We’ve previously discussed the NIH F32 Fellowship designed to support postdoctoral trainees. Some of the structural limitations to a system designed on its fact to provide necessary support for necessary (additional) training overlap considerably with the problems of the F31 program designed to support graduate students.
Nevertheless, winning an individual NRSA training fellowship (graduate or postdoctoral) has all kinds of career benefits to the trainee and primary mentor so they remain an attractive option.
A question arose on the Twitts today about whether it was worth it for a postdoc in a new lab to submit an application.
In my limited experience reviewing NRSA proposals in a fellowship-dedicated panel for the NIH, there is one issue that looms large in these situations.
Reviewer #1, #2 and #3: “There is no evidence in the application that sufficient research funds will be available to complete the work described during the proposed interval of funding.“
NRSA fellowships, as you are aware, do not come with money to pay for the actual research. The fellowship applications require a good deal of discussion of the research the trainee plans to complete for the proposed interval of training. In most cases that research plan involves a fair amount of work that require a decent amount of research funding to complete.
The reviewers, nearly all of them in my experience, will be looking for signs of feasibility. That the PI is actually funded, funded to do something vaguely related* to the topic of the fellowship proposal and funded for the duration over which the fellowship will be active.
When the PI is not obviously funded through that interval, eyebrows are raised. Criticism is leveled.
So, what is a postdoc in a newer lab to do? What is the PI of a newish lab, without substantial funding to do?
One popular option is to find a co-mentor for the award. A co-mentor that is involved. Meaning the research plan needs to be written as a collaborative project between laboratories. Obviously, this co-mentor should have the grant support that the primary PI is lacking. It needs to be made clear that there will be some sort of research funds to draw upon to support the fellow doing some actual research.
The inclusion of “mentoring committees” and “letters of support from the Chair” are not sufficient. Those are needed, don’t get me wrong, but they address other concerns** that people have about untried PIs supervising a postdoctoral fellow.
It is essential that you anticipate the above referenced Stock Critique and do your best*** to head it off.
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*I have seen several highly regarded NRSA apps for which the research plan looks to me to be of R01-quality writing and design.
**We’re in stock-critique land here. Stop raging about how you are more qualified than Professor AirMiles to actually mentor a postdoc.
***Obviously the application needs to present the primary mentor’s funding in as positive a light as possible. Talk about startup funds, refer to local pilot grants, drop promising R01 scores if need be. You don’t want to blow smoke, or draw too much attention to deficits, but a credible plan for acquiring funding goes a lot farther than ignoring the issue.
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