Transitioning from an Early Investigator Award to

the Coveted R01

Presented by Christopher Francklyn, Ph.D. University of Vermont

Brought to you by Principal Investigators Association

Webinar Outline • Introduction: the nature of the challenge

• Creating a strategic blueprint to get you to the first R01

• Managing your time effectively

• Building and husbanding your financial resources

• Building your research team

• Laying the foundation for your first R01

Introduction

What makes this transition so special? – Major change in your skill sets and responsibilities – Now must do things you weren’t trained for!

The New & Early Stage Investigators Toolkit has everything new PIs need to know to gain the confidence required for leading a successful research team. It includes a 192 page Career Guide co-authored by some of the industry’s best, as well as over 4 hours of targeted education they can access at any time!

http://www.principalinvestigators.org/new-and-early-stage-investigator-toolkit-new/

Previously… • As a post-doctoral fellow your

principal activities were confined to experimental design, execution, and data interpretation

Now… • more management than

execution: a coach rather than a player

• Train others to excel at what you have been trained to do

Second key feature: this transition is time limited. • As a grad student and as a fellow, time limits are more

flexible and open to extension

• After tenure, there is no time limit

Prior to first grant and tenure, there is a “clock”

• Should seek to secure major federal funding within 2-4 yr of first appointment

• The “classical” tenure clock means that paperwork submitted in year six for decision in year seven. (Now extended in many institutions.)

Your overall goal in this transition period:

A “formula” for tenure.

1. Identify research ideas 2. Recruit initial lab members 3. Gather preliminary data 4. Supplant start up with additional awards and

grants 5. Write and successfully compete for first R01 6. Generate data pursuant to those original aims 7. Publish results 8. Seek promotion!

In this webinar, we will focus on steps 1-5, especially 1 through 4.

Let’s return to our outline… • Introduction: the nature of the challenge

• Creating a strategic blueprint to get you to the first R01

• Managing your time effectively

• Building and husbanding your financial resources

• Building your research team

• Laying the foundation for your first R01

NIH Career Awards foster the independence of promising new investigators by providing mentorship, salary support, and protected time to develop a research program. During this educational pack, your expert presenters dig into the different NIH training and career development programs, discuss what programs are tailored to specific individuals during their career, and provide an overview of how to write a competitive award. Walk away with tactics you can implement right away and take your career to new heights.

http://www.principalinvestigators.org/nih-career-development-awards-educational-pack/

Creating a strategic blueprint to get you to your first R01

Why create a strategic plan?

A plan can help you focus your energies.

Scientists are like hunting dogs: prone to distraction!

New professors have limited time and resources: need to avoid natural tendency to dissipate these

A plan provides a basis for resource/time allocation

Provides a framework to help senior colleagues mentor you

What should be in the plan? – The plan defines what you need

to have in place to write a successful R01. It might include:

• The first versions of the 3-4 Specific Aims

• The set of Approaches/Technologies you will need

• What output (i.e. publications) you will need to gain reviewer confidence

• What potential collaborators you think you will need

Why write a fixed plan? Won’t you change it anyway? Plan should be dynamic, evolving as you (a) better understand the key questions in your field and (b) better appreciate what potential resources, technology, and collaborators are available.

Steps before you secure your first appointment

• Draft Aims of your first R01 should be part of your research plan during the hiring process

• Feedback from search committees/new department

When should you start writing your strategic plan?

Steps after you secure your first appointment

• Revise and refine Aims to maintain a “leading edge” emphasis and make consistent with your capabilities

• Take inventory of your environment. Network with others in your field.

• Test plan with local mentors

Let’s return to our outline…

• Introduction: the nature of the challenge

• Creating a strategic blueprint to get you to the first R01

• Managing your time effectively • Building and husbanding your financial resources

• Building your research team

• Laying the foundation for your first R01

http://www.principalinvestigators.org/time-management-toolkit-for-scientists_new/

By gaining 1 extra hour each day, you will add up to 6 extra weeks of productive working time a year…

Managing time effectively One of the biggest challenges for a new professor is managing your time

While previously you only focused on science

In addition to CEO, chief grant writer and rainmaker, you also serve as

• The lab’s first post-doctoral fellow and scientist

• Accountant and finance minister

• Head of purchasing • Head of human

resources • Head of new

employee training • Laboratory chemical

and radiation safety, and other regulatory compliance

Remember you also may have teaching and departmental/ institutional service responsibilities!

• A challenge with time management is that mentoring around this issue is very uneven across departments and institutions

• You may receive mixed signals from colleagues and administrators about priorities (hint: listen to Department chair!)

• Let me suggest a few basic principles: • Prioritize • Delegate and supervise • Create time blocks • Manage communications • Close the door

• There is no such thing as multi-tasking, only task switching

Prioritize • Need to

establish what only you can do and what can be delegated.

• Consider departmental priorities and success metrics

• Organize tasks

Supervise and delegate

• Identify functions that can be delegated, get weekly reports

• When you delegate, review the results: it’s your name on the forms!

• Don’t be a “helicopter” lab chief

Create time blocks • Particularly for writing, establish significant time blocks

where you write and think, and are not disturbed

Manage communications Handle email and phone calls at beginning or end of day, not every time the bell rings.

Close the door, sometimes • Protect your access,

especially when you need to complete a task.

• Leave the door open when you are receptive to students and colleagues

Let’s return to our outline… • Introduction: the nature of the challenge • Creating a strategic blueprint to get you to the first

R01 • Managing your time effectively

• Building and husbanding your financial resources

• Building your research team • Laying the foundation for your first R01

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Building and husbanding your financial resources

A useful model • Running a lab is not an “ivory tower”: it’s a small business, and you

are an entrepreneur • Your Department chair is

your chief investor and provider of start-up capital. For a tenurable position, He/she is likely investing 1-1.5 million in you.

Two important considerations • Issue #1: controlling your rate of spending. (i.e.,

biotech industry burn rate.) • Issue #2: what should be your spending mix on

equipment, personnel, and supplies?

Strategies for extending your start up package • Learning to play to the “short game” for capturing additional

resources

Controlling burn rate Main idea is to have your start-up extend until the first R01 gets awarded.

Track monthly spending so you don’t experience gaps in operating…these will stop your momentum

• Try to borrow equipment, obviating expensive maintenance costs

Finding the right balance between equipment, personnel, and supplies

• Seek to leverage personnel costs with support from teaching assistantships and training grants

• try to ensure that each full team researcher has adequate supplies to be successful: 12-15 K per researcher per year.

The “short game:” Seeking out sources to supplement your start-up

– Small institutional awards. Small, may have programmatic flexibility. Can provide additional operating resources to extend your start-up. New faculty sometimes treated preferentially.

– Private foundations. Advantages: Can be sizable; specifically targeted for new investigators. Disadvantages: restricted to programmatic interests of the foundation.

– NIH: specifically RO3 and R21 mechanisms. These can be helpful in getting on the path to an R01. They are reviewed by regular study sections: no special bonus for first time investigators. Aims will have to be distinct from your eventual R01.

Assume your start-up package is a bank account…try not to overdraw it!

Let’s return to our outline… • Introduction: the nature of the challenge

• Creating a strategic blueprint to get you to the first R01

• Managing your time effectively

• Building and husbanding your financial resources

• Building your research team • Laying the foundation for your first R01

http://www.principalinvestigators.org/how-to-become-an-exceptional-mentor-educational-pack/

Planning is fine, but your team is the crucial factor in executing your research plan: people management must become one of your key skills.

An effective team allows you to better delegate tasks not essential for you to execute

Your first team will get you to the first R01, and strongly influence re-appointment and tenure

The key decisions are the mix of employees (technicians, grad students, and post-docs).

Building your research team

The value of a good lab tech • If well trained, can start executing experiments immediately. Can help manage lab administration and assist in training

Grad students •Can be highly motivated, independent and very capable in the lab. •Can seek support for them via training grants •Screen carefully (rotations!), and allow for time to finish academic requirements.

Post-doctoral fellows • Advantage is that they come with

high training

• Have the potential to gain independent salary support

• Work independently as co-investigators

• As a new PI, your situation may not be optimal for them

• They will need to find a position after 3-4 years: can you create an independent project for them?

Remember, there will always be a trade off between cost of an employee, and their experience level

Let’s return to our outline…

• Introduction: the nature of the challenge

• Creating a strategic blueprint to get you to the first R01

• Managing your time effectively

• Building and husbanding your financial resources

• Building your research team

• Laying the foundation for your first R01

http://www.principalinvestigators.org/nih-r01-manual-4th-edition/

http://www.principalinvestigators.org/nih-webinar-library/

http://www.principalinvestigators.org/scientific-and-medical-writing-educational-pack

Inside this Educational Pack, you will find step-by-step guidance and writing examples applicable to grants, journals and everyday communications; expert guidance on what you should and should not include in your own writing; and exercises to get you one step closer to becoming a scientific writing expert.

http://bit.ly/PIAwriting

Laying the foundation for your first R01

• By carrying out the phases described above, you should have a strong foundation for writing an R01.

Before discussing the preparation process, let’s

discuss how grants are reviewed

• Are the overall specific questions that the application is addressing significant

• Are the approaches described feasible, well designed, and appropriate?

• Is the investigator and the team that he/she has assembled the right group to perform this work?

Honing your specific aims: • The specific aims form the foundation and core of the

application.

• If successful, your aims should have potential to transform your field

• Constant revision and sharpening during the “transition period.” should represent the “leading edge” of your field.

• Aims have to include an artful balance of what is readily achievable with your current skill sets, and what is riskier but potentially more exciting.

Refining the approaches in your aims… – Your approaches should be chosen as the preferred experiments

to address the hypotheses stated in your specific aims page.

– Using multiple complementary approaches is always a strength

– Your key challenge is convincing your reviewers that you can execute these of experiments.

– As part of the set-up for the grant, you have to have completed these as preliminary data (option #1) or published them (better).

– Alternatively, you can recruit in collaborators who are published experts in the method.

• Strengthening the investigator and environment components

• Even if Aim and Approach are superb, a weak Investigator and Environment can still sink the application.

It is key to remove all productivity concerns prior to review

Create additional enthusiasm by bringing additional experts onto your research team. These can add additional technical innovation.

Summing up • There is a finite amount of time between your initial

appointment and your first R01 and then re-appointment/tenure. Create a dynamic plan to achieve those goals.

• Use good time management skills to allow sufficient time to do the thinking and writing required for a competitive application. You will need to start early to increase your odds. Try to delegate some of the lab administration tasks to create the required space.

• When managing your financial resources, embrace a business model, considering cash and expense flow to that your resources won’t dry up before your funded. Write small grants to local and private sources to extend your operating budget, and consider the mix between equipment people and supplies.

When recruiting the people who will become your lab, consider their organizational and interpersonal skills, and their potential to be funded by sources other than your start-up. Don’t be afraid to use probationary periods to avoid being saddled with disruptive or unproductive lab members.

Be aware that in writing a competitive R01, much of your success will ride on the steps you’ve taken before you start writing. This means that you have to identify the right questions early, and start demonstrating scientific momentum, in order to convince reviewers you are the right person for the work. Potential productivity concerns must be allayed for starting to write!

Transitioning from an Early Investigator Award to the Coveted R01

Presenter: Christopher Francklyn, PhD. Webinar Format: CD-Rom, MP4 and PDF Transcript. All formats include the PDF presentation handouts. Length: 60 minutes

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