Grant cycle woes

A close friend is in the down side of the grant cycle.  NIH R01 renewal just got scores that are not fundable and may or may not even be fundable in the revised version.  He went out on a limb by doing some really innovative work for the renewal and has preliminary data to back it up.  Still waiting for the reviews, so not sure why it wasn't loved yet, but likely too far from the original work.  It has me thinking about the downsides of being a PI.  If you are too conservative, it's incremental work that isn't worthy of another 3-5 years of funding.  If you are too innovative, it's too risky to be worthy of another million.

My observation of a year on study section is that it is so important to get the right reviewers but you have no control over this.  If you get the newbie ad-hoc who doesn't really know the field as your primary you could be in big trouble unless one of the other reviewers is willing to stick their neck out to correct this injustice.  It's a rough funding climate out there, especially with the current year's budget still not approved. I hate that I even know what CR (continuing resolution - when congress limps along approving a provisional budget for a few months).

The other part that is hard and in this case harder for this friend, is that to take this risk of innovation, he has put his eggs pretty much all in this basket.  Now without the renewal, he has to cobble together funding for students in the lab and his tech, well I'd rather not say what will happen, but soft money positions are the most vulnerable in tough time.  The friend will take a hit too, no summer salary.  You might think that doesn't sound so bad, but a 25% pay cut hurts no matter how much you make.  His spouse works too, so it won't be as bad but still not easy.  That's the ugly side of academia.  You might have tenure, so you can't be fired, but if you lose your grants your soft money salary disappears and you may have to up your teaching load if you can't pay for buyout of classes.  I guess he is lucky to be on 9 month appointment (75% hard money) for teaching.  Someone on 50-100% soft money would be out of a job.

The silly part is that in a year or two this PI will likely have funding again.  In the meantime the students will have been rushed to finish and the other lab personnel will have moved on to other jobs.  Now the PI is ready to roll again, but all the expertise he built up is gone and he has to start building it again.  It's really a huge waste of time. money and research that could be done instead of reinventing the wheel.  It happens all the time in academia today with funding for science and engineering being so tight.  There isn't any backstop (except maybe for students) for those rough times.  I watch the cycle happen in repetition this last year.  It hits the small to medium labs hardest.  They often operate off of 1-2 grants so they don't have any backup and these can often all end at the same time.  I was near the point about 18 months ago, but was lucky enough to get bridge funding and then a renewal.  It was scary and I worried most about the people.  What would happen to them and how would I rebuild?

We have to think about these issues both from the stand point of the people (students, post-docs, techs, PIs) but also the larger picture.  This is why so many people (especially women) don't want to go into science right now.  It feels so unstable.  Also, how does this affect us nationally and harm our scientific progress.  We lose so much expertise, time and money by operating in a short sighted boom and bust model.  We could make so much more progress if we had even funding.  I'm not suggesting funding for life (what would motivate us to work like dogs then?) but some backstop funds would be great.  NIH bridge funding is really helpful (thanks to my awesome Program Officer for helping secure this) but it doesn't fit every situation, and there are many who don't have NIH funding.   Not sure how to approach this from a structural standpoint, but it is an issue that seems to be getting worse in the last 4-5 years.

Finding the writing groove

I'm in the midst of an R01, or rather hopefully nearing the end and I'm finally hitting my writing groove.  In graduate school I hated writing.  I almost lost my mind while writing my thesis and had to workout every day to break the monotony of being at a computer everyday for hours on end.  Now, it is my life largely.  Writing grants, papers, etc. But, I've gotten used to it.  Still the hardest part is getting started.  I often procrastinate until under pressure of a deadline.  But, if I can find a few hours of peace to think of the big picture and frame the work, then it all starts to flow.  This grant has been better than most because I'm writing it with a collaborator, Dr. X (a well know clinician) and Dr. X's research coordinator (research prof - RPY).  Dr. X is awesome at framing the need for our research and selling the big picture, as well as telling us what we are missing  or need to change in the grant.  RPY is awesome for making those edits and helping me write in general, especially when it comes to the items that are more Dr. X's area of expertise rather than mine.  We've been emailing drafts back and forth like maniacs these days. We might even break the intertubes. My point being, having a writing partner is so helpful ,someone to read and point out what is missing with each round of new drafts.  I'm also grateful to a lab member who generously proofread the whole stinking 27 pages for us.  We are nearing the final draft, and it's a whole week before the deadline!  Sometimes you can get there, although I did freak out two weeks ago when we still had much work left to do.

Now for my dream, to have my own RPY to write my grants for me.... Maybe some day when I'm chair. (Not sure I really want to be chair...)

The best laid plans...

In the summer when you are planning course that you have taught before, it sound so great to add a new lecture here or there.  Freshen things up or add something that the students really should know.....  It's all good until I get to the week of the lecture and then I realize that my prep for that lecture is going to require more than just pulling out my notes from last time and refreshing my memory on what I want to say.  I have to read new material, prepare new slides or board notes and it's going to take way more time than I normally budget for prep on this course I teach each year.  Oops.  These new lectures always sneak up on me too and I forget about them.

So this week I had one of those new lectures and it was painful to prepare.  I remembered why I had stopped teaching this lecture even though the students really should see the material.  I struggled to pack the obscure information into my brain in a hurry and seem like I know something about what I was saying.  It was not joyful, but it did get finished before class.  It wasn't my most brilliant lecture ever, but we made it through.  I did contemplate a quick topic change this morning, but vetoed that idea.  Since the new topic, while more interesting to me and taught every year was full of details as well that would have to be refreshed.

In hindsight I should have move this lecture to the week when I wasn't frantically trying to finish my R01 resubmission with a collaborator.  I was coasting along fine until I suddenly realized last week that it was mid-October and there was significant work remaining.  I'm feeling much better this week after major writing last week, but I still have many smaller details to work on and I like to have a little time to reflect on the whole draft and make sure it all fits together (and within the page limit).  Our research office has gotten stricter about deadlines with the whole online submission thing.  I think it will all come together and I'm desperately trying to finish before Halloween since we have a busy weekend with school parades and neighborhood parties....  I really don't want the darn thing hanging over my head.

Oh and just to add to the mix I just found out that the in-laws are coming to visit this weekend from out of town, as in tomorrow night!   OK sorry for the rant here but it was a really crazy day.  And as I always say (often in delusion) next week will be less crazy right?

PS Has anyone read the new Shriver report "A Woman's Nation".
It looks really interesting - addressing the growing number of women in the workforce, as breadwinners and dual career families.  I'm interested in hearing about the new balance of domestic duties when women are co-breadwinners.  Not focused on academia or engineering, but I think many of these issues are common among professional women.

NIH and engineers

So I will preface this post by saying that I am not an expert at the NIH system, but I have received funding from NIH and am currently in the process of renewing my grant.  Here is some advice for new comers to the NIH system that I wish I had known before starting the process.

1. Find a mentor that has NIH funding and is close enough to your field that they can read proposals and give you pointers.  Don't be afraid to ask someone you don't know too well at your institution or another.  Most people will say no if they don't feel up to it, but many people will be generous with their time.  I find that activities for women faculty is a great way to meet women in other departments/schools who might be willing to serve this role.  Keep searching until you find a careful and ruthless reader.  You don't want someone who will just correct your grammar you want someone who will tell you what you are doing wrong structurally and how you are shooting yourself down.

2. Learn the NIH funding mechanisms(and lingo) and look for smaller starter grants.  R03 (small research grant) and R15 (for institutions with little NIH funding) can be great mechanisms for getting started.  There are relatively few of these grants at study section and they are reviewed together, so it is easier to stand out. R21s are OK, but they are high risk/high reward proposals so they need to be a little more innovative than just the first Aim of your future R01.  Also the transitional K99/R00 grants are great if you are still a post-doc (and have a year or more to go).  These make you very attractive to future employers since you walk in the door with 3 years of funding for your research.  I have a friend who used this to leverage a faculty job with reduced teaching.

3. Get a copy of a funded proposal that is close enough to your field you can understand it.  Read it and note the structure, what are the key parts, and what strikes you as you read it.  Important points need to be reiterated clearly so that they are hammered home.

4. Start writing early.  Try to have a complete draft a month before the deadline so you can get critiques from others and have time to modify.  I find my best grants get put to rest for a week or so and then picked up and cleaned up before they are submitted.   Spend a lot of time on your Specific Aims page.  If you haven't sold the reviewer by the end of the first page, you are wasting your time.

5. You need preliminary data.  Even when it says you don't, you do.  So get to work on those experiments.  And, for R01s, that data needs to be published (or at least some of it does).  You need at least one publication on the project.  And if you have collaborators you are going to put on the grant, you need a publication with them.  You need proof that you can work as a team and get research data together that is publishable.  NIH is risk averse.  You are asking them for a lot of money (> than $1 million for an R01) and they want to know that you will be able to do what you say you will do.   Would a VC firm give you a million dollars for that project?  No then get more data.  (This is some of the tough love one of my mentors gave me and she was right!).  Don't waste your time submitting R01s until you have these publications no matter what others may tell you.

6.  You should probably be about 1/3 of the way through the research when you submit.  That's when you know you have enough data.

7.  Make good friends with a business manager/grant administrator who know NIH grants and have them guide you through the forms (it's not fun the first time).  Bring them coffee or whatever they like and treat them nicely.  People are always yelling about their grants and those who are nice often get the most help.

8.  Make sure that your work is hypothesis driven (even thought that's not what the guidelines say).  Reviewers like hypothesis drive research and be very clear about how you will measure outcomes.  E.g.:We will assess skin healing by x stain at 12 days and expect treatment x to show more skin cells in the wound than in untreated control.

9. Always write a cover letter.  Look at the institute within NIH that you think should fund your work and make sure your research falls in their area of interest.  Request this institute in your cover letter.  Look at the list of study sections that review research in your area (available online).   Ask a mentor for pointers here if they have study section recommendations.  Look at the members of the study sections.  Pick the one you think is most qualified to review your work.  When you look at the members you should recognize some names of people whose work you know.  If not this is a red flag that you are in the wrong place.  Find the right study section for your work.  REQUEST THIS STUDY SECTION IN YOUR COVER LETTER.  You don't want someone who knows little about your work guessing where it should be reviewed.  Guide it to the right place.  (PS If you don't like where your grant is assigned, you can appeal your study section if you do it right away!)

10.  Remember that almost no one is getting funded the first go around (especially these days).  Remember to check that new investigator box and hope for the best.  You get one revision (now) so you can use those comments to rewrite and you get an additional section (Introduction) to respond to the comments.  If you do a good job of addressing the comments your score generally goes up.  Be nice in your response, the same reviewers usually review your grant so offending them will not help your score.  Patience is key!

Please leave additional questions in the comments and I hope this was helpful.