co-PI on NIH grants as resident/fellow/postdoc

[bluebubbles]

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[SurfingDoctor]

So...

Can a resident/post-doc be a co-PI on an NIH grant meant for professors, e.g. a U24? Assume professor is agreeable.

The rationale would be to build a funding record and attach yourself to a project semi-permanently. Obviously, you can't apply for that kind of grant yourself.

Are you sure you are talking about Co-PI and not a Co-I? It depends want ones goals is, I suppose one could be, but from a grant standpoint, having an inexperienced person as a Co-PI weakens the grant substantially. Additionally, from a trainee standpoint, this would very disadvantageous as this person would lose the ability to apply for K awards and new investigator status. I'm not familiar with a U24 grants specifically, but I believe U grants on cooperative program grants. Again I don't know how the specifics would apply to trainees, but I wouldn't recommended personally if you plan to pursue future NIH funded as a junior faculty.

 

[bluebubbles]

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[eteshoe]

Better to stick w/ the standard sequence: F32 (independent postdoc) -> K-award (early career/transition) -> R (independent investigator). With those alone you'd demonstrate a growing funding record

 

[bluebubbles]

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[eteshoe]

Thanks for bringing up the standard sequence. The issue is that my clinical specialty's a bit weird, and I'm not sure my future chair will be patient enough for this. Anyways, just curious.

what specialty if you don't mind

 

[dl2dp2]

If you are a resident you should file for a K series grant. Administratively, you are generally not eligible to file for PI (co or not) for R series grants due to lack of full time employment (resident is considered trainee). This is not related to NIH policy. It's related generally to institutional policy. i.e. you "can" technically file for an R series grant as a PI if you are filing as a research scientist at a startup that you opened, for example. Filing as a resident also makes it hard to write a budget (i.e. when your grant comes, how much FTE can you put in for yourself when you are full time clinical?). K series grants have built in mechanisms for this (i.e. you stipulate K period to start at the end of residency, but the grant can go in a year or two prior, sold as "career development"). Rs are meant to have a project start date as soon as the funding comes, and any delays have to be specifically justified.

This is not a question for the forum but for the business office at your institution.

From a career perspective, in the long run nobody cares if you are Co-I on a grant. Whether being a PI on a grant "weakens" the grant depends on your expertise and previous training. If you have multiple prior Nature papers (say) as a postdoc prior to residency or very specific training on specific techniques, or access to specific patient population, and the grant is topical, and the senior PI has no track record in this field, your Co-I/Co-PI actually vastly strengthens the application. This is a complicated issue and you need higher ups to give you feedback.

I'm of the opinion that if you can skip K, you should. If you can be a (co or not) PI on an R01 and get 5 years straight salary support, you should do it. But, more likely than not, that 250k a year modular R01 isn't enough to pay for your FTE plus the other Co-PI's FTE, plus staff, plus equipment/supply, so you end up with very little money for 5 years, and you lose Early Stage designation. However, this might not matter to you if you are a rad onc or dermatologist, since more likely than not throughout your entire career most of your salary support will NOT come from NIH... So this is really a complicated question.

IMHO this question is a surface manifestation of some very deep structural issues for physician scientists, in that physician pathways are now *so* vastly different from scientist career pathway. If you are a rad onc your clinical salary is so vastly higher than from your NIH FTE salary that if you want to do science it's almost better to just do it for free, instead of applying for grants from NIH. The amount of time you spend applying for grants is not time efficient vs. just taking a cut as an indirect off your clinical revenue. And this is increasingly being done in said specialties. So NIH grants are really just a status thing--it shows that your work is legit. From a funding perspective, most of the revenue that goes towards research in these specialties are actually not NIH fund... what a weird and awkward system!

 

[Neuronix]

If you are a resident you should file for a K series grant.

My buddies who have applied have gotten scored poorly. Unofficially given the high competition for those awards, the NIH wants to award them at the assistant professor level, not resident or fellow. This is what several of my friends have been told. Unfortunately, you need the K to get the research job, so it's a chicken and egg problem.

 

[gbwillner]

My buddies who have applied have gotten scored poorly. Unofficially given the high competition for those awards, the NIH wants to award them at the assistant professor level, not resident or fellow. This is what several of my friends have been told. Unfortunately, you need the K to get the research job, so it's a chicken and egg problem.

While you CAN apply as a resident, you MUST have a letter from your chairman stating that they will promote you to Asst. Prof. independently of you receiving this grant. Tough to do without a fellowship, and unlikely to go far with many scorers.

 

[Neuronix]

rad/onc

Hello fellow rad onc.

I don't think this is true...but it'd be nice if it was.

Salary cap from NIH in total is ~$185,000.

K awards have lower caps. It depends on the exact grant and institute, but the cap is $100k for example for an NCI K08.

Standard academic assistant professor rad onc salary is ~$300,000, give or take 50k. The only people making significantly less are fellows or instructors. I tried to find a fellowship or significant research position like an instructor and failed. There are very few of these positions. Institutions generally don't want to invest in K awards for us because we're too expensive and the institution ends up making up the difference.

This is funny. Maybe I'll do this.

Doing research for free is hard when you're working 60+ hours a week clinically as most academics do these days.

I suppose you're right, but I'm skeptical that anyone will subsidize my research and time using my senior colleagues' clinical income. Maybe chairs have this luxury. The non-chair physician-scientists I admire received R01-level funding (NIH or foundation) within a couple years of their first faculty position. So even if clinical RVUs > grants, I just feel like external funding can't hurt.

Getting institutional money as a young career investigator is very difficult. It does happen occasionally.

Your choices will be either find a real research fellowship in a clinical rad onc department (few of these exist) or find an institution, preferably wherever you're doing residency, who will pay you more than PGY-6 salary but with significant protected time to do research as an instructor. With this, you'll have to hope that you can get a K award or some other significant funding and that you'll get hired in the next few years for the job you want. It's still a serious gamble.

Without a fellowship/instructor position, you have to hope that you can find an assistant clinical professor job at all and hope that maybe you might be able to put something together in your limited free time with no resources. That's the experience of most of the MD/PhDs in this specialty that I know, and most fail to have any significant research of the type we MD/PhDs were trained for.

While you CAN apply as a resident, you MUST have a letter from your chairman stating that they will promote you to Asst. Prof. independently of you receiving this grant. Tough to do without a fellowship, and unlikely to go far with many scorers.

Getting such a letter is hard enough as it is. In most rad onc departments, the chair isn't even responsible for doing the hiring, so the higher ups in the institution have to sign on. The cute thing that I heard from a study section leader is that they don't even trust these letters any more. Too many institutions have promised a position independently of receiving the grant, then reneged on the deal. So such a letter is required, but not trusted.

 

[dl2dp2]

The non-chair physician-scientists I admire received R01-level funding (NIH or foundation) within a couple years of their first faculty position. So even if clinical RVUs > grants, I just feel like external funding can't hurt.

Of course they can't hurt. The problem is they aren't enough and typically take a long time to get. Given modular R01 is 250k direct, and take about 1-2 years to get, even with significant positive prelim data, it won't be able to cover your FTE salary in a rad onc department for a long time. Are you willing to drop your salary? By how much? And the time it takes to get the R01s, how much opportunity cost is it? You need to think about that carefully. K awards only cover 100k salary. When you write your R01 budget justification, if you put down yourself as 20% FTE with a 189k salary cap or something as an assistant professor, it will trigger issues during review both internally and externally, and therefore is typically not done.

Your chair may or may not subsidize using someone else's revenue stream, but the real question is are YOU willing to subsidize yourself. This is the first step. Are you willing to take a 50% clinical job but getting paid like a fellow (i.e. 70k), knowing that you are generating 200k+ of clinical revenue (and maybe plus some Medicare GME funding, or a T32 here and there). The department head can easily give you another 50k for research expenses, since oh, it's just a matter of "exploiting" you a little less. But really in essence you are subsidizing yourself to start. People are not stupid.

The physician-scientists you "admire", how much do you think they are getting paid? If they are getting paid at 300k a year plus fringe, say in a typical grant cycle year 1-2 application ($0 from NIH), 3-5 funded (250k from NIH). In this 5 year period, your cost is 1.5 million just salary alone, and the total funding received from NIH is 750k, so you have a 750k shortfall. And this is not counting staff, equipment and etc. A typical budget from NIH, the PI salary is about 50% of the budget, so you have another 125k*3 for supplies and staff, so it's almost > 1 mil shortfall. And this is for someone who can write a funded R01 in 2 years. So as you can see, the numbers are SO radically "off" that department heads don't really think about NIH money that much in these departments. It's a nice icing on the cake.

Department chairs frequently make calculations in terms of whether they would subsidize your research efforts, if they care about research and reputation, which they may not. It's easier to just negotiate protected research time and salary instead. Of course it's nice if you are willing to write grants and bring money in...

Getting institutional money as a young career investigator is very difficult. It does happen occasionally.

This does on occasion happen. I have a friend who finished a cards fellowship and got hired as an assistant professor with a very solid salary as a cardiologist and 20% clinical 80% research, without even a K yet. Different departments have different priorities. He also has a Science paper and is thought to be a hot shot and has connections. It's *in theory* possible. You have to ask and negotiate.

 

[Neuronix]

Are you willing to drop your salary? By how much?

Yes. Significantly. I could not find a department that was willing to consider me at a reduced salary but doing 80% research. I could find a fellowship with no dedicated resources, no expectation of a job afterwards, at 50% research at PGY-6 salary. That's the only fellowship opportunity that was ever discussed.

The physician-scientists you "admire", how much do you think they are getting paid? If they are getting paid at 300k a year plus fringe, say in a typical grant cycle year 1-2 application ($0 from NIH), 3-5 funded (250k from NIH). In this 5 year period, your cost is 1.5 million just salary alone, and the total funding received from NIH is 750k, so you have a 750k shortfall. And this is not counting staff, equipment and etc. A typical budget from NIH, the PI salary is about 50% of the budget, so you have another 125k*3 for supplies and staff, so it's almost > 1 mil shortfall. And this is for someone who can write a funded R01 in 2 years. So as you can see, the numbers are SO radically "off" that department heads don't really think about NIH money that much in these departments. It's a nice icing on the cake.

This is exactly what is happening. There are very few positions/institutions willing to invest this kind of money that will likely be mostly lost.

Department chairs frequently make calculations in terms of whether they would subsidize your research efforts, if they care about research and reputation, which they may not. It's easier to just negotiate protected research time and salary instead. Of course it's nice if you are willing to write grants and bring money in...

Our job market is terrible in rad onc. There are way too many rad oncs, and way too many MD/PhDs. There is essentially no negotiating power as junior faculty in this specialty. I have seen rare exceptions. I wasn't good enough to be in this exception category.

 

[tr]

My buddies who have applied have gotten scored poorly. Unofficially given the high competition for those awards, the NIH wants to award them at the assistant professor level, not resident or fellow. This is what several of my friends have been told.

This must be specialty-dependent. Most of the people I know who have gotten Ks applied as fellows or postdocs.

Your chair may or may not subsidize using someone else's revenue stream, but the real question is are YOU willing to subsidize yourself. This is the first step. Are you willing to take a 50% clinical job but getting paid like a fellow (i.e. 70k), knowing that you are generating 200k+ of clinical revenue (and maybe plus some Medicare GME funding, or a T32 here and there). The department head can easily give you another 50k for research expenses, since oh, it's just a matter of "exploiting" you a little less. But really in essence you are subsidizing yourself to start. People are not stupid.

Can I just also say that it makes no financial sense to pay yourself out of a grant because if you account for the amount of time you have to put into writing multiple grants and papers to get one funded, it's like 10x the number of hours you are actually paying for yourself to do the work after you get the grant.

Futhermore you are paying yourself out of your grant in pre-tax dollars, plus you have to pay your benefits, meaning your salary costs way way more to your grant than it would cost to your self in forgone income (which is post-tax and post-benefits) if you just elected to work less than 100% FTE.

If you consider the grant money to be the financial equivalent of the time/blood/sweat/tears you put into it, it literally costs less to buy out your own time by just working less than 100% FTE.

 

[dl2dp2]

Can I just also say that it makes no financial sense to pay yourself out of a grant because if you account for the amount of time you have to put into writing multiple grants and papers to get one funded, it's like 10x the number of hours you are actually paying for yourself to do the work after you get the grant.

Futhermore you are paying yourself out of your grant in pre-tax dollars, plus you have to pay your benefits, meaning your salary costs way way more to your grant than it would cost to your self in forgone income (which is post-tax and post-benefits) if you just elected to work less than 100% FTE.

If you consider the grant money to be the financial equivalent of the time/blood/sweat/tears you put into it, it literally costs less to buy out your own time by just working less than 100% FTE.

I know!!! RIGHT??? It's an insane insane system.

 

[Neuronix]

These sound like bad choices. Well, I'd be fine with assistant clinical professor, but it's not ideal. And why is a 50% clinical rad/onc being paid $70k?! 50% * $300k (full-time clinical) + 50% * $100k (full-time research) is $200k.

Welcome to the real world where it seems like everyone is trying to take advantage of you.

I don't think I will be either, but just curious, what're these exceptions like?

I know a couple guys who got million dollar startup packages and 80% research jobs with the full rad onc salary just like sluox described. It happens. It's very uncommon and a lot of people want those positions with very few available.

 

[Fencer]

BREAKING NEWS.... As a faculty member, you must earn your salary plus contributing to institutional taxes. If you earn too many clinical revenues, you might be able to set aside your research fund to allow you hiring a PhD to do your research work.

Here is the basic problem for some of those high salary specialties... It's difficult to do research, and once you are used to that high salary, you don't want to cut down. As an academic neurologist, you will not be able to push a salary of $300 K if you want to do research... (at least not for the first 10-15 years of your career). Most IM, Peds and Pathology and other specialties with a high density of MD/PhDs doing some research earn less than that barrier.

 

[SurfingDoctor]

The bottom line is that you have to have strong institutional support for research start up. Even beyond the illustrious start up, K awards cap salary is $100K (plus fringe) for 75% of your effort. Thus you need institutional support because 25% clinical effort won't typically generate enough RVUs to bring you up to the level of clinically-oriented colleagues. Now, some institutions are willing to pay that extra into have physician-scientists because grants and research draw attention, prestige and thus, donor/endowment money, but the financial bottom line from any hospital system is that research is a money loser because it doesn't generate revenue. It is finding that right institute and situation (a strong advocate that is a chair, chief, etc.) that gives the best chance for success early on.

 

[dl2dp2]

The bottom line is that you have to have strong institutional support for research start up. Even beyond the illustrious start up, K awards cap salary is $100K (plus fringe) for 75% of your effort. Thus you need institutional support because 25% clinical effort won't typically generate enough RVUs to bring you up to the level of clinically-oriented colleagues. Now, some institutions are willing to pay that extra into have physician-scientists because grants and research draw attention, prestige and thus, donor/endowment money, but the financial bottom line from any hospital system is that research is a money loser because it doesn't generate revenue. It is finding that right institute and situation (a strong advocate that is a chair, chief, etc.) that gives the best chance for success early on.

This is not entirely true. If you count R01 level indirect, the overhead is 30-40%, sometimes more! No way are institutions using that much to hire maintenance staff. If you can effectively pull in R01s, institutions can make a very nice chunk off of you. In comparison, profit margins for certain clinical specialties are not actually very good (i.e. typical cognitive specialties). Large academic departments often has scant clinical services (of a specific type, e.g. primary care-ish) for this reason.

Classically, the more people institutions hire, the more R01s come in, the more indirects. More indirects can be used to do discretionary things, like startups, subsidies, etc. However, two issues: 1) problems come when the clinical salary at market is much much higher than the NIH R01 budgets, which happens in things like rad onc... This is where the institutions lose so much money even with monumental indirects it cannot begin to cover physician-scientist salary at a comparable level. 2) R01s no longer come even when you hire a lot of researchers to write grants because the budget of NIH is fixed. In that case, hiring more researchers represents investments that can't be recouped. This is why department chairs are resistant to "supporting research". IMHO attention and prestige in the long run are not what makes a department organically grow.

 

[SurfingDoctor]

This is not entirely true. If you count R01 level indirect, the overhead is 30-40%, sometimes more! No way are institutions using that much to hire maintenance staff. If you can effectively pull in R01s, institutions can make a very nice chunk off of you. In comparison, profit margins for certain clinical specialties are not actually very good (i.e. typical cognitive specialties). Large academic departments often has scant clinical services (of a specific type, e.g. primary care-ish) for this reason.

Classically, the more people institutions hire, the more R01s come in, the more indirects. More indirects can be used to do discretionary things, like startups, subsidies, etc. However, two issues: 1) problems come when the clinical salary at market is much much higher than the NIH R01 budgets, which happens in things like rad onc... This is where the institutions lose so much money even with monumental indirects it cannot begin to cover physician-scientist salary at a comparable level. 2) R01s no longer come even when you hire a lot of researchers to write grants because the budget of NIH is fixed. In that case, hiring more researchers represents investments that can't be recouped. This is why department chairs are resistant to "supporting research". IMHO attention and prestige in the long run are not what makes a department organically grow.

I was speaking more to the pre-R level. But sure, if you have multiple Rs, or P or U grants, then the indirect costs provide enough money to the institute. However, that tends to be more the exception than the norm. Additionally, many of those people have reduced to no clinical effort and thus are really just scientists, not physician-scientists. For those who see enjoy doing clinical time and doing research, the best case from a institutions standpoint is to break even.

 

[drg123]

This is a fascinating and depressing discussion. So what is the answer? How does one actually be a physician scientist? I agree with all that's been said about the payoff from NIH extramural funds actually being not worth the effort. So how do you pay for yourself? You could work clinical all the time, but then you can't do science. I suppose you could be a remote PI and pay a tech or staff scientist, but that's no fun and you're probably not going to be able to keep up with the science. Wealthy benefactor? Passive side hustle? Maybe those would actually be more realistic than trying to do the traditional K->continual R pathway.

 

[Fencer]

Indirect costs are actual costs... You don't get a nice lab out of nothing. If you are pulling 2 or 3 NIH R01, you get better research space. Faculty have a misperception about actual institutional costs. Having said that, every year we spend $ 60 BILLION in biomedical research when you consider the sum of the 36 Billion NIH budget, plus NSF, VA, DoD, HHMI, other private foundations and endowments for research. As a community, we are making sure that bright people make it to Assistant Professor, get a K-award, perhaps a K99/R00.

I wouldn't give out the eligibility for new investigator taking the Co-PI of a R01. It is better to get the K, and then apply left and right for R01 as a NEW investigator (3 cycles per year x 2 last years of K)

 

[dl2dp2]

Indirect costs are actual costs... You don't get a nice lab out of nothing. If you are pulling 2 or 3 NIH R01, you get better research space. Faculty have a misperception about actual institutional costs. Having said that, every year we spend $ 60 BILLION in biomedical research when you consider the sum of the 36 Billion NIH budget, plus NSF, VA, DoD, HHMI, other private foundations and endowments for research. As a community, we are making sure that bright people make it to Assistant Professor, get a K-award, perhaps a K99/R00.

I wouldn't give out the eligibility for new investigator taking the Co-PI of a R01. It is better to get the K, and then apply left and right for R01 as a NEW investigator (3 cycles per year x 2 last years of K)

Things are getting worse. As this year's Feb cycle winding down at our facility, which is one of the top in securing K awards in our field, very qualified applicants (top MD/PhD, top residency, great papers) are getting unfundable K scores on A1, with contradictory objections mainly in the candidate section--the toughest kind of things to fix in a grant. This means multiple very qualified applicants are having significant pay gaps. K to R transition is also increasing perilous, since there's very limited bridging options at that stage, when training grants are no longer accessible. Multiple applications through multiple cycles do not guarantee funding. Non-training centers still have money to hand out, but they typically lack the expertise/team to support R01 level research, and they are hesitant to take on poorly scored candidates. Tournament style science has real casualties.

 

[Neuronix]

What are the sorts of things that they're commenting about in the candidate section?

 

[tr]

What are the sorts of things that they're commenting about in the candidate section?

Argh so familiar. I applied two separate cycles for K, never got funded, and defaulted to clinician educator. For the same cycle I'd have one reviewer cite my productivity as a strength and another mark me down because it was low. One reviewer said a high percentage of first author papers showed initiative (good), another said it showed I didn't know how to collaborate (bad). One said my rec letters were a positive, another said they were lukewarm and marked me down. (I wrote all the letters btw, mentors rubber stamped.)

Got similar contradictory comments in other sections as well. I think it's just that most proposals are good but most also can't be funded, so reviewers grasp at straws to lower scores.

 

[Neuronix]

I got put on a clinical educator track after being able to find no research fellowship or job with a different track. I was given no startup resources at all. I have been producing at full clinical RVU levels in "academics" since month 3.

They have been telling me to write a K08--that it's my only way to get any resources at all around here. But am I really viable to submit a K08 in this sort of position? I'm afraid to even waste my time.

That written, without any investment from the institution, how are smaller grants going to do anything for me? How am I supposed to build a lab $50k or $100k at a time?

As a community, we are making sure that bright people make it to Assistant Professor, get a K-award, perhaps a K99/R00.

I'm not seeing that.

 

[Fencer]

As I indicated previously, each of us buys their research time. It is much harder in high-paying specialties such as radiological oncology due to the high salaries, as compared to traditional low-paying specialties such as Neurology, IM, & Peds.

 

[Neuronix]

As I indicated previously, each of us buys their research time. It is much harder in high-paying specialties such as radiological oncology due to the high salaries, as compared to traditional low-paying specialties such as Neurology, IM, & Peds.

Chicken and egg my friend. How do you get grants to buy research time in radiation oncology or any other specialty with no startup package or resources?

 

[dl2dp2]

That written, without any investment from the institution, how are smaller grants going to do anything for me? How am I supposed to build a lab $50k or $100k at a time?

This I would argue isn't so unique a scenario and isn't limited to rad onc. Most translational investigators don't get startups these days, and typically they leverage off other institutional resources (shared lab space, microscope, clinic time, scanner etc). While you are on K, you write other grants to get some more money which buys you some time. I actually think startup funds provides minimal value, since the level of prelim data is different in different fields. if you are competing with basic scientists, then yes, you need a startup. But given in translational research very few people have a lot of prelim data, your R01 would be "okay" (i.e. having as poor odd as anyone else) regardless. Once you have an R01, your startup will run out anyway.

At the facility I'm referring to, essentially nobody has a startup, and I think K to R transition occurs with about the same odds as documented (~60%) overall. What I'm bemoaning is the fact that 1) people who were on the T (postdoc) stage have a huge dropout rate. Many are excellent candidates. Some new report suggests that the luck that pushes someone forward essentially determines their career. 2) K to R should be 100% for those who submit an R, but it's not. This is a huge waste of resources. I'm not sure what's the point of K is if it develops a career that has no end point. One dept chair told me recently that K99 is now called "bridge to nowhere", and many deans now actively discourage dept chairs in promoting Ks. Others have pointed out to me the not infrequent phenomenon that people now carry K99s and can't find a job (especially with geographical restriction) and drop out of science altogether. This is *particularly* common for women, who often have a child or two around the K application and between K and R, and isn't helpful when the K salary is so low that they really have to defer to their partner's salary in making major life decisions.

So then you say okay I'm gonna try gunning for the startup and I'm willing to move wherever for it. Yes, if you fight really hard on the job market you might get a startup. But this is often associated with some new programmatic need of an institution. This means you show up to a department that has a lot of money but nobody of relevance is working there, and if you need equipment that might need to be set up de novo, which means you have to hire everyone yourself. Keep in mind you have a 5-7 year window to get an R01 before your startup runs out. How this is different from having a K (only) at an institution with existing team and resources I don't know.

NIH and universities pay lip service to "promoting junior faculty" and "encouraging diversity in the workforce", when the entire system is set up to reward a single earner family who are from a really wealthy background and senior researchers. Remember how the proposal to limit senior group size got scraped? When you try to touch someone's cheese, their true color shows. It's all bs. MSTPs need to see and be aware of this before they jump head first into this game.

 

[tr]

They have been telling me to write a K08--that it's my only way to get any resources at all around here. But am I really viable to submit a K08 in this sort of position? I'm afraid to even waste my time.

What's the downside to submitting? You might as well. What else are you doing with your time? Meeting your RVU targets? :eyeroll:

Did you see Maebea's link to the new outcomes data? On page 9 it says "More than half of the survey respondents in academia or at a non-NIH institute (56.5%) have applied for NIH research support as a principal investigator. Among those who applied, 76.9% received a research grant."

Those are pretty good odds, though on a personal note they make me wonder what's wrong with *me*...

 

[solitude]

What's the downside to submitting? You might as well. What else are you doing with your time? Meeting your RVU targets? :eyeroll:

Did you see Maebea's link to the new outcomes data? On page 9 it says "More than half of the survey respondents in academia or at a non-NIH institute (56.5%) have applied for NIH research support as a principal investigator. Among those who applied, 76.9% received a research grant."

Those are pretty good odds, though on a personal note they make me wonder what's wrong with *me*...

thanks to Maebea for calling our attention to this.

some nuggets from the executive summary of the report (I did not read the entire report):

60% of alumni are full-time faculty. 80% of survey respondents are faculty or work in NIH-like organizations or industry. Split the difference, I think it's safe to say about 30% wind up private practice, clinical medicine exclusively.

(of those who responded) 56% in academia have applied for NIH grant. 77% received an NIH research grant.

52% of those in full-time academia are devoting at least half-time to research. But those without a grant reported spending less than 30% of their time on research.


Say you start with a class of 10 MD-PhD graduates. If 30% go into private practice, you are down to 7. Another 10% goes into industry, so you are down to 6. Now 56% of those in academia have applied for an NIH grant. That means just 3 of the 10 have applied for the grant. 77% received the grant, so basically 2 people got the grant. If you get a grant, you are probably spending at least half of your time on research. But if you didn't, you are spending 30% or less on research.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but by my math this means of the 10 graduates in your class:
-2 will end up doing more than 50% research
-4 others will end up clinician-educator with one admin ("research") day per week
-1 goes into "industry" where maybe they are doing research, maybe they are doing consulting, business, administrative, something entirely non-medical, who knows
-3 are private practice, straight clinical

If you assume 100% effort for each person: and that the researchers are doing 70% research, 30% clinical, you end up with:
-2 researchers: ~70% research, 30% clinical
-clinician-educators: ~10% research (all that clinical admin work gets done on half of the research day), 90% clinical
-industry: ?? I will exclude this graduate because clinical-research time distribution unknown
-private practice, 100% clinical

you end up with a weighted average % spent on clinical time of 80% clinical. So 20% research. Which gets you right back to where any MD clinician-educator is: 4 days clinic, 1 day admin/research. Or where a lot of straight MDs are, which is working 4 days a week clinical, and doing nothing academic on the 5th day.

So you are saying those are good odds???

 

[tr]

The odds Neuronix should be concerned with are not the odds that an entering MSTP student will eventually submit a grant application to the NIH. He's way past that.

Neuronix' relevant stats are the odds that, if he writes a K (perhaps more than once), it will get funded. The report above suggests those odds are about 0.77. That's great, considering K award rates are in the 20-30% range (in turn much better than R series which are 10-15%).

(I am having a little trouble squaring that stat with others I've seen that indicate MD/PhDs are just slightly more successful than other applicants for NIH funding, not more than 2x-3x as successful as the stat above suggests. But let's take this at face value.)

Neuronix has said he had a highly productive PhD and a strong research trajectory in residency, and he continues to publish regularly. Without knowing anything else about his situation, those things all strengthen his position.

 

[Fencer]

Funding rates for K-awards vary among the NIH institutes...
See this spreadsheet: NIH K-awards success rates spreadsheet

 

[dl2dp2]

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but by my math this means of the 10 graduates in your class:
-2 will end up doing more than 50% research
-4 others will end up clinician-educator with one admin ("research") day per week
-1 goes into "industry" where maybe they are doing research, maybe they are doing consulting, business, administrative, something entirely non-medical, who knows
-3 are private practice, straight clinical

...

So you are saying those are good odds???

Your math is approximately correct and consistent with my unscientific intuition following two large MSTP cohorts (my home program and another one I'm very familiar with). Out of the 10 MSTP graduates, approximately half of the people already determined that they will never do significant sponsored research after grad school and be a PI. Then out of the rest, perhaps about half (2-3) will eventually end up with an R01. So the odds look vaguely good if you are "determined" to do research.

That said, it's unclear how institutional support would help with this leaky pipeline situation. I've mentioned in other threads, the salary differential even in cognitive specialties are dramatic and increasing, especially if you take into account the risk-adjusted salary (i.e. expected value of money raised given funding rates). This kind of scenarios create distortions: in large research departments in high cost of living areas, very frequently most research faculties generate income in other ways, so people who "really want to" do research stick around without institutional support. Institutions, being the uncaring corporate actors as they are, are happy to maintain this arrangement (private supplement, may it be from moonlighting or spousal support) so as to maximally extract indirects from an army of grant writer drones. In fact, the better you do this, the more likely you get promoted: in several private conversations, division head/department chairs informed me that their performance is measured (by the dean/board of trustee/hiring committees) by the amount of indirects they generate (as well as papers, of course, but those are correlated, and in the end, secondary). The way the system is set up is not by some unhappy accident--it's designed to do exactly what it's set out to do. In fact, this system is so successful that lower tier programs are trying to copy the upper tier programs. In a number of interviews at lower tier programs, the department chairs give explicit double-talk: we want to support you by giving you a good (better) job, but in the end we want end up like the department from where you came.

That said, this ~20% is still much better than a typical PhD. For a garden variety biomedical PhD, the numbers I've seen cited is something like mid single digits (5%). And, the contractual job instability and winner takes all paradigm is obviously prevalent in other industries. So ironically MSTPs now are probably the best way to eventually land an 80%+ research job in biomedicine, which explains their increasing competitiveness against even the best PhD programs. It's just that academic institutions like to bs more. And internet forums like this provide a good venue for trainees to get a layer below the bs and get the real numbers for the long odds and psychologically prepare.

 

[SurfingDoctor]

I assume most people read "Open Mike"...
The Issue that Keeps Us Awake at Night
Clearly the NIH is concerned about the problem mentioned in this thread. The bigger issue I see is it really is just shuffling around money without really addressing any specific issue of why biomedical research leaves good scientists out in the wind. I also worry that this effect of pulling funding from more established investigators will just create the same problem when ESIs move onto mid-career or senior-level but are struggling because of the diversion of money. I suppose that is all the NIH can really do, which is just shuffle around the pot, but the real problem is the efficiencies of the pot expenditures and make the ability to divide the pot, harder.

 

[CheGuevaraMD]

Apologies for the bump, but I think mid-career struggles are worth discussing. It's definitely possible to win a K if you simply try hard enough and are willing to remain in fellowship poverty for several years. Winning an R is even harder, but definitely possible if your K went well.

However, consistently winning multiple Rs in succession for 20-25 years is very unlikely, especially if this funding climate persists. I've seen plenty of people in their mid to late 40s increase their clinical hours, or pivot to administrative duties, pharma, consulting or a lower ranked school.

Honestly, that's just sad. One of the key benefits of hard money tenure is that you don't have to worry about being kicked out of science during the latter half of your career. Soft money doesn't just remove this protection, it ensures that leaving science is more likely. It's crazy that you can spend your whole life from 18 on working to be a scientist, and then be unceremoniously "fired" at 45. It wouldn't be so bad if you were allowed to start early, like with military service, but it's a crazy system when it takes you until 35 to become a PI.

 

[dl2dp2]

Just following up on this: how do clinical departments at academic institutions view funding from non-NIH sources, such as NSF or industry, and would they be willing to allot more research time and/or offer tenure-track assistant professor position if you get funding from those sources but didn't get the NIH K's/R's? I'm applying this cycle to MD/PhD programs so apologies ahead of time if this seems like a dumb post.

I'm glad you found this thread as I was about to direct you to this thread from the other thread.

Funding sources don't matter. There are academic faculty sustaining long careers mainly on only pharma $. OTOH, tenure doesn't really exist. There's a difference btw tenure in name and tenured salary lines. Tenure in name means the university needs to give you a job--> could be any job at any level of pay above a certain very low minimum. Tenure in salary line means a line of salary is allocated to you to do research--this can be variable in quantity. Tenured salary is allocated based on previous grant performance, and even in the best-case scenario typically universities only keep 50% of their salary on tenured lines.

Universities want to attract people who have a track record of rainmaking so that they can make more money. Once you understand this fundamental dynamic everything else essentially follows. There are exceptions where faculty develop a reputation that are significant that allows them to extract academic performance and prestige without rainmaking. These are rare circumstances and generally outside of the rubric of biomedicine.

Generally, if you *really* want to do some research as a board-certified physician at an academic hospital, such jobs always exist--but they will often involve a large pay cut, maybe at very undesirable locations. Some people are willing to make these compromises, others decide that taking a purely clinical job at a desirable location is more important. Some clinicians eventually return to the university for some research role...perhaps after they achieve financial independence.