Grant Writing Practice: K99/R00_,huang x,xu s y,et al. can a one -on- one mentorsh-CSDN博客

本文链接：https://blog.csdn.net/Yuinfen/article/details/104906500

# Here are notes that I got from the internet.

# Main reason for this blog: I am doing some proposal writing in class. I would like to write it into a format that I will use one day, which is K99/R00, this is the only one that I know I can apply in US as a non-citizen.

1. Link 1: https://www.brains-explained.com/guide-to-applying-for-the-k99-r00/

Key information:

1. Understand what it is

The K99/R00 is a transitional grant that gives you 1-2 years of funding as a postdoc (K99 phase) and 3 years of funding as a PI (R00 phase), assuming you get a faculty job. By the way, I’ve heard you should always apply for the full 2 years of the K99 phase—apparently you can cut it short if needed, but you can’t lengthen it.

As a “K” award, the K99 is a career development award. It’s not a fellowship like the NRSA or a research grant like the R01. It’s super important to understand this as you prepare your application. Even though your research proposal is obviously important, you need to spend a lot of time on the other components that discuss your background, career goals, and how this award will help you “transition to independence”.

The main point you want to convey is that you’re an awesome scientist, but you need a couple more years of training as a postdoc in order to gain important skills and conduct research that will set you up to be a successful independent investigator. Apparently a common mistake is to focus on telling the reviewers how awesome you are without justifying the need for further training.

6. Contact people

There are a lot of people you need to contact 1-2 months in advance:

You need an eRA commons login with postdoc/PI roles. This is something you can’t get yourself, some kind of administrator needs to do it for you. I just used google to figure out who at Columbia was in charge of this, and it was pretty easy once I found the right person, but in some cases it could take days or even weeks.
You probably need to get a “PI waiver”. This is a completely ridiculous bureaucratic device that allows you to apply for a grant as a “PI”. Apparently universities think that without this mechanism we lowly postdocs would be applying for PI grants willy-nilly. Anyway, this was a process that required me to get a letter from our department chair (which I had to draft), then send the letter and my biosketch to the grants office, which then sent the official “PI waiver request” to some university dean who finally granted the request weeks later.
The department and grants office probably have a bunch of other internal forms and budgets they need you to fill out, so check with them about that.
Ask your department admin how to get the letter of institutional commitment, which usually comes from the department chair but needs to be tailored for your application (more below).
Let your advisor know that they will need to submit the mentor statement and their biosketch (more below).
Contact your collaborators/consultants, who will need to submit a letter of support. Let them know that you’re willing to draft the letter for them.
Contact 3-5 references who will submit letters for you. Give them the NIH instructions for writing and submitting letters (found here). Note that none of your references can be associated with the grant as collaborators or co-mentors.

7. Make a list of what you need

Before you start writing, make a list of all the stuff you need to write. If you’ve never applied to the NIH before, you might flip your sh*t when you see how many documents there are. Here was my list, which doesn’t include any of the components related to vertebrate animals or human research:

Cover letter (1 page)
Project summary/abstract (0.5 – 1 page)
Project narrative (2-3 sentences)
References cited
Facilities and other resources (1 page)
Equipment (1 page)
Your biosketch (up to 5 pages)
Your mentor’s biosketch (one for each co-mentor, if there are multiple) (5 pages each)
Budget for each year (filled out online, but make a template in Excel first)
Budget justification (1 page)
Candidate section (used to be separate essays but now they are one file with 3 components):
- Candidate’s background (1 page)
- Career goals and objectives (1 page)
- Career development/training activities (2 pages)
Specific aims (1 page)
Research plan (8 pages)
Training in responsible conduct of research (1 page)
Plans and statements of mentor or co-mentors (6 pages total)
Collaborator letters (6 pages total)
Description of institutional environment (1 page)
Institutional commitment (1 page)
Resource sharing plan (< 1 page)
Plan for authentication of key resources (< 1 page)
Forms for human or vertebrate animal research- not applicable for me
3-5 reference letters- submitted separately by your references

Most of the page lengths I’ve listed above are just my own recommendations. Only some of the documents have official page limits and the guidelines can be found here. The main thing to note is that you get 12 pages total for the candidate section plus the research strategy (not including the aims). I recommend using 4 pages for the candidate section, broken up as I’ve specified above, and 8 pages for the research strategy.

The list of documents changes frequently, so that’s why you need to read the SF424 instruction book carefully! I didn’t even notice one of the required documents (authentication of key resources) until a few days before the deadline because it’s a new component that was just added and wasn’t in any of the examples I had.

8. Write stuff

This may get long, but I’m going to describe key information that needs to go in each section. Obviously I haven’t gotten my reviews back so I don’t know if I really did everything right, but here’s what I think is important based on all the information and examples I’ve collected.

Cover letter: It has a standard format and guidelines can be found here. It must include the list of the people who are submitting reference letters for you. You should also use it to request the institute that you want to submit to, although now there is also a separate “assigment request” form that you fill out online and serves the same purpose.

Project summary/abstract: This should include an abstract of the proposal as well as a few sentences about your career development plan, your collaborators, and the institutional environment. Write this last, after everything else is done. It should definitely be less than a page and I’ve also heard it’s supposed to be 30 lines max, but I’m not totally sure if that restriction applies here. The summary will be visible online to anyone if you get the grant.

Project narrative: 2-3 sentences on how your project relates to human health. It’s supposed to be written for non-scientists to understand, and will also be visible online if you get the grant.

References cited: The NIH doesn’t require a specific format for citations, but they want you to list all authors instead of using “et al.”. No page limit. My application had 60 references, and I’ve seen anywhere between 20 and 90. I think 60 is a bit high but I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss citing something important and possibly offend someone!

Facilities and other resources: Describe the lab space, animal facilities (if relevant), computer and office facilities, core facilities at the university, support staff in the lab or the department, and the scientific environment of the lab (e.g. “interactive and collaborative with a wide range of backgrounds”). Make it clear how awesome your lab is for doing research and how you have everything you could ever want.

Equipment: Same idea as above, but talk about specific equipment like microscopes, electrophysiology rigs, behavioral setups, PCR machines, etc. Again emphasize how you have amazing stuff that includes everything you could ever want to conduct your research.

Biosketch: Use the template online (found here) and follow all the rules about how many papers you can list, etc. They will use the dates listed on your biosketch to determine whether you’re within the eligibility window for the K99, so make sure those are correct. In the personal statement you want to tell a compelling story about your scientific career. Describe your background, postdoc work, and career goals. It seems to overlap a lot with the candidate section even though it’s not supposed to. For part C (contributions to science) you don’t need to list the maximum of 5 contributions, you can just do 2 or 3. The examples I’ve seen usually have one section on graduate work and one on postdoc work, with maybe an extra section if you worked on multiple different projects in either phase.

Mentor’s biosketch: In theory, your advisor should already have this and will just give it to you. In practice, this was the last freaking thing that I was waiting for on the last day after all my materials were done. Hopefully your advisor is not a procrastinator. Each co-mentor needs to submit their biosketch. Collaborators generally don’t need to do this.

Budget: You’ll fill this out online, but you’ll want to make a template in Excel first. The budget is super confusing to most of us who have never submitted an R01 or anything like that. People will tell you that your grants office or PO will help you, but for me this was not true and I spent half a day figuring it out. So I’m just going to tell you exactly how to do it:

You’ll fill out 5 budget periods, one for each year. For the K99 phase (years 1 and 2), you will request salary and research costs. The maximum amounts vary by institute and can be found here. However, your department may not approve you for the maximum salary (you can ask them in advance to be safe, or just put down what you want and hope they sign off…). Once you decide on your requested salary, list it under both “base salary” and “requested salary” in section A for 12 calendar months.

Then you need to calculate the fringe costs on your salary, which is an extra amount that the NIH gives directly to your university for benefits, etc. The fringe rate can vary from year to year and is determined by your university (probably somewhere around 30%). There’s most likely a university website somewhere that tells you what it is, otherwise ask your grants office. You may see that there are different “federal” and “non-federal” rates: use the federal rate since this is a grant from the federal government.

Aside from salary, you can request up to a certain amount for research, which most people use for “materials and supplies” under section F. People also often allocate money for travel (section D), publication costs (section F), or other things like animal care costs, training courses, etc. which you can specify in section F. Don’t use section E at all because that’s for “trainees”, which you don’t have.

Then you need to total up all the direct costs (all the research stuff plus salary and fringe) and apply an 8% indirect cost rate. This is money that the NIH gives directly to your institution to theoretically cover the cost of maintaining facilities, keeping the lights on, etc. The “indirect cost type” is usually listed as MTDC (modified total direct costs).

Ok, so that’s it for the K99. You fill out a different budget for each of the 2 years, but they’ll probably be pretty similar. Then for the R00 phase things are simpler, but somehow more confusing. You’re not supposed to itemize your R00 budget (because if you get the grant you’ll have to submit a detailed budget upon transitioning to the R00 phase anyway). The R00 phase gives you up to $249,000/year total for direct and indirect costs. You’re supposed to just list the number $249,000 in section F, creating a new line called “R00 independent phase”. Yes, even though that amount is for both direct and indirect costs, you still list it all under direct costs. That’s it. Don’t add in any indirect costs or fill out any of the other entries. Under salary, which is a required field, just put “0”. Repeat this for each of the 3 years of the R00 phase.

Budget justification: List the stuff you will buy, the conferences you will go to (if you asked for travel costs), and how you calculated animal costs or any other specific expenses. Mention that your requested salary has been approved by the department and is consistent with what other postdocs in your department get. Mention what fringe rate you used for the calculations.

Candidate information: This section is super important! I think a lot of people blow it off, but it’s basically as important as your proposal. It used to be 3 essays and is now one file, but you should still write three separate sections. Overall, it should convey that you have an awesome background in certain areas but still need to learn more stuff in order to achieve your future goals. A lot of the material will feel redundant, but in general, the background essay focuses on your past, the goals/objectives essay focuses on your future, and the training plan focuses on your immediate training goals. Here are guidelines for each essay:

Candidate background: Use different headings to describe different research experiences, e.g. undergrad, graduate, and postdoc research. Tie them all together, i.e. talk about what you learned from each experience and what made you choose to move on to the next thing. Talk about what you still need to learn as a postdoc (the stuff in your training plan) and how once you’ve learned those things you will have exactly the perfect combination of skills and background to investigate the question you want to study. You will be a special snowflake destined for success.

Career goals and objectives: Again, I suggest using different headings such as “Career Goals”, “Training Progression”, “Mentored Phase Objectives”, and “Independent Phase Objectives”. Using these sections I first talked about my career goals, then described how my background gave me expertise in relevant areas, then mentioned the training I still need and how my lab/department is an awesome place that will help me get it, and finally concluded with what I will do in my own lab. It’s important to mention how you will distinguish your work from your PI’s. Also, this is the section where I put in a couple sentences explaining why they shouldn’t judge me too harshly for not having a paper yet (I have a manuscript ready to submit, I have a good record from grad school, etc.). I think it’s important to directly address this issue somewhere if it applies to you.

Training plan: This needs to be very specific about what skills you want to learn in the two years of the K99 phase. I was told to choose 3-5 things to describe. I chose 5 areas: 3 were technical or analytical skills that I want to gain and the other two had to do with general education (broadening my neuroscience background) and professional development (grant-writing, communication, mentorship). But you can’t just mention these things, you need to say how you will acquire these skills. I mentioned collaborators, a course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and classes and professional development seminars at my institution. After that, I talked about my interactions with my mentor and collaborators and described how they will supervise me, evaluate my progress, and help me get a job. Finally, I made a timeline that included, for each of the 5 years, which aims I’m going to work on, which aims I’m going to present at conferences, which classes and seminars I will attend, and other things such as “apply for jobs”, “set up lab”, and “write R01”. Having a timeline is SUPER important, but I’ve seen other people include it in different places such as the career goals section above.

Specific aims: Everyone will tell you that this is the most important page of your proposal! In one page you need to convince the reviewers that your proposal is significant, exciting, feasible, and will set the stage for your own independent research program. You should specify which aims will be done during the K99 and R00 phases. Most people have 2-3 aims. Spend a paragraph or two on introduction, then a paragraph on each aim, then a concluding paragraph about what you expect to learn and why it’s so important.

Research proposal: There are plenty of guidelines on the internet about how to write this part, so I won’t reiterate them here. I think the “Significance” and “Innovation” sections are super important for getting reviewers excited and convincing them your work will make a big contribution. I wrote half a page for each of those sections. Figures with preliminary data are important to convince reviewers that your proposal is feasible. Also, if you don’t have publications it’s a way to show them that you have a lot of unpublished data that will result in a paper soon (especially if you make the figures look nice and professional). It seems like most people have 4-7 figures. I had 9, but 2 were just models or schematics.

Training in responsible conduct of research: Talk about the RCR course at your university. The instructions mention 5 specific points that you need to address, so don’t skip any of them. Also include a paragraph about “informal training” that talks about guidance you will get from your advisor/ collaborators/ labmates.

Mentor statement: This is NOT a normal recommendation letter from your advisor! It is a detailed statement that includes their endorsement of your abilities and potential, their own qualifications as a researcher and mentor, and a description of their role in your career development and transition to independence. They get 6 pages, so it should be pretty detailed. You should draft this statement for your advisor because they’re not going to want to do it. There are several points it needs to include that are detailed in the various instruction forms. Make sure to address ALL these points and to coordinate this statement with your own training plan. I’ve heard that the most important aspect is conveying that your advisor supports you in taking your own research with you and starting your own lab (i.e. they’re not going to compete with you by working on the same thing). If you have multiple co-mentors you need statements from each of them; together they still need to fit within the 6 page limit.

Collaborator letters: These should describe each collaborator’s role in the project and how often they will meet with you. I don’t think a super long letter is necessary; usually they’re less than a page, maybe a bit longer if the person really knows you and has a lot to say. You’ll probably want to draft these yourself so they include everything you want. They need to be signed and dated on letterhead so they look legit. All letters need to be combined into a single PDF file, 6 pages max.

Description of institutional environment: Describe why you are in the perfect place to do your research and get the training that you’ve proposed. This includes a description of your PI’s credentials, his/her mentorship style and ability, the lab environment, department, university, office of postdoctoral affairs (hopefully you have one), and facilities (refer the reader to the “facilities” and “equipment” essays). You should describe how intellectually stimulating the environment is, all the seminars and workshops you can attend, labs that you could collaborate with, etc.

Letter of institutional commitment: This will come from your department chair or some dean, and although they have a standard template it needs to be tailored for you. Depending on their usual protocol you might draft it for them or they may give you a template and you can edit it. It should reiterate all the same points about how great the department and university is, and it should mention that you will be able to take any specific courses that you proposed in your training plan. It also must address 4 specific points that are mentioned in the instructions, so double check this and insist on a revision if it doesn’t (I had to).

Resource sharing plan: Usually just a paragraph or two. The NIH provides guidelines and templates for what this should include (found here).

Plan for authentication of key resources: This is a brand new component and I didn’t really know what it’s supposed to include, but I think you need to mention how you’re going to validate the identity of any reagents that could be contaminated or misidentified, such as transgenic or mutant animal strains, cell lines, antibodies, etc.