Hello, and welcome to our live webcast, Career Development Awards and Grants. Thank you for joining us. My name is Gary, and I will be the operator for today's presentation. Before we get started, I'd like to take a moment to acquaint you with a few features of this web event technology. On the right side of your screen, you'll see the Q&A window. To send a question, click in the text box and type your text. When finished, click the Send button or push Enter. All questions that you submit are only seen by today's presenters. Your questions will be responded to in the order in which they were received and will be addressed throughout and at the end of the presentation. At the conclusion of today's program, we ask that you complete a brief post-event survey. Please take a moment to complete the survey, as it will help us plan future web events. We are joined today by our moderator, Leslie Rickey, and our speaker, Dr. Jennifer Wu. At this time, I'd like to turn things over to Leslie for opening remarks. Leslie? Thank you, Gary. I would like to welcome all of you to our next installment of our all-virtual forum web-based lecture series. This is a series of presentations by experts in our subspecialty from across the country, focused on topics based on the SPNRS learning objectives, as well as relevant practice-related topics. The virtual format also provides AUG members the opportunity to interact with the speakers in real time. This presentation will be captured and made available for view at any time on the AUG website. As Gary mentioned, upon completion of this program, you will be given the opportunity to provide feedback, which we value greatly. For this evening's presentation, we are so pleased to have Dr. Jennifer Wu here with us. She is an associate professor of urogynecology and reconstructive pelvic surgery at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her presentation today will be on career development awards and grants. So thank you, Dr. Wu, for being with us today, and we look forward to your talk. All right, well, thank you so much for that lovely introduction. It's my honor to be here on this webinar presenting on career development awards. And just as a brief introduction, I think that sometimes training grants and career development awards can be sort of a mystery, and it's hard to kind of find out some of the details about what they are, what different kinds exist, and how to go about applying for one. So that's kind of the goal of this talk, so it's called Demystifying Career Development Awards. I'm just gonna go ahead and start now. So here are my disclosures. So for the objectives of this talk, by the end, the goal is that you're gonna know more information about training grants, that you'll have a greater understanding about career development awards, or CDA, and that you'll be able to discuss the different components that are needed to actually apply for a career development award. In terms of the outline, let's go through a little bit about why would you even think about applying for a training grant or a career development award. And then we're gonna go through what the training grants are, and the difference between training grants and career development awards, and then we'll go through some of the different types of career development awards that exist. And then we'll talk about at the end some practical considerations if you're interested in applying for a training grant or career development award. So the first question is, why would you even consider applying for a training grant or a career development award? Well, maybe one of the issues is that you're interested in developing a research career. So you're doing your training in FPMRS, or maybe you're already a faculty member and attending in FPMRS, but you really wanna kind of build that component of your career that's in research. Ideally, it's usually for people who are interested in becoming independently funded. And so we use that term a lot, but what does that mean? It really means that you have sort of grant funding or some kind of funding, substantial funding, that supports your time to conduct research. And so a lot of times when people are interested in a career development, they're wanting to get a substantial grant to fund a lot of their time to do research. Now, a reason to think about doing a training grant or career development award is that you really need a specific type of training or more additional or sort of additional training in some type of methodology in research. Maybe it's clinical trials, maybe it's in basic science, maybe it's in some type of translational methodology. So you need to get more training, and that's why you need time in a training grant or in a career development award to pursue additional training. And we'll talk a little bit more about what that might mean. And the other component is that maybe you need some mentorship. You need to find a methods mentor who's gonna teach you more about basic science or translational research or clinical trials. So it's sort of those sort of three things that if you're interested in sort of building your research career, but you need some more training and maybe some more mentorship that you might think about pursuing a training grant or career development award. Now, what are some of the practical considerations? Well, if you really wanna kind of have more time where you wanna gain more additional training or education in research methods and have time for mentorship, you essentially need protected time. Okay, so when you have a job and you have a salary, in order to really get that time to pursue didactic training, additional workshops, additional seminars, or sort of having mentor meetings, you need that time, that protected research time to do those activities, which also then kind of equates to having some salary support to basically support the time that you're not seeing patients, you're not in the operating room. So you kind of need, again, protected research time to pursue that additional training or education. And then the other thing about a training grant or career development award, in addition to protecting some of your time, often also offers some funding to actually do some additional research or pay for that additional training. So your additional training might entail some master's level courses or maybe an MPH or a master's of health sciences. So you need funding to support the pursuit of that additional education as well as time to do research. So just for an overview, again, we were gonna talk about the difference between training grants and career development awards. And so for training grants, they really support additional training and research versus a career development award, or CDA, supports additional career development and research. So there's a little bit of a difference. And we'll talk about kind of what these grants and awards entail. All right, so one of the things that I think that's the most confusing when you're kind of learning about this is that there's so many different sort of grant options or we call mechanisms that are sort of signified by letters and numbers. So K08, K12, R01, R21, R03, they're the U grants, F grants, and it's really confusing. It's almost like alphabet soup. You're like, what do those numbers mean? And for people who are sort of more familiar with the NIH mechanisms, they're very familiar with what some of these grant letters and numbers mean, but it can be very confusing. And so today our goal is that we're just gonna focus on some key opportunities. We're not gonna go through a comprehensive list of every single type of grant that exists, but some key ones that, again, are gonna highlight the training grants and the career development awards. Okay, so again, what are training grants? So they're often called T32. So again, a letter and a number, and they're NIH-funded. And I sort of highlighted that they're institutional awards. So your institution where you work is able to apply for a training grant. So they have like a T32 award, which means that they kind of administer this program at your institution. And sometimes it's hard to know, well, what training grants even exist at your institution? So for example, I'm at UNC Chapel Hill. I literally just Googled UNC T32 programs. And then because we have sort of a research office at the UNC School of Medicine page, they had an Excel document that linked to all the 68 T32 programs that are at UNC Chapel Hill. Now, some of these might not apply to those of us in FPMRS. They might be in cancer, or they might be in ophthalmology, or GI, or pharmacology. So you have to find out if there's a T32 program at your institution that would apply to the field that you're in. So FPMRS, or women's health, or OBGYN. And typically, it's to support research training in specified shortage areas that NIH feels needs more focus. And so I put on several of these slides different links that can be helpful in terms of trying to find out more information about these different types of grants. So for example, here's the link for finding out more about training grants. But again, the key thing is this is an institutional award. So UNC, my institution, has many different T32s. And then I need to figure out if I'm interested in getting some training, what T32s even exist at my institution? So for example, at UNC, within actually OBGYN, we have one that's called Training in Epidemiology and Clinical Trials, or TECT. And so here's the link for the TECT program. And the way this T32 is set up, and many T32s, is that they give you a significant amount of protected time for research. So it's 75% of your time is protected for research, and then you're only 25% clinical. And this particular program was one that was, you know, for a while run by David Grimes, and now has sort of a different program director and PI, but it's actually a nice combination of mentors from both UNC and Duke in clinical trials. So that's sort of the methods piece that you learn. But also, a lot of OBGYNs are involved in the TECT program. And then what it allows you to do is actually supports training to pursue, originally it used to be an MPH, now it's a Master's of Health Sciences, both at UNC or at Duke. So essentially, again, this is a T32 training grant at my institution, so at UNC. And then if you apply to get a T32 and you successfully compete for one, it gives you a lot of time for research, but also allows you to pursue a Master's so that you can have that additional training, that additional education in research methods, and then still keep up some of your clinical work. So I'd say oftentimes a T32 is someone sort of in their training. So for example, I actually did this T32 when I was a fellow, and that's how I was able to support my time to pursue an MPH, and then also at the same time I was clinical as a fellow. Okay, as sort of a side note, this is just not to forget that there is something called the NIH Loan Repayment Program, or LRP, and I mention this because it can be a great way to repay some of your loans. So again, I put the link on here at the very top, and just sort of the gist of this program is that it repays $35,000 annually of the researcher's debt, and the key is that you have to have a substantial amount of time to do research, so about 20 hours per week for each quarter that you have this award, that you need to sort of prove that you actually have the protected research time, and that you have to have a certain amount of debt for this to basically be, you know, to qualify for this Loan Repayment Program. And the key is that you need to be able to be conducting research in one of these five areas, so either clinical research, pediatrics, which doesn't so much apply to us, disparities, again, contraception and infertility doesn't apply to us as much, or clinical research for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds. But what's nice is that if you're interested in building a research career, and you have a substantial amount of protected time, you could also apply for this NIH Loan Repayment Program, and it's such a great program, I just didn't want to forget to mention it, but it's not a typical type of training grant or creative element award, it's just more of a side note. Okay, so that's sort of the gist for training grants. So again, an institutional award that allows for you to have protected time, to pursue additional training, education, and then, again, a brief comment that I mentioned about the Loan Repayment Program by NIH. Okay, so we're moving into- Mrs. Leslie, can I talk to a question real quick? Absolutely. So are the training grants different lengths? Are they typically for a year? Yeah, so this one was a two-year training grant. I think that it might depend on what type of training grant. I don't think that they're usually a year, I think they're usually longer, but again, there's so many different kinds. So for example, the 68 UNC, they're literally, they're very sort of, I think, discipline-based, right? So there might be a cancer one, a GI one, they might run differently. I know this one was two years, and then part of it is that, you know, if you're pursuing a master's degree, usually it's hard to get that necessarily in one year and also be clinical, but it also depends. Some of these T32s are not necessarily for physicians, but they're also for postdocs, so other type of graduate students, not necessarily all MDs, although there are some programs that are for MDs. So I think it's probably key to kind of look at, if you find one that you know about, look into the specifics, because I wouldn't say across the board they're a certain length of time, necessarily. Okay, that's helpful. And then I just have one more question about the T. What, do you have any suggestions for people whose department, whose main department that they're in, doesn't have a T award? Yes, Sue. Guidelines for that. You know, so the thing is about the training grants. Really, I'd say this is more for potentially if you're a fellow, and if you're at that level, that this would be something that you could pursue. And I don't know how many OBGYN programs necessarily, let's say, have a T32. It's usually gonna be something that's maybe more cross-disciplinary. Maybe there's a T32 in a methods area that you're interested in. So I think it'd be uncommon for a department, let's say, to have a T32. So I think it's a little unusual, like we have this tech program, and that's really, I kind of spearheaded, I think, by David Grimes before, and it was for more contraception and clinical trial training, but then it became all women's health. But I do think that this will come up more with also the K awards, because I think that the K awards probably apply more to junior faculty. I don't think for, you know, the fellows, I think we're also, the fellows are so busy with their clinical responsibilities, and they have research responsibilities that I don't know, it's sometimes hard to fit a T32 in with a fellowship, because you're only supposed to be 75, I mean, you're only supposed to be 25% clinical, which, you know, might work in some fellowship programs for that research year, but would be hard to be, you know, 75% protected for two years, for example, in a fellowship program. But yeah, so I will also, I think that it's good to like talk about that too when we get to the K awards, because I feel like T32s are probably not as common. They're, in terms of just being able to fit that into your training, although it does kind of, again, give you that decent amount of protected time, but if it's a two-year award and you need to be protected that much, that might be hard to manage in a pretty clinically busy fellowship. Versus the K awards, which is what we're gonna get to next, the career development awards, that is something that you wanna do a little more digging to figure out which department, you know, or what's at your institution for those K awards. So let's talk a little bit about that. So what are career development awards in these K awards? So overall, these CDAs, or career development awards, support protected research time, again, which is equivalent to salary support, and they also offer some funds to actually do the research, and it's for people who are interested in building a research career. And the thing about career development awards is that there's a lot of different sponsors, you know, people who are gonna support the career development awards. So the big one's NIH, but the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, or AHRQ, there are also VA career development awards, and then foundations and societies. And then the big thing about CDAs is that there's some that are institutional and some that are individual. So let's go through what some of these might mean. Okay, so let's first talk about institutional career development awards. So then, I kind of, throughout that term, these are the K awards. And so oftentimes, anything with a K means it's a career development award. Okay, and this is sort of the NIH lingo with a letter and then some numbers. And again, there's a link that allows you to figure out all the different kinds of Ks that exist. The most common one is called a K-12, or sometimes called a KL-2. And again, this is institutional. So again, your institution would apply to say, hey, we want to get this K-12 program, or KL-2 program, at our institution because we have so many trainees that really need some more career development. And the way these work is that, again, they give you a significant amount of time protected for research, so 50 to 75% time. And then the key is that, again, you need some additional training so that you can become this independently-funded investigator that you have to have some mentors, and then it gives you some funding for some research. So let's talk a little bit more about these K-12, KL-2s. So again, they're institutional programs. So common ones that would kind of apply to those of us in FPMRS. So one of them is called BIRCWH. So that's Building Interdisciplinary Careers in Women's Health, commonly, again, called BIRCWH. And as of 2016, so last year, there were 24 different programs. And there's a link here at the Office for Research for Women's Health, or ORWH. So the thing is is that, you know, if you already have a job and you're an institution, then you wanna figure out, well, at your institution, do we have a BIRCWH program, okay? If you're a fellow and you're interested in building a research career and you're looking for a job, and you know that you wanna do a lot of research, you might investigate, well, where are these 24 BIRCWH programs, and target those institutions to look for a position. So when I was graduating from fellowship, I was sort of debating, you know, how much research I wanted to do, and then finally, through the process, and I interviewed at lots of different kinds of programs, I realized, well, I really do wanna build a research career. I really think I need a significant amount of time protected for research, and I'm only really gonna look at programs that have some type of K-12 program that would kind of fit for something that I wanna do. And a lot of these BIRCWH programs, again, they're not just FPMS, you know, programs. They're for women's health, and the key is interdisciplinary research. But you can look and try to find institutions that have a BIRCWH. Now the other type of program that's common within OBGYN is called the WERHR. So that's Women's Reproductive Health Research, or W-R-H-R, or we say WERHR. And these are based within the OBGYN department. So again, there's a link. It's through NICHD, and you can look and say, well, what are the programs that have WERHRs? And then some of the WERHRs have different flavors. So some might be more basic science-focused, some may be more clinical research-focused. So again, if you're looking for a job and you know you wanna do research, you could even target programs that have a WERHR and a BIRCWH so that you have more opportunities to be at a place that has a K-12 program that you could apply for to see if you could get a spot. Now within urology, they also have K-12 programs. So there's the Multidisciplinary K-12 Urologic Research Programs, or CURE. So again, here's a link, and that's through NIDDK, and a similar thing. So if you're interested, you could look for a place that has a CURE program, and it would do the same thing. So protect your research, and protect your time to do research, I should say, and then offer some funding to actually do the research. So these are kind of common K-12 programs, but then there's also, at most institutions, sort of maybe not as discipline-focused, but just sort of different K-12, or sometimes they're called KL2 programs that are available in spots that are within the institution. So for example, at UNC, we would go to the head of our education within our CTSA awards, so the Clinical Translational Science Awards. So these are big awards that support research at an institution, and they have a whole educational focus. And then you could go to the head of that and say, well, what are the different training, career development awards, these K awards that exist, and find out what are the different programs at your institution. You might have one of these that are more specific to a type of career development, but then you might have a generic one that then looks for anyone who's competitive for applying for a career development award. And again, we'll go through some of what competitive means, what are some of the criteria that they're gonna look for to see are you a great candidate for a career development award. And feel free if other people, I think, I know that Leslie's been asking some questions, but I'm happy to take questions at the end, or if things come up, I'm also happy to take them in between as we go along the slides. Okay, so, so far, all those that we just talked about, the K-12s, or even KL-2s, and then some specific K-12s are named Birch, Werher, or Cure, are institution awards. So you would come to an institution, you would see if they have one, you could apply for that, and then see if you could get a spot. Separately, they're individual career development awards. So this is one that's given to you that you have to apply for. So let's go through what those are. So for the NIH terms, again, we often say K awards for these career development awards, and there's different kinds. So the most common ones are a K-08. So then the focus of this one is a mentored clinical scientist research for biomedical behavioral translational research. So I think of this as more sort of translational research, basic science, versus a K-23, which is more patient-oriented research. And so if you were interested in getting your own award, then you as an individual would apply to NIH for potentially a K-08 for, again, more basic science translational research, or K-23, and then you would go through just like a regular NIH application to see if you're competitive enough to compete to get your own career development award. Then there's other ones through, again, different sponsors. So the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, or AHRQ, has, again, a K-08, mentored clinician scientist award. And the VA, if you're within the VA system, they also have career development awards, or K awards, as well. So it's almost like if you know you wanna build a research career and you feel like you need some additional training and mentorship, you wanna kinda look into, well, what are the different kind of awards that are available at your institution? If you don't have a VA program, yeah, a VA K award wouldn't be an option. Yes, go ahead, Leslie. One thing I just wanted to add, like I come from a urology background, so the VAs have always figured prominently in my training, and I've been at institutions, and the female women's healthcare VA is growing. It's bigger at some centers than others. So some, I feel like gynecology trainees aren't used to thinking of the VA, but it can really be a great funding source. And I think that they are growing their women's health in a lot of places, so that might just be a good opportunity to keep in mind. Right, and I think it's so true. And I think also, if you're at a place that doesn't have a VA, you don't think about it, but if you might be, let's say you're a fellow and you're looking for a job, and that place has a VA, looking at the VA system and saying, well, what opportunities might be there? And then also, you know, one of the, like Elaine Marklin, who's a geriatrician, she does a lot of urinary incontinence and fecal incontinence research, but then had her K award through the VA system. So it is sort of one of those things that we don't always think about exactly, Leslie, and so I think it's to not forget, there's lots of different sponsors, so you don't only wanna think about just your institutional ones, but not to forget about the VA and AHRQ. And then, just in general, the difference between, again, I just can't stress enough, the difference between institution and individual is that the institutional career development awards, again, the K12, KL2s, the funding is to the institution. So let's say you decide you have your first job, but then you're gonna leave and you're gonna go to a different institution, you cannot take that career development award with you. However, if you have an individual career development award, let's say, again, a K08 or a K23 from NIH, if you moved institutions, you could take that K award with you. So that's sort of the difference. One, it comes to you as the individual versus to the institution. Okay, so I'm sort of focused a little bit more on NIH grants, and then we'll talk about some other opportunities for career development awards. Just to say that NIH grants can be challenging to obtain. This is, I think, data that's a little bit old, but not too bad, where here you can see the difference between, again, the top two lines are NIDDK, and then, again, K08 versus K23. So I didn't give a pointer here. So K08 or K23, so the first two lines, NIDDK. And then you can see here the number of applications reviewed and the number of applications awarded and the overall success rate. So 45 and 54% for K08 and K23, or I should say the other way around. And then if you, in contrast, looking at NICHD, so the bottom two rows are kind of what the box in pink, K08, K23, fewer applications submitted for K08, but it's still the same number for K23, but the success rate for funding them is much lower. So I do think, you know, obviously the institute that you go to depends on what your research is in, but also kind of getting some information about maybe if you could maybe go to NIDDK or NICHD, trying to strategize where you might want to go. And again, beyond NIH, AHRQ, or VA, there's some other options to consider, so we'll talk about what are those other options. Okay, so this is one more for OBGYNs, so this is called AGOF, American Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Foundation. So this is a foundation that goes along with AGOF, which is another one of those societies, but the American Gynecological and Obstetrical Society, so they have a foundation. And it's a great opportunity, so again, there's a link, same thing, minimum 75% protected time, which is oftentimes what the criteria are for these K12s. Sometimes the ones that are through NIDDK, they recognize that a lot of the, you know, urologists will go to NIDDK, that they only need to be 50% protected for research, but they can be 50% clinical, but many of these other career development awards require 75% protected time for research. And again, they offer funding up to three years. Typically, for AGOF, they often, I believe, have two spots. One spot typically goes to an MFM, because it's kind of co-funded by SMFM, but then another spot goes to someone else that's not an MFM, so certainly FPMRS, you know, applicants would be welcome, and I think that there are not that many of them, so this is a good opportunity. Again, more for the OBGYNs, because it's an OBGYN sort of foundation. But then don't forget about AUA. So again, you know, I think for those of us who come through the training in OBGYN, we know that more, but we also don't want to forget about urology opportunities, because I feel like there's also a lot more funding and opportunities within the urology side. The key is going to be figuring out, you know, if you're an OBGYN, would you qualify maybe for some of these? But they have a lot of different awards, so there's one that's the Research Scholar Award. Again, this is 50% protected time, this is for an MD. Then the Rising Star Award, so up to five years of supplemental salary support for, this is for urologists who already have a Career Development Award from NIH or other major funding organizations. So this is recognizing those who are already pretty competitive, have already received a Career Development Award, but need some additional salary support to, again, support their salary, to give them protected time to kind of build their research careers. So you want to look at essentially any kind of funding opportunity from any foundation or society. And then also not to forget about, so the geriatric side of things. So there's a great mechanism that started, I think, several years ago. It's an R03 mechanism, it's called GEMSTAR. And the focus is basically training medical and surgical specialists in geriatrics, because they know that there's going to be this aging population, they're going to need more providers who can take care of older adults. And this is a nice R03 mechanism that gives a decent amount for an R03 in terms of research funding, so $75,000 per year for two years. And then some additional potential funding that can go along with this R03. So what's interesting about this is that if you have a competitive enough score and look like you're going to get funded with this R03, they separately have a Career Development Award that you can get in addition to this NIH R03. So the R03 means a smaller grant through NIH, this one goes to NIA, which is the National Institute of Aging. And it's kind of, again, a co-funded kind of initiative with American Geriatric Society and NIA to support training of other specialists in geriatrics. And then again, if you are competitive for this R03, there's some additional potential funding that can come. And the one that's for surgeons is called the Janigan Career Development Award. And in the past, AUGS has co-sponsored this with American Geriatric Society to give some additional funding to support the career development of these R03 recipients. So this is an awesome mechanism. And there have been several Uruguayans who have received this GEMSTAR award and then also have gotten this additional Career Development Awards funding. So again, another really nice mechanism to know about. Okay, so that's sort of the overview of what are the different training grants and Career Development Awards that are out there, okay, things that you should think about. But now there's some practical considerations of what do you need to think about to say, well, you know, I think I'm going to do this. I know what the opportunities are. What do I need to do to apply for one? What do I need to think about? What do I need to plan? Okay, so again, if your goal is to become an independently funded clinician scientist, meaning you have substantial grant funding to protect your time to do research and you know that you need some additional training and mentorship, then you should definitely think about pursuing a training grant or probably more likely a Career Development Award. Okay, so knowing this, let's again review the different kinds. There's training grants, institutional K awards, again, Career Development Awards, or individual Ks or Career Development Awards. And I would say in general, probably the training grant is the less competitive one. And then your own individual K or Career Development Award is probably the most competitive to sort of successfully apply for. So what are the considerations that we need to think about? Okay, so the number one thing is, why do you need more training? Okay, so these awards provide a salary support, basically funding, to protect your time to do research. And what are you planning to do with this time and funding, right? They're going to give you all this money to protect your time. What are you going to do with it? Well, maybe you need some more research skills. Or maybe you thought you were going to do research in this one area, but you sort of changed the direction of your research and you need to develop skills in a different area. And a lot of times it's around specific research methods. So you need to build some basic science skills. You need to build clinical trials experience. You need to build translational skills. Whatever those skills are, you finished your FPMRS training, you got some basics in statistics and study design, or maybe you did a good amount of research, but you need more training. So you need to substantiate, why do you need this training in career development? And then how are you going to gain these additional skills? Well, essentially you need two things. Number one, you need really good mentors. Oftentimes it's a research methods mentor. I want to learn more about clinical trials. I need to find, you know, a trialist who's going to help me and be my mentor. For my career development award, it was in sort of genetic epi. So I was going to learn more about genetic epidemiology. I had a genetic epidemiologist as my methods research mentor. But then you also probably need a mentor in your own field or one for career development. So you might have a senior FPMRS person be your mentor or someone in your department who's an OBGYN or urologist who could just offer awesome career development advice because they've been a successful clinician scientist. So what does an ideal mentor look like? You know, it's someone who has independent funding. So they're funded so that they can help you get funding. They have a strong publication record. They're strong. They have a strong bio sketch, okay. They have funding and publications. And then they also want to show that they've actually mentored other people successfully. So that often means they had someone who was a mentee on maybe a training grant or their fellow, and then that person successfully went on to get more grant funding. And then ideally, it's someone that you have an established relationship with, right. So maybe I find this amazing scientist, this amazing researcher who has agreed on, you know, when we had a meeting to be my mentor, but we've never had any, we haven't done any research together. We've never published together. We don't have any abstracts together. Well, on paper, this person looks great, but we haven't had a relationship. So is someone going to believe that this person's actually going to spend time and energy to mentor me? We haven't proven that we have an established relationship yet. All right, so beyond actually having mentors, you also then need a good career development plan. You're saying, hey, give me the funding so I have all the time to do some additional training. What are you going to do to sort of gain additional skills that you need to be a successful research scientist? Well, maybe you need coursework, didactic, seminars. Maybe you're going to get a master's in health sciences or an MPH. You need some maybe training in research ethics, research skills, and then maybe there's some other career development tools like a grant writing seminar or other research seminars that are held at your institution, or you're going to go to national meetings or other workshops. So you need to have a sort of a thought through career development plan. All right, so here are the practical considerations. I have a lot of other information that will come along the other slides, and I don't know if we'll have all the time to go through each of the questions or the components of each of these five pieces that you need, but at least it's all on the slides here. I will say these are the five things that you need to think about when you want to be a successful applicant for a career development award. So it's about starting from the left in the blue, you as a candidate. How strong are you as a candidate? And then you have to come up with a plan. What is your career development plan? What do you need to do for this training? Why do you need all this time and funding? What's the plan for your sort of development in terms of your research skills? And then what research are you going to do? What's your research plan? Who's going to help you do this? Who are your mentors? And then also where you're working, your environment. Is there a commitment from your chair, your division director, your institution to really support you to actually help you become a successful clinician scientist? So for each of these components, the one thing you want to think about, let's say you're going to go for the most competitive career development award, something from NIH, okay? You want to kind of know, well, what are the criteria that they're going to use to rate you when they're at study section, okay? So for the candidate, the things that they're going to be looking for, what's your track record of dedication to research? You know, do you have publications? How many do you have? Have you successfully competed for some smaller grants? Maybe at your institution or in your society that shows that you kind of have some skills in being able to get funding and execute an actual research study. And what kind of training have you had to this point? More specifically, kind of if you look at sort of the NIH criteria, these are the specific questions. So do you have the potential to develop as an independent and productive researcher? What's your prior training and research experience? Is it appropriate to give you, again, all this funding and time to do more research? Is your academic, clinical, and research record of high quality? And is there evidence of your commitment to meeting the program objectives to become, again, an independent investigator? And for example, this is for a K23 in patient-oriented research, right? So you want to say, I'm putting in this application. What are the criteria that the reviewers are going to be looking at about me? And then look at these questions and then see what you think. And then you can go to other people in your department, in your institution, to ask, how competitive am I? Am I ready to apply for my own independent K award? Or should I apply for an institutional one? Or even maybe I need to have some more publications before I can be a little more competitive. And then career development award, I mean, sorry, career development plan. You need to come up with a very detailed plan. So here are some of the questions. What is the likelihood that the plan will contribute substantially to the scientific development of the candidate and lead to scientific independence? Again, this independence is the goal. Are the content, scope, phasing, and duration of the career development plan appropriate when considered in the context of what you've already done and your goals for your research objective, again, in achieving research independence? And are the plans adequate for evaluating your research and career development progress? So you also need to have criteria. So, for example, for my K23, I was going to have this many publications, this many presentations a year. These were the goals. And so there are some metrics to show, have I been successful in sort of reaching my goals? And what are the metrics that they're going to evaluate me? Because we have to kind of make sure I'm staying on track. All right, and then don't forget about the research plan, right? So there's you, there's what you need to do for your training, but then you actually also have to present something really compelling in terms of what research you're going to do. And so for the research plan, it's almost like you also have to have the same criteria that you would have for any other grant. You know, what's your research question? Is the design and methodology significant? Is it technically sound? I mean, you also want to make it ideally innovative. Does it make sense? Does it kind of relate to your overall career research goals? And is it an appropriate type of research plan that you could actually achieve given your stage in your development and in promoting kind of your goals to become independent? So you also have to have a good idea. What research are you going to do? And then you need to have the mentors who can help you get there. So there's a lot of other criterias. I'm not going to read all of these for your mentors, but essentially they need to be qualified. They also have to write really strong letters to show that they're going to be dedicated to you. Ideally, you want to, again, show an established relationship that they've been able to mentor successfully other people to become independent. And you want to probably have different kinds of mentors. And even up here, you can see there's mentors, but there might be some other people that are going to have other roles in your career development. So you might have consultants who are going to just, you know, you're going to consult with about a particular type of area of research, but they're not going to be a consistent mentor who's going to meet with you on a regular basis and give you feedback and have mentoring meetings. And you might have group mentoring meetings. You could have collaborators that you do research with, but they're not necessarily your mentor. I even had some advisors on my sort of mentoring team. And there's a lot of criterias. So I just listed all the criterias that when you're thinking about looking for the right mentor or kind of proposing someone as your mentor, you want to think about the criteria that the mentor is going to be, you know, reviewed against. And then also just where you're working, your environment. They want to know that your environment is, you know, supportive of research, that there's a commitment to you as an individual. So oftentimes a chairman letter saying that they believe in you, they know that you're going to be, you have all, you show great promise in becoming an independently funded researcher, that they're going to protect your time, your institution has all these other resources to help researchers be successful. So again, there are a lot of different criteria about the environment and the institutional commitment. Okay. So in summary, what are the take home points? Okay. The reasons to seek a career development award is that you really want to build a research career. You need protected research time because you need additional funding and you also want to have time to conduct some research. And essentially you need some salary support so that you can get that protected time to do research. And don't forget, there's lots of different kinds of career development awards. So NIH, AHRQ, VA, foundations, societies, don't forget about not just FDMRS, but urology, geriatrics, and don't forget the difference between institutional versus individual career development awards. And then for each type of career development award, there are going to be differences in terms of the specifics. So you need to know what are the specific criteria, how much time will they protect, and you want to know the nuances about each of them. And ideally, you want to often look at, well, who's been funded before? Who could I go to, maybe an FDMRS, to seek advice about, oh, they had a VA award, let me ask them about that. Oh, they had a BIRCWH, tell me more about that. So you want to try to reach out to find out some more specifics about each of the different CDAs. And then if you're going to apply for one, you should know all the different components and then what are the criteria that they're going to assess you against to see if you're strong in each of those, let's say, five categories. I will say of the grants that I've written, the hardest one I wrote was a career development award, my K23, because not only do you have to have a strong research plan, you also have to have a strong all those other components. So like you have to be competitive, your mentors have to be competitive, your research plan has to be great, and then you have to have an awesome career development plan in addition to be working at a good, you know, environment. So it's a lot of work, but again, can give you a lot of time to be able to pursue your research goals. And then again, I would just encourage you, I mean, FPMRS is a pretty small field. And so we actually did a workshop at Augs about career development awards and had a panel because, you know, there's a handful of people who've had career development awards, and I think those of us who have want to, you know, help other people to be successfully competitive in getting another one because we need to build, so the, you know, the group of us who are doing research in our field, and so I think people are more than happy to share their experiences, give advice. And so feel free to kind of seek out others. I think that everyone who's done one of these feels like they want to help out other people who are interested in doing one as well. So those are my main take-home points. I don't think, I think that's my last slide. It is. So that is actually about 45 minutes, and I'm happy to take questions. So if anybody has any questions they want me to ask Dr. Wu, you can type them in the Q&A box in the lower right-hand corner of your screen. And while people might be doing that, Jen, can you talk about eligibility for K awards? Is there any time out of training for that, or people that are not eligible to apply for a K award? I think it's things like, you know, U.S. citizen or something like that, you know, like something like the citizenship issue. I think the only thing for, let's say, I know your own, if let's say you're on a K-12 right now, you're at an institutional K-12, you can, at least for NICHD, I don't know if this is the same for NIDDK, but I think so, you can only have a total of six years on a K award. So let's say you have some time on an institutional one, but you want to apply for your own individual one, you can only have six years total combined of, let's say, a K-12 plus a K-08. So if you've been on an institutional one for five years, I don't even know if you're allowed to apply for your own individual K because you might be able to get a year, but I don't even know if they would let you do that, so there's probably some criteria in terms of that. I don't, there might be something also about seniority in terms of maybe your rank, like it's really for kind of more junior faculty who are interested in building their career development. I don't think you could be like a full professor, maybe, and then going back and trying to get a career development award. So I don't know if there's anything about how long you've been out from your last terminal degree. I don't recall, but it's typically people who are interested in doing this are the ones who are kind of more junior and needing more training, but I don't have the exact information on that, I would say. And again, it might be different in terms of, I'm thinking more NIH, but you know, AGOF or maybe AUA or VA might not be the same criteria that NIH would be. Okay, and then I have one other question, you know, especially for new faculty and trainees, you're sort of used to just being surrounded by your people, you know, in residency and in fellowship. So I was wondering if you have any sort of advice or places where you went outside of your home department to look, because you mentioned, you know, sometimes you need different mentors and certain research methods or that. So where are some places within somebody's maybe university they might be able to find that or how did you do that? Yeah, so I think that's a great point, because sometimes, you know, we look, we kind of know, let's say, OBGYN or urology, and then you might know the people who do FPMRS. And you don't always look outside of that. But, you know, a lot of, you know, the research now is very multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary. And so, you know, it depends on kind of where your research is, where you might want to seek outside mentors, especially, again, for these training grants or career developments, your goal is to say, I need additional training. Well, you probably don't need more additional training in FPMRS, right, you need additional training in some type of area of research. So your mentor is going to be in that area of research. So I will say I've kind of done different kinds of research. So for me personally, you know, I have collaborators in epidemiology. My K award was more for genetic epidemiology. I had one of those GEMSTAR grants, and so I actually had a geriatrician who was my main mentor for that. But then also it was kind of this pharmacogenetics project, so I had a pharmacogenetics collaborator. So it's almost like whatever your area of research is, you know, and you're saying, I'm making an argument that I need more training in, let's say, the microbiome. Well, your mentor should be a microbiome person, not an FPMRS person. And then the goal is within your institution trying to figure out, well, who is that microbiome person that I should talk to? Who's done some collaborations with clinicians? And then kind of reaching out, looking at the core facilities and saying, oh, there's someone that says who does microbiome or someone who does proteomics or someone who does genomics, who is that person? And then kind of reaching out and setting up meetings and talking to people and then trying to establish a collaboration with someone that you kind of connect with and who might have time and interest in building a collaboration with a clinician. So oftentimes you'll go with maybe an idea. So sometimes what I would do is, for example, when I was trying to look for, I was moving institutions and I was coming to UNC and I needed someone in genetic epi, so I literally kind of just looked on the UNC website to find who does research in this one particular area. And then asked other people that I knew in the field, like, is there someone that you think would be good for me to reach out to? Cold emailed that person and then sent my CV and kind of said what I was interested in, what I needed, set up a meeting to see if they were responsive to my email, if they're willing to meet with me, and go from there. But you really kind of have to put yourself out there. I feel like it's almost like you're kind of going on dates with different potential collaborators and you meet with them and you set up a meeting, you see if it works out and if you get along and if so, will this lead to a second meeting? But it is really trying to build collaborations in other areas, because you're trying to make the case that you need training, your training is likely outside of FPMRS. It's in some type of research area, most likely, and you need to find someone who can help you build those skills in that research area. Does that help? Yeah. It totally does. I think that's a great point. So, you know, don't be afraid to, I mean, I found people even by Googling, you know, like Yale, and then what I was interested in, and that person might not be your person, but sometimes you leapfrog, you know, like they'll, you connect the dots and you will find various people. And so it's just, it's something you don't really think about when you're a young, you know, you're a young faculty or a trainee, but a lot of our institutions, there's a lot of wonderful potential collaborators. But you do have to, like Dr. Wu said, you just have to kind of put yourself out there and some people will say yes and some people will say no, but you can meet people from a lot of different departments that way too. Absolutely. And if they don't respond to your email even, then you're like, well, that's probably not going to be a great collaboration. So, you know, keep me emailing other people and finding out, or like you said, leapfrogging. I love that term. Yeah. But I do agree. It's like putting yourself out there and trying to see who's at your institution, who can help you out, who do you kind of connect with, and who could you, you know, maybe work with or have as a mentor. Other questions, anybody? Let me just, hold on. Yeah. Let me double here. Let me see if I see any questions. I don't see any. No, we still have some participants, but I don't see any. So I will, oops, now I lost my thingy, of course. Okay. So I want to go ahead and just wrap this up. I really want to thank Dr. Wu for that great presentation. You know, as always, there's so much that we get to learn from our subspecialties, great educators. So I appreciate you putting together the presentation and taking the time in your evening to do this. I also want to thank all of our participants for also making the time in your busy days to participate in this forum. So thank you, everybody. We will not be having a webinar next month because we'll be busy with PFC week, but we will be having one in November, so look for that, look for that information to come out. So thanks, Jennifer, and thanks, everybody, and have a good evening. Yeah. Thank you, everybody, so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Leslie. Thank you, Dr. Wu, for a great presentation. On behalf of AUGS, I also want to thank our audience for your participation in today's event. A post-event survey will appear at the conclusion of today's program. Requesting your feedback, please take a moment to complete the survey as it will help AUGS plan future web events. This concludes today's program. Again, we thank you, and have a great night.

Career Development Awards

Grants

Training Grants

Institutional Career Development Awards

Individual Career Development Awards

Mentors

Career Development Plan

Eligibility Criteria

Collaborations