NIH Funding Success! Finally!

Today I got a fundable score on a big 5-year NIH grant.  The grant mechanism is similar to an R01, and has the same level of funding.  I have a few takeaways for those applying for their first grants…

1.   My lab currently has no other funding and I’m going up for tenure soon.  NIH study sections are not supposed to consider these things, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this was the grant to hit the payline. 

2.  I submitted what I would consider credible applications to this study section at least 2 out of 3 grant cycles for the last 3 years.  They’ve seen my name many times at this point, and I’m sure that helped.   These repeated submissions also involved a bit of “spaghetti throwing” to see what sticks to the walls, i.e., experimenting with what combination of aims the reviewers liked. 

3.  I stopped publishing my lab’s research. I discussed this in my last post, but I think it bears repeating because it seems to have been successful.  I still had collaborative manuscripts coming out, so I have lines on my CV for this year.  But, what I had experienced too many times was that I would submit a grant and the reviewers would say certain aims were incremental because we had already published on the topic.  In one instance, I had a paper accepted surprisingly quickly, so it was out before the study section met, and basically scooped one of my own subaims.  I was not going to let this happen again, so I put a pause on our submissions.  This idea of needing a strategy for timing of publications is not something I had thought about previously. 

4.  Having served on five study sections now for NIH and other national or international organizations, I’ve seen a total variety of successful grants written in completely different ways.  What I will say is that there are a few things that seem to be necessary if you’re a new PI and/or not famous:  a perceived need for funding by the study section even though these things are never discussed outright (e.g., tenure deadline, no other funding, salary requirements for your institution), a steady track record of productivity (fancy journal publications help immensely whether that’s fair or not), credible applications (clear and concise with not a single extraneous experiment; if an experiment won’t give a clear result, don’t include it), appropriate collaborators with strong letters of support for any new techniques, and something about your application that is really exciting or novel.

Random Updates

This blog still gets quite a lot of daily hits, mostly from people searching for K99 writing tips or advice for new faculty, so I thought I'd give some updates on my progress as junior faculty. 

1.  I still don't have an R01.  I've had multiple grants score within 5% of the payline.  I've had grants that would have been funded under this year's payline had they been submitted this year rather than two years ago.  This is, of course, all incredibly frustrating.  The only thing I can do is to keep refining and submitting. 

2.  I've learned that it is better to use your best work as preliminary data in a grant BEFORE publishing it.  I've had to change aims in my main R01 several times because my lab has been publishing.  My most recent R01 submission got the critique that one of my aims was "incremental" because it was building off of a high impact paper my lab had just published.  Again, incredibly frustrating, but it's helped me to change my strategy.  My lab has not published anything this year, other than collaborative work (which still makes me look productive).  We have two papers sitting on the shelf that are ready to be submitted as soon as I get my R01 funded on those projects.  I'm terrified of getting scooped, but I can't keep changing my aims. 

3.  I've learned that having an R56 bridge grant doesn't preclude you from getting another R56 grant.  Like I said, I've had lots of close R01 scores.  I'm currently in a no-cost extension from my first R56 and am being considered for another one.  I will find out about this next month.  My department chair laughed about me funding my lab a year at a time...and then very seriously told me that R56's won't be enough to get tenure. 

4.  My first student is going to graduate this year.  I'm very proud of him and he's accomplished a lot.  It's time for him to go.  I just hate change, and am kind of sad about it, but I'm forcing myself to support him in every possible way.  The tricky bit about this is that since I don't have 3 YEARS of stable funding secured (as required by the program I recruit students from), I am not allowed to take on a new student.  So my lab will shrink when he leaves and I can't do anything about it.  This is at the time when I need to be at my most productive.  Again, frustrating. 

5.  A lot of people have contacted me to say that my very first blog post helped them in writing their K99 and other career grants.  (Apparently it's pretty easy for people to figure out who I am and contact me based on what I've written on here)  I've also given out my K99/R00 to a few people over the past few years, and I'm very proud to say that I know of at least three who used my grant as a template and were funded.  I love hearing about this stuff, so do keep letting me know. 

Anyway, I'm still plugging away, doing good science, and hoping for the best!

No-cost extensions of NIH grants - What I just learned

I learned something this month that surprised me about no-cost extensions of NIH grants, so I thought I’d share it.  A no-cost extension means that you are allowed to use money left over from the last year of your grant for an additional period of time.  From what I understand, NIH has granted universities the ability to simply request one extra year and this is automatically approved.  Again, no new money.  You’re just allowed to use up the money you didn’t spend in your last year of a grant. 

I had always assumed there was a limit of 25% of the money from your last year that you could carry forward to an extra year, but this is wrong.  I assumed this because in a multiyear grant like an R01, you cannot carry forward more than 25% of funding period 1’s (year 1’s) money into funding period 2 (year 2), for example. However, the no-cost extension is actually an extension of the length of time for the final funding period.  It is not considered carryover of funds into a new funding period.  Thus, the 25% rule does not apply.  This means that if you’re really worried about obtaining new funding (like I am), you can cut back in that final year of a grant and split the money over two years.  I’m not saying this is a good idea.  I’m just saying this option is available.