As you can read in the “About Me”, I’m from Europe, and the
idea is that we’re going to stay here in the US for the duration of our
post-doc and then move back to where there are free babysitters in the form
of grandparents our families live. And since NIH doesn’t allow people that
aren’t citizens to apply for grants like the NRSA and most K awards, I never
paid much attention to how applying for grants really works here. When people
were talking about their program officer I always thought that was something
that other people had, but not me. And even though I’ve been following DrugMonkey
blog for a while, I always read his posts about how NIH-things work like you
read the news from another part of the world: it’s all very interesting, but it
doesn’t concern you directly.
However, it seems like the only way to get a tenure
track-like job at a university back home is when I manage to secure a grant
from my home country’s scientific council, and those are not that easy to get
(~10% funding rate). And on top of that Dr. BrownEyes requires the same grant
to get a TT position (yup a two body problem here too ).
The alternative when we want to move back is when either or both of us accepts
(another) post doc position.
So even though we’re pretty sure that we will eventually
move back, I’ve started to look into applying for grants here, and recently
asked the people on twitter advice about applying for a K99, since this is one
of the few grants that you can apply for as a non-citizen. And then @Neuropolarbear
suggested that I could call my program
officer to figure out when would be a good time to apply. And all of a sudden I
realized that I was part of that foreign world of people talking about eRA
commons accounts, program officers and study sections.
So I started to read here
and here
for good advice about how to put together a K99/R00. My current strategy is to
start to write a proposal for my home country grant application and use the
same science for a K99 at the end of the year, which is when I’ll be entering
my fourth year as a post doc. And I’ll call my program officer, like a grown up
US scientist!
Any other advice or suggestions?
Any other advice or suggestions?
Have you been through the NIH gauntlet before? I think it's totally normal to feel like you've gone down the rabbit hole. I have some experience with them and still it feels like a lot. Talking to your PO is highly recommended. I just recently talked with 3, each at a different institute, to make sure I was sending my application to the best place. With the K99 (and everything else) there is just a lot under the surface going on. The best stuff I've read on the subject are narratives of what it's like to be a reviewer. The "minor" details about how study session works actually say a lot about how you want to write your grant.
ReplyDeleteNo this is my first time applying for an NIH grant. As someone who's not a citizen I'm not eligible for a lot of grants. Thanks for the advice!
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