I was recently awarded a #K99/R00 from the #NIH. Not going to lie, it was a lot of work and I got a lot of help. Also, NIH is complicated and intimidating. Here's some advice based on my experience, hopefully it will help others. #BlackInNeuro #FuturePI
First, what is a K99? Also called a career transition K award, it will fund 2 years as a postdoc and my first 3 years of my first faculty appointment. There's also a similar K22/R00 award that focuses on minority candidates.
I applied for the BRAIN initiative K99, which also focuses on increasing diversity. This particular award includes women as a URM (not usually the case). The eligibility window is extended to 5 years post PhD. Its restricted to US citizens. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/r…
So 1st piece of advice: look at all the different K awards at all the NIH institutes and figure out which one is best for you. Different institutes receive different numbers of applications, so you may be more competitive in one versus another. Some are open to non-US citizens.
I attribute my success to 2 main factors: luck and a LOT of failed attempts. As a postdoc, I applied for, and was rejected from, an F32 and K01 from NIH, an NSF postdoc grant, and several private foundation grants. I learned a LOT from those failures. So second POA: keep trying.
Also, the NIH grant system is complicated, information is found all over the place, and it isn't even clear where the application even is at first. And frequently your university will have an internal deadline a couple of weeks before the NIH deadline.
So 3rd POA: start early, and reach out to your departmental office or other postdocs for help. I literally had no idea where to even start when I applied for my first NIH grant. Administrators in the UW Pbio office were really helpful!
4th POA: once you've figured out which NIH grant you will be applying for, and once you have a draft of some specific aims, reach out to the NIH program officer (PO) that administers that particular grant.
Think of the PO as your liaison and possibly advocate throughout the process. They can help you figure out if you are a good fit for that particular funding mechanism, plus they are usually present during the application review discussion and can provide feedback afterwards.
With that said, I have dealt with 4 different POs at NIH, and each interaction was very different. I had some that were not at all helpful, and others that were SUPER helpful. But might as well try, and maybe you will develop connections at the NIH that will help future grants.
You should never cold call a PO. If it is your first time interacting with them, send them a nice email describing who you are, the grant you want to apply to, ask for a meeting via phone, and attach a copy of your specific aims and maybe your CV.
When you finally talk to them, have some questions ready. You can ask them about whether they think that this funding mechanism is a good fit for your grant (based on your specific aims), what past committees have been looking for, etc etc.
(sidenote: sometimes you can find NIH POs at conferences! I actually first met my PO at the 2019 Neuroethology Gordon conference)
In addition to the usual research and personal statements, the application consists of a lot of small, tedious documents describing your work environment, data management, etc.
5th POA: Often, there will be someone in your department or lab that has copies of these documents that you can more or less modify for your purposes. Don't be afraid to ask for copies! Will save a lot of time. (Also you can re-purpose them from the corpses of past grants)
6th POA: if your advisor is a young PI without a strong mentoring record, you should find a senior co-mentor and make sure that it is clear how that co-mentor will be part of your project. My F32 was rejected because my advisor and I didn't know this "secret" rule
7th POA: you won't get the grant if you don't apply! I almost didn't apply until my advisor pushed me to do so. I had been rejected so many times by NIH, and it seemed that the bar would only be higher. But sometimes you get lucky!
(Plus far fewer people apply for a K99 compared to F32s. A PO told me that your application is pretty much guaranteed to be discussed, so you're likely to get feedback no matter what)
8th POA: if you are rejected, you should still reach out to your PO for some advice and to go over why your grant was rejected. Hopefully you will be eligible to resubmit your grant, and there's usually a much better chance that a re-submission will be funded.
9th POA: Even if you are rejected, hopefully you will learn a lot about the NIH grant system and you will have the foundations for a research proposal for future job applications/R01. It was also a good chance to discuss projects with my advisor and what I can take to my own lab.
I hope that this helps! Feel free to reach out with any questions. You can also get some great advice from my colleague @drEllaGutierrez, along with some useful links, on her website (gabriellejgutierrez.com/2019/09/17/app…).
Oh one more POA that came from my advisor: you want to convince reviewers that your idea is important and feasible, and most importantly: that you are the PERFECT person to do these experiments. Keep this last point in mind as you write each part of your application.
Thanks for all the congratulations everybody! If you're a @UWPostDocs, @JulieCVDW organized a useful K99 postdoc working group, complete with a dropbox folder full of example applications. DM me if you'd like to know more.
oh oh also! my last year of graduate school, I developed a serious illness that hindered my productivity going into my postdoc. I mentioned this in my biosketch...and the reviewers actually took it seriously! I was afraid because I didn't want to be seen as making excuses...
...but it really did make my grad to PD transition harder. It was also something my grad PI might not have put in his letter because by then he had moved institutions and we were only communicating virtually. Not sure if I just got lucky with my reviewers but glad I mentioned it.
