The FOA for the K99/R00 says that a different institution is “encouraged (but not required)“.
I will confess I thought this was somewhat stronger in tone but the original announcement was similar.
Applicants are encouraged to consider independent positions at departments and institutions different from where they conducted their mentored research. Should an awardee wish to activate the independent phase of the grant award at the same department or institution at which they conducted their mentored research, the individual must provide justification addressing the decision to remain at the same institution.
Still, I guess we can bench race what this would mean in our personal interpretation or recommendation. I would think this an exception for extreme circumstances… so more like 10%?
Well, a comment on a prior thread asserted that something around 25% of R00 awardees had remained at the same Institution in which they had been “training” under the K99 phase.
Naturally, I was interested in what my ICs of greatest interest have been up to. Of currently active R00 grants, one IC came in at 21% at the same institution as the K99 phase and another came in at either 29% or 35%. This latter one had a single award for which the K99 phase moved in the second year and then the R00 was continued in that new location.
Huh.
Huh.
Color me surprised.
I am no big fan of enforced academic nomadism. Were I the Boss of Science I may have omitted that little “encouraged but not required” clause, frankly. Maybe. But the clause is most assuredly in there and it gives an indication about intent. Nice to have exceptions for unusual circumstances, yes, but I would tend to interpret that statement as meaning rare.
At 25% of the awardees, clearly the NIH does not agree with me on this meaning.
Either that, or the reality of the (lack of) academic nomadism under the current system has essentially overcome the NIH’s intent.
Here we have a fancy grant award that gives postdocs some negotiating room in where they would like to be. As we’ve been discussing, these are presumably some top-quality candidates, going by the usual academic seals of approval. And a quarter are disregarding the expectation of nomadic dispersal at the transition to faculty level independence.
To me this underlines the opinion I have on nomadism.
There is something seriously wrong with the expectation that academic scientists travel all over creation for their jobs, in the current era of dual-career families and “training” phases that extend well into the third decade of life.
Quite some time ago I started scrutinizing CVs of visiting speakers, grant applicants, etc to see their trajectories. I didn’t formalize it but I came to the conclusion that a substantial (20-25% would probably have been my estimate prior to today’s exercise) number had violated the “expectation”. Yet it persists. Here we have fairly accomplished scientists (grant winners and invited speakers) violating the truthy truism of academic careers. Substantial numbers of them too. Yet the culture is to sneer at this as an intentional trajectory when it comes to advising junior scientists.
Shaking my head.
DrugMonkey 