing paradigm and reduce unnecessary surgical intervention. [See how we slipped rigor in there?]

4) Note those calling for your research:

The 2020 vision statement of the Association to Cure Everything specifically calls for exploration of new dimensions as an approach to providing therapeutics through alternate realities.

As the RFA underscores, potential for gene-by-drug analyses to reduce harms is substantial.

5) Go wild and keep the reviewers’ attention with a quote or clinical vignette:

On disrupting dogma:

As Mark Twain described: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

On why we need answers:

John Whorfin was dead on arrival to the emergency room after spending $100k. [ref] He is among more than 2,000 cases of individuals harmed by illicit oscillation overthruster use this year. Cancer is a devastating diagnosis and the public will continue to pursue extreme options. Our purpose is to translate this cutting-edge technology into a viable, safe, and affordable clinical tool.

Pure bragging:

Latin for innovation means “to renew or change”. RFTS fibroids data is well along the path to changing how we understand the role of fibroids in pregnancy. The proposed expansion of the cohort will speed us along.

Remember you are marketing your ideas. Give your pitch to colleagues, family and friends until the innovation and value-proposition are clear in plain language.

As a manager for our career development programs, many questions I get from trainees and faculty can actually be answered by using NIH RePORTER.  You can find out all kinds of nosy things like:

• Who else on campus has the kind of grant I’m writing (so I can ask if they’d share a copy)?
• Who else in the country does exactly the kind of science I’m doing?
• How many grants does my NIH institute fund each year?
• Which grants did the study section I’m aiming for fund in the last several years?
• Who on campus has VA grants (VA grants are now part of RePORTER)?

(Note to trainees: Not that I mind answering your questions.  But it’s probably faster to search yourself.)

First, you’ll need to visit the site.  You’ll find a form where you can search by

• PI name
• Organization
• City, State, or Congressional District
• Project number (including parts of numbers, so for example you can retrieve a list of all R01s in the nation or at a particular institution)
• NIH institute
• Study section

And more.  At the top, you can also choose whether to search only for current (“active”) projects or grants whose funding period ended up to 20 years ago.

Say you’re writing one of those fancy new R61 grants for exploratory research and you want to know if anyone else on your campus has one.  You can find out!  Let’s take Vanderbilt for an example.  I’ll type “Vanderbilt” into the organization field, and “R61” into the application number field.

Guess what?  There is someone on campus who has one of these grants.

If I click on the title, I can see the grant abstract.  By using the “Details” tab at the top, I can view things like the project start and end date, funding for this fiscal year, study section and program officer.  The “Similar Projects” tab provides a list of NIH funded grants that have similar key words, while “Results” links to papers produced from work funded by the grant.

You can run this same kind of search by any of the other criteria on the form, including a text search that combs abstracts and key terms provided by the PI.  (You’ll want to be specific in your terms, though.  “Cancer” gets you 22,870 results.  Maybe you have time to sift through them all, but I sure don’t.)

Want RePORTER to read your mind, or at least your conference abstract?  Try the “Matchmaker” tab at the top of the search form.  You can paste in a chunk of text up to 15,000 characters—that’s pretty much a paper right there, but you can use abstracts, drafts of your aims, heck, maybe you’ve tweeted something you want to search for—and Matchmaker will analyze it for key terms and spit out the 100 most closely related projects, listing them in order from most to least similar.  HOLY COW.

If you go to the “Quick Links” tab at the top and choose “Funding Facts” or “NIH Data Book,” your brain will soon explode from all the funding data NIH is about to shove in it.

Want to know the success rate last year for K08s at any institute or the NIH as a whole?  The total amount of funding that was available for new R01’s in each of the last five years?  Funding Facts has all this and more, including info on F awards.

The Data Book will not only give you that information, but it gives it to you in GRAPHIC FORM.  For example, here’s the R01 success rate:

You can get it in table format by clicking on the “Data” tab.

The Data Book also has super-cool charts and figures on success rates and awards by new investigator status, gender, MD vs. PhD, and other criteria.

NIH RePORTER: Learn it, love it, use it.  Be nosy.  Be informed.