February 19, 2021 • 43 mins
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke’s Building Up the Nerve is a podcast for neuroscience trainees that takes you through the components of a grant application with successful awardees. We know that applying for NIH funding can be daunting, but we’re here to help—it’s our job!
In this episode, our grantee guests share their training and career goals and how they tell their science story in the Candidate/Applicant's Background and Goals section. Guests also provide insight on how they aligned their expectations with their advisers' to ensure synergy in the training experience and the application itself.
Featuring Ubadah Sabbagh, PhD candidate, Virginia Tech, Alejandra Fernandez, PhD, Postdoctoral Researcher, OHSU, and Laura Ngwenya, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Cincinnati.
Transcript available at http://ninds.buzzsprout.com/. This episode has been edited since its original publication.
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Lauren (00:02):
Welcome to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and
Stroke's, Building Up the Nerve, a podcastfor neuroscience trainees that takes
you through the components of a grantapplication with successful awardees.
We know that applying for NIHfunding can be daunting, but
we're here to help; it's our job.
Hi, I'm Lauren Ullrich, aprogram director at NINDS
Marguerite M (00:25):
and I'm Marguerite Matthews, a scientific program manager
at NINDS and we're your hosts today.
Lauren Ullric (00:31):
This episode will focus on the candidate or applicant's
background and goals section.
Uh, it has slightly differentname depending on whether you're
applying to an F or K mechanism,but the purpose is the same.
And we'll discuss how to define yourgoals, how to work with your mentor
on this section and how to presentyour previous research experiences
to support your application.
Marguerite Matth (00:51):
And of course, our disclaimer still applies.
Everything we talk about mayonly be relevant for NINDS.
So if you're applying to a different NIHInstitute or center, it's always best
to check with them about their policies.
Lauren Ullrich (01:11):
Our guests today are Ubadah Sabbagh, Dr. Alejandra
Fernandez and Dr. Laura Ngwenya.
So let's get startedwith our introductions.
Ubadah Sabbag (01:20):
I am a fifth year PhD student at Virginia tech.
Hopefully this is my final year,unless we have another shutdown.
This is recorded in COVID-19times, just to be clear.
So I study how the brain makessense of the world that's around us.
And specifically I work on how, uh,information that goes to the eye,
(01:42):
reaches the brain, how it's processed,how those connections between the
retina and specific parts of the brain,including in the thalamus, uh, how
those connections form, what moleculesare needed to guide their formation.
And then after they're formed, howdo they parse that visual input into
useful information for the brain?
Um, in terms of awards I've appliedto at the NIH, uh, I've applied to a
(02:06):
lot, but at the NIH, I've only appliedto one, which is the D-SPAN F99/K00.
And that's the only one that I got.
And my hobbies outside of work,besides doing like things like outreach
and stuff like that, non a workthings, are soccer and, um, running.
Running is my de-stressing activity.
Painting wasa quarantine resolution of
(02:29):
mine, but it never really took.
Lauren Ul (02:33):
I had a lot of those.
[laughter] And Alejandra?
Alejandra Fernandez (02:39):
Yeah.
So first of all, thankyou for inviting me.
And I'm a four year plus doctoralfellow at the Vollum Institute at
Oregon health and science university.
SoNIH awards that I have received
when I was in my--doing my gradwork, I received an F31, an NRSA.
(03:00):
And then during my post-doctoralfellowship, I received a K01 award.
So I'm interested in the developmentof sensory neurons within the
peripheral nervous system.
And in particular, I study how signalingpathways that are known to be altered
in autism spectrum disorders disrupt thedevelopment of sensory neurons and how
(03:23):
these defects could contribute to alteredsensation in autism spectrum disorders.
And hobbies or passions,uh, outside of work.
Uh, I have a daughter, so, um, scienceand a daughter that takes a lot of time,
uh, but I'm interested in first helpingher to understand science better and also
(03:47):
to, um, trying to figure out ways to help,like people that are not very into science
to try to better understand science.
I'm still trying to figure that out, butI think it's very important for everybody.
So that's kind of like my current passion.
Lauren Ullrich (04:02):
Ok great.
Laura (04:05):
Hi, so I'm Laura Ngwenya.
I am a neurosurgeon and a physicianscientist at the university of Cincinnati.
I'm an assistant professor.
In the past.
I've had a F31 whiledoing my graduate work.
During, um, my neurosurgery residencyI had some research time and applied
for an F 32, which I did not receive.
(04:25):
Um, and currently I have a K08.
Um, my research really is translational.
So it focuses on, um, some of thethings that I see clinically in my
traumatic brain injury patients, whichare, um, spreading depolarizations
it's, a abnormal brain activity, wesometimes call them brain tsunamis.
And we've found that, uh, these areseen in about 50 to 60% of patients
(04:47):
that have severe traumatic braininjury, but there's a lot we don't
know about these, so my K grant and mylaboratory work actually focuses on a
rat model of traumatic brain injury.
Uh, we looked at these spreadingdepolarizations and look at some of the
mechanisms behind them and look at howthey potentially influence things such as
adult neurogenesis and cognitive function.
(05:09):
Um, you know, in terms of hobbiesand passions outside of work, I
keep pretty busy as a neurosurgeonthat also has a basic science lab.
Um, I do like to travel and it's been alittle rough this year because I haven't
really been able to get any traveling in,but, um, but yeah, so that's, that's me.
Marguerite Matthews (05:25):
Wow.
Lauren Ull (05:26):
What's your favorite place that you've been to um, recently?
Laura Ngwenya (05:31):
Uh, recently, so, uh, last year I went to Japan.
I actually went to a conferencethere and then, um, finagle the
two weeks of vacation out of it.
So it was, I had never been to Japanbefore, so it was, that was pretty cool.
Marguerite Matthe (05:43):
That's great.
Did you get to travel around the country?
Laura Ngwenya (05:46):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I traveled around a bit.
Yep.
Marguerite Matthews (05:48):
Nice.
Lauren Ullrich (05:49):
Definitely on my bucket list.
Marguerite Matthews (05:55):
Alright.
Well, could each of you share yourgoals, sort of maybe more broadly
what your career goals are andspecifically how you approach defining
and refining your goals for thepurposes of your NIH grant application?
Ubadah Sabbag (06:12):
So, um, again, so I'm a PhD student, so my career and
the mechanism that I was applyingto, which is, again, the F99/K00, uh,
the DSPAN fellowship is aimed at, um,helping trainees transition from pre
doc to post doc stages of their career.
And so I stated my goals like asthreefold, actually one is to run
(06:37):
my own lab, um, after my post-docas an independent investigator.
And I specified the kind ofinstitution also that I would
ideally want to have a lab in.
I also said that one of my career goalsis to build a research program in a
lab environment that empowers trainees.
(06:57):
And so this was a really important thingfor me to say in my grants, because I
think it's something that I want to carrythrough my work throughout my career.
And so those were like kindof the overarching goals.
If you're talking about goals ofskills to develop and things like
that, that went into the training plan.
I can talk about that too.
Lauren Ullrich (07:16):
Yeah.
Why don't you expand on that a little bit?
Ubadah Sabbagh (07:19):
Okay.
So I have five main categoriesof goals that I specified, and I
spent a lot of time thinking aboutthe first of course is the obvious
one, which is technical skills.
Developing those is reallyimportant for any kind of research.
And so, uh, I was proposing work thata lot of which I was familiar with
(07:40):
how to do, and then some work that isnew to me, and some work that is new
to my lab in terms of, uh, laboratorytechniques involved in that work.
And so I talked about my goalsof learning those techniques
and how I'm gonna approach that.
Uh, whether it's taking a course,that's offered like a graduate level
course, if it's some kind of dataanalysis like computational tool,
(08:00):
then taking some training on thator collaborating with somebody.
So any, any kind of way that I candevelop those technical skills.
Another category was my criticalthinking and intellectual skills,
which are also really importantfor thinking about how to design
experiments and new questions to ask.
And those, um, can be developed bythings like journal clubs or presenting
(08:24):
talks and attending talks that areinternal and external to the institution.
Um, and then many other things like that.
And then communication skillsof course, for how to present my
work in written and oral form.
And so a lot of that comes withpractice and there's also workshops
on science, communication and datavisualization and things like that.
(08:44):
And then the fourth categorywas mentorship and training.
And that's because I, you know, oneof my goals is to be a mentor to other
students and postdocs down the line.
And so it's kind of a skill that needsto be developed, and there's nothing
inherent about the process of grad schoolor postdoc that makes you a good mentor.
And there's lots of trainingthat is out there, but you
(09:07):
kind of have to seek it out.
It's not, as I see, it's not like,uh, intrinsic to any programs that
are out there that I'm aware of.
So I talked about what kind of mentorI want to be and where I'm going to go
to start learning skills and receivetraining on how to be a better mentor.
And then the last category is teachingand pedagogy, which is another thing
(09:28):
I value as a scientist and educator.
And so I talked about TAing as a studentand also talked about guest lecturing,
um, as a student and as a post-doc.
So those were like the skill setcategories that I talked about developing.
And I think for me, they were a goodfit after thinking deeply about what
I'm lacking as a student, and then alsohaving conversations with my sponsor.
Alejandra Fernan (09:52):
So for me, um, my long-term goal is to develop, um,
independent line of research studying,uh, how altered circuits is affecting
behavioral, phenotypes in, as Isaid, I'm very interested in autism.
So the way that I divided my, mysection is I use two paragraphs
(10:13):
to pretty much state my goal.
And then I divided that in threespecific goals that I would
like to achieve with the award.
Uh, so it will be to develop thattechnical expertise, to acquire more
knowledge about the subject and to getadditional career development skills.
(10:35):
And this would be going to conferences,opportunities to talk about my research.
So that was kind of like my overallgoals that I wanted to achieve.
I also used the section to talka little bit about what made
me suitable to do the project.
(10:55):
So my expertise in the field--I'ma postdoctoral fellow, so I
wrote about my dissertationproject and how was it related.
And although it is not directlyrelated, the set of skills that
I developed as a graduate studentare useful for my research now.
So I talked about that and Ialso talk about what skills I
(11:16):
want to develop during the award.
So I'll be able to achieve mygoal for the next level, so as
an independent investigator.
That was kind of like howI divided the section.
So for that last part, I addedthat I wanted to get technical
experience on experimental design.
And I talked about how I was gonnawork with my mentor to develop the
(11:39):
experiments and what techniques arewe going to be using, and also what
pitfalls we may, encounter and then Ithink a very important thinking science
in general is quantitative data analysis.
Uh, so that's something that I, Ireally emphasize on my application,
(12:00):
what I was going to do to learn, tobe able to do the data analysis in
a statistical very significant way.
Overall, that was my focus.
So first describing my, what skills Ihad and then what I wanted to do, uh,
what I wanted to achieve and then whatI needed to do to achieve my goals
Laur (12:23):
my, uh, my goals were kind of similar to the other two speakers.
So, um, I set mine up in terms of sortof short-term and long-term goals.
So for my short term goals, I reallyfocused on sort of the additional
technical skills or, you know, kind oftechniques, um, experimental design type
of things that I wanted to learn as, aspart of my K. Um, it included, you know,
(12:47):
details on different electrophysiologicaltechniques, even learning some
bioinformatics, things like that.
And, uh, with those goals, Ihad sort of detailed ways in
which I would learn those.
So whether or not it was, you know,direct interaction with some of my
mentors versus going to particularcourses, attending seminars, et cetera.
(13:08):
And then my, my long-term goals, youknow, I want to have it independently
funded laboratory, but I have thatgoal as one, that's a laboratory
focused on translational research.
For me as a, as a neurosurgeonscientist, it's really important that
my basic science lab, um, continuesto be dedicated to, and sort of
relate it to what I do clinically.
(13:29):
Um, so I want to actually learn how toactually, uh, work on that translation and
to be successful sort of in both spheres.
Um, so I had that as one of my goals.
And then I also had as a long-termgoal that I wanted to work on being a
leader in, um, an academic neurosurgery.
This is one of the things that'simportant for me because there's very
(13:49):
few, uh, neurosurgeon scientists.
And I feel like if I'm going to takeon this role and if I'm going to be
successful, um, I have to be able tobe successful in my, in my field as a
whole, not in each sort of little silo.
So for me, it's important forme to actually get to a point
where I'm recognized as sort ofa leader in my sub-specialty.
(14:09):
Um, so I actually had in my, um,development plan things such as, um,
leadership courses and things thatwould actually help me to, to not just
learn the science, but to actuallyadvance as a leader in academics.
Lauren Ullrich (14:24):
Yeah.
That's a great point.
We're seeing a lot more incorporationof more leadership focused skills
in, especially in K awards, um, andcertainly more opportunities and
programs to get those, those skills.
So that's great that youwere ahead of the curve.
Now I want to talk a little bit aboutthe candidates background section.
(14:45):
So, you know, usually this is a summaryof your research experiences thus far, and
I wanted to talk and get your perspectiveof how you approach this section and how
did you make it exciting and engaging,especially when thinking about the
background and presenting your researchexperiences in the context of the current
(15:09):
application that you were writing, howdid you sort of tie them all together?
Or did you try to tie them all togetherand how did you approach that section?
Ubadah S (15:20):
So, in my application, uh, for the F99 K00, I kind
of started my background at myfirst summer research experience.
It was chronological.
I went into my undergraduate researchexperience, which was brief, but
very important to my development.
And then I, my graduate program hasrotations in the first year of your
PhD. And I felt that every rotation Iwas in, each lab that I, that I spent
(15:46):
time in, I learned some new techniquesor some new skills of doing research,
not just like collaboratory techniques.
And so I, I broke it down in that way.
So I had like a category of, or asection for doctoral research experience.
And I broke up that section into threesubsections that had each of my three
labs very briefly, like one paragraphfor each what I worked on there.
(16:09):
What was my goal?
What did I come out of thatexperience having learned?
I even would underline or bold.
I can't remember which, but I did,I basically highlighted somehow
the sentence, the one sentence thatsays, like what I came away from that
experience with and how that's relevantto what kind of scientist I am now and
propose to be in this, in this proposal.
(16:29):
And in fact, one of my rotations,the project was a complete failure
and I had zero data at the end of it.
Um, and it was like me tryingto do something like way, way
different than what I'm used to.
And so, uh, I talked about that and Italked about what I learned from it.
Um, and I talked about what I take fromthat experience to, to develop my current
project and my current, um, doctoral lab.
(16:51):
And then after that in the F99,because of its structure, I
talked about my current research.
There's a section in which youdiscuss your dissertation research
or your doctoral research up untilnow, uh, at the point of application.
And so I talked about that too.
What I've I worked on so far in thelab and, uh, if there's any products
from that, I mentioned those.
(17:12):
And then also what techniques I took awayfrom every project I've worked on, whether
it's writing or whether it's some new,like, I dunno, in situ hybridization or
some other like, technique, all of those.
I mentioned them.
And I think my goal during the wholeapplicant's background section, my goal
was basically to paint a picture to thereviewers, that all of my experiences
(17:35):
have been meaningful, even if they'vebeen unproductive, for example, in terms
of publications or posters, but they havebeen meaningful because I took away XYZ
things from each experience, and it showsthem that you can identify the value
and the skills that you're learning.
And also that you are learningthat you are getting training.
And so then getting more training throughsuch a fellowship would be a good thing
Alejandra Fernandez (17:59):
in my case, it's, it's similar in the K01.
Uh, so my goal for the candidatesbackground, uh, section was to try to
convince the reviewers that I am capableof doing the work that I propose to do.
So I used a session to elaborate moreon what my previous project was, my
(18:21):
dissertation project was, and thenwhat techniques and what experiments
I have gotten from my previous work.
And how was I was gonna use those to,uh, apply them to my current application.
And so for my rotations, I did, uh,very different things that were not
related to my dissertation, but atthe same time, it was very useful
(18:44):
because I got to learn differenttechniques that I didn't actually use
during my, my dissertation research.
So there was a lot of imaginginvolved and there's also a lot of
imaging involved in my current work.
So I focus on that particular point tolet the reviewers know that although
the imaging experiments that are Iwas proposing to do in the K01 were
(19:07):
not something trivial, I was able tolearn, given that I had the experience
with different, um, imaging techniques.
Laura N (19:15):
My section was, uh, was very similar to what others have said.
So I, I did also kind of do a surveyof all of the, you know, research
that I had done up to the point ofapplication, but I tried to focus it
so that it sort of filled in the gapsthat aren't necessarily sort of apparent
just in looking at my NIH biosketch.
(19:37):
So, um, for instance, if you justlook at my CV or my biosketch, it's
not necessarily clear that everythingis really related and, and how I've
gotten to the point where I am now.
So I really used the section for thecandidate information and background to
really talk about the research experiencesthat I've had, how they're related,
(19:58):
and how it brings me to this sort oftranslational research that allows me
to do research as a, as a physician.
And then I, I really tried to alsosort of explain how, um, having the
opportunity to do the K grant, um, would,would sort of enhance my knowledge,
not just in different techniques thatI would learn, but really allow me to
(20:20):
do this, this sort of translationalresearch and would, would also, um,
allow me the time to do it, cause for aK um, one of the important things is, is
that as a junior faculty, you actuallyget dedicated time to do research.
And for me as a neurosurgeon,that was super important.
So I used that background section toreally explain everything that I had
(20:40):
done up to now, how it led me to thissort of translational research and
to sort of show how I would benefitfrom having this protected time.
Marguerite Matthe (20:49):
Since each of you have an award that has a mentoring
component, how did you work withyour mentor in order to lay out many
of these things and write them out?
And is there anything that youfelt was a struggle to deal with?
You know, maybe you were not seeingeye to eye on a piece of the project,
or perhaps, um, there were somethings that you think needed to be
(21:13):
more clarified in terms of your goalsand how your mentor would fit in.
Um, what was that process like?
Laura N (21:20):
For me, um, as I worked with my mentor--I actually have kind
of a mentoring team, so, um, I havemy main mentor, but actually I have
a lot of mentors and they all, um, alot of them actually helped as I was
kind of compiling this application.
So one of the things that I struggledwith was how to, um, how to set up the
goals, because on paper it looks like Idon't need any additional training, cause
(21:44):
I'm already a neurosurgeon, I alreadyhave a PhD. So, you know, there was this,
okay, how do we set this up to show thatI'm actually going to learn from this?
And this is actually gonna help my career.
So, um, we spent a long timereally thinking about the different
techniques that I would be learning.
And, you know, my mentors worked withme in terms of, as I was writing, um,
what those goals were sort of explainingthat, you know, for instance, I talk
(22:06):
about electrophysiology and EEG.
And even though I'm a physician, I don'tcurrently actually read EGGs on patients.
So just talking about how thisactually is a, like something new that
I would be learning, that it's notsomething that I already do and already
know, and that there's value there.
And then, um, the leadership thingactually was something that, um,
(22:27):
I kind of struggled with, uh,between myself and my mentors.
We were trying to figureout what to do with that.
One of the things that, as I wasthinking about, you know, being a busy
neurosurgeon and getting a K and thinkingabout, am I going to construct a plan
that requires me to take additionalcoursework or, or go to seminars?
You know, what, what would Iactually want to be working on?
(22:47):
And I discussed with my mentor thatone of the things I really would
like to do was to take classes on,you know, leadership and so forth.
And, you know, we debated whether or notthat was something that was appropriate
for a K, but in discussing it, we finallydecided that we thought it would work.
And we, and we worked that in as a goal.
So it would allow me to, to say thatI would be taking classes and doing
(23:08):
things that were in line with stuff Iactually wanted to do so that I'm not
saying I'm going to take a bunch ofclasses that I didn't want to take.
But it did take a lot of work.
And my, my mentor workedwith me a lot on that.
Alejandra Fernan (23:20):
So for me, uh, it was, uh, a process in which, um,
my mentor was involved throughoutthe entire time that I was writing.
And we went back and forth trying toput together, um, the training plan and
write it in a way that it will make senseand will fit with the research plan.
(23:40):
So I, the first thing that I rememberdoing is that from day one, I told my
mentor, well, my goals are very specific.
This is exactly what I want todo, or I want to go and get a, uh,
an independent lab at some point.
Uh, so that was kind of like thefocus of the whole proposal, right?
(24:02):
Um, so because of the, because, becauseof the, because the research plan
doesn't--has some techniques thatI don't really, uh, have mastered,
and also the lab doesn't work inthose techniques, that was kind of
a crucial part of the, of the plan.
We needed to bring people inand have a mentorship committee.
(24:29):
So I have my, my principal mentorand then I have, uh, other professors
that are also part of the committee.
And the idea was that these otherpeople were going to contribute,
uh, to my training and that's forthe technical training and also for
(24:50):
the career development training.
Uh, so the whole process ofjust, uh, it was kind of like
a dialogue with my mentor.
So the whole process of justbuilding together the proposal,
um, just revising it over and overuntil everything fit together and
made sense, uh, that helped a lot.
(25:11):
So my mentor could also understand,uh, what my goal is in like where
the proposal should be going.
Ubadah Sabbagh (25:24):
Yeah.
So, um, much like what Alejandrajust said, I did coordinate a lot
with my mentor as, as I wrote this.
And in fact, the first thingI did was write the aims page.
And then right after that, I startedwith the training plan, um, before the
research strategy, because honestly,I think a lot of people when they're
(25:45):
writing this, they think they have anidea of the research they want to do.
They have a good idea, but the trainingplan, especially for fellowships, um,
is it really crucial component and,uh, takes a lot of thought and at least
in my case, some backwards planning.
And so I just stated mybroad goals to my mentor.
(26:06):
We talked about them a little bit.
And then, and then I just went and Istarted writing about what strategies
I will use, or what approaches I'lluse to like address each, each training
goal that I have or training objective.
How am I going to start developing that?
And then I think about--this is again,the F99/K00 is a transition mechanism.
(26:27):
And in this grant, you have to talk aboutalso your goals for your postdoctoral
phase, which you're still a grad student,you don't even have a PhD yet, but you got
to think about, which is really useful.
And so you think about what techniquesare involved in the kind of research
that you want to do as a post-doc.
And what conferences are, are, are,are around that are relevant to
your research now, and that wouldbe around to your research later.
(26:50):
Um, and so I also like even drewout an illustration of a timeline
that had, um, all the meetings thatI would want to attend, including
like Society for Neuroscience, ofcourse, but also like other like
smaller things like a Gordon researchconference or, or a course, maybe.
So I said, I wanted to attend asummer course at Cold Spring Harbor
(27:12):
that's related to my like very nichefield, which is visual neuroscience.
And then I also like plotted outwhere would I have opportunities to
give talks internally and externally?
So I set goals for myself of like, okay,I want to, I want to give talks at, um,
these internal symposia that we have, orseminar series, and also like at these
meetings, I want to aim to give talks.
(27:32):
Of course you have to have it accepted.
And then I would go back to my PIand we would talk about those goals.
And we would talk about that plan andwhether they come in at the right times
and which meetings are better thanwhich, and whether I'm overloading
my year with conferences, um, givingme very little time to do the actual
experiments that I would be presenting on.
And then of course, we talked abouthow it would break down my efforts, my
(27:55):
percent effort each year, in terms ofhow much writing, how much research, how
much mentorship and how much professionaldevelopment efforts I'll have each year.
So I used those four categoriesand it was an important discussion
also to have with my mentor.
And then the last thing, which I thinkis, uh, another like specific thing to
this mechanism is that you need to thinkabout how you're going to identify a
(28:19):
postdoctoral mentor as a PhD student.
And so that also involves, you know,ideally, conversations with your mentor
and I, and so I, I did have thoseconversations and whether it's meeting
them at conferences or whether it'snetworking, uh, when they come to your
institution and give talks, uh, you know,sometimes trainees have lunch with them
(28:39):
and stuff like that, or whether it's likesaying, you know, I'll tap into my PIs
network of colleagues, if that's still thefield that you would want to postdoc in.
And then you talk about also, what areyour criteria for a postdoc mentor?
You know, do they have the big lab, oris it small, you know, are they super
senior established investigators orare they more early career researchers?
And what kind of institutionalenvironments are you looking for?
(29:02):
And so on.
So those were also conversationsthat had to have with my PI.
And so it was constant, like, revisionand then having a conversation,
revision, having a conversation, kindof what, like, what Alejandra said.
And, um, I think that that reallyhelps develop a coherent training
plan that shows that you're being verythoughtful and very intentional about
(29:25):
the next, in my case, it was six years,which is crazy.'Cause I never think
that far ahead for anything, but likesix years of your career, you know,
what are you going to do each year?
And what, what are your goals for eachyear and how are going to achieve them?
Lauren (29:37):
So besides your mentor, was there anyone else that you asked to
give feedback on your grant and were thereany revisions that you made in response
to that feedback and especially thinkingabout this background and goals section,
was there anything that you thought wasclear that wasn't, or, you know, they
(30:00):
identified that something was missing?
Do you have any experiences like that?
Alejandra Fernan (30:05):
So for me, uh, people from the lab were, um, very
nice, uh, and instrumental, uh, whileI was revising this, because I pretty
much just ask everybody to justread, um, my, candidate's background
section and just tell me whether itwas clear, whether it made sense?
(30:27):
It is, it is sometimes, sometimeswhen you're writing, what you're
writing seems clear to you, but itmay not be clear to everybody else.
So having, uh, other members of thelab, like, from students to post-docs
everybody just look at it and saywhether it was clear or not, that
was very useful for my proposal.
(30:49):
Of course.
Uh, I had to make changes based on that,but I think that will, that exercise
made my proposal, uh, more clear.
Ubadah Sabba (30:57):
So I, I definitely echo the fact that what might be
clear to you is not going to beclear to other people necessarily.
And often I think it is not.
So I had, I have people read overmy training plan that were PIs at
my institution, including of coursemy mentor, but also people who are
not involved in my mentorship andalso are not in my field at all.
(31:20):
And so, um, I had somebody who was acardiovascular biologist read my proposal.
And, and then I also sent it to, I thinkby the time I was done with my training
plan, maybe six people had seen itand given me comments and, uh, some of
them were graduate students I know atother institutions, some of them were
(31:40):
like post-docs, uh, but again, noneof them are in my fields because the
D-SPAN F99 is a neuroscience-specificstudy section, but it's not a, um, any
kind of like discipline specific one.
And so that's why I wanted to havepeople who were not necessarily
visual neuroscientists or sensoryneuroscientists review the writing
(32:02):
and see whether it makes sense.
And I think something that I benefitedfrom that, besides people, you know,
helping me with like grammar and whateverit is, but like the explanations of what I
learned or the explanations of what I didin the, in the background section needed
to be succinct, but also informative.
And so sometimes when we're trying to besuccinct, we use more jargon because like
(32:24):
a big word is equivalent to many smallerwords, but then it doesn't make sense
to anybody unless they're in our field.
And so it was helpful to havepeople look at it that weren't
a visual neuroscientists.
And then another thing I wouldsuggest, and I advise everyone to do
this is to try to find somebody who'sgotten an award that you're applying
to and get their feedback on it.
(32:46):
Um, if they have the time, of course, youknow, see if they, if what they think of
your proposal and if it makes sense, or ifyou're writing along the lines of what's,
what's appropriate for that proposal.
Laura Ngwenya (32:58):
Yeah.
I guess, uh, my comment on this one,I'll kind of go off of the last thing
just said I had a, um, a colleague whoseoffice is next to mine who has a K23.
So, um, his is a little bit differentbecause it's clinical research,
but I had him look over the, um,candidate background section of
mine to see what his thoughts were,um, and to see if he thought that
(33:20):
the way that I had set up sort of acareer development plan made sense.
So yeah, I echo that.
I think if you know, someone that has asimilar grant and is familiar with sort
of this background section, um, havingsomebody else give it a read is, is great.
Ubadah Sab (33:33):
And if I could just, uh, I would say for the F's, at least
I know like, uh, if you know, somebodywho sat on any F grant study section
really great to have them look at it.
And also if you don't knowanybody who's ever received the
award that you're applying to,there's also, it's also, okay.
I've learned, to just likekind of cold email people.
Marguerite Matthe (34:02):
Thank you all for sharing your wisdom with us today.
Um, and since so many applicantsseem to have a problem with talking
about themselves and thinking about,um, ways in which to approach the
candidate and applicant background andgoals section, can each of you give
us one last piece of parting advice,especially as it relates to being
(34:24):
confident about approaching this section?
Laura Ng (34:27):
Yeah, so I think it is really important to be able to write
about yourself in a positive light,and also be able to show, um, your
strengths and show what you'll learnto gain from the development award.
Um, I did struggle with this a bit,and that was something that my, my
mentors were able to help me with.
In addition, you know, I think,you know, my advice to people would
(34:50):
be essentially just to, you know,write this section first, actually.
I spent, I think more time on thissection than I did on the research
strategy, um, because it, it really isharder to write and it takes some time
to really think about what are yourgoals, what's the development plan.
Um, so I, I really actually spentmore time writing this section and I
(35:11):
did this one first, just because the,the research and the science, um,
comes, comes across pretty easily.
And that's the part that, you knowthat part, but this is something that's
sort of almost weird and differentto have to think about and write.
So yeah, that would be sortof my kind of final word.
I think actually in terms of the scoring,it ends up being kind of counts as like
two sections versus the science, it'sjust sort of one section in terms of
(35:34):
the way the scoring goes for these.
So it's super important.
Alejandra Fernande (35:38):
So my advice for other trainees is to start
writing early and we hear this a lot.
At least I have heard this a lot.
And I cannot emphasize how importantit is that you start thinking
about the process and writing.
(35:59):
And this is for every section.
So what I usually do is I usually dothe specific aims page, and then I
start writing like the different parts.
And then at the end, if you don'tstart early, there's not enough
time for you to see whether thewhole application is coherent.
And I think that's very important becauseI feel that usually people just give
(36:24):
priority to the science because that'swhat you're proposing to do, right?
But what I feel is that if youconsider that every section is
important, just as important as thescience, then your application has
more chances of being successful.
So I would say yes, just start early andget the time to just work through all the
(36:49):
sections and through every single detailuntil you are happy with your application
and have enough time to send that out.
Lauren Ullrich (36:58):
Yeah.
Thank you for saying that becausethat's what we always say, but I feel
like people don't always listen to uswhen it comes to advice from NINDS.
So, um, we like to hearit from you all as well.
Ubadah Sabbagh (37:11):
Yeah.
I, I think, uh, I definitelywould say start early.
And so the question of, youknow, how do you get comfortable
talking about yourself?
I mean, time helps, but also ifit never happens, like it's okay,
but you still have to do it.
And, um, I think for PhD students,particularly because, I mean, I feel
like that's the experience I can speakto at least, you know, grant writing
(37:33):
isn't just for getting funding, althoughthat's like great and useful, but it's
also like a really good skill to learnhow to put your ideas down on paper.
And it's a really good skill to learnhow to communicate your abilities
and your skills and your background.
Because by the time you've finishedtalking about your background and
(37:56):
then finished articulating yourgoals and finished planning out how
you're going to meet those goals,you'll feel much more confident.
I feel like if you put in the effortinto like the writing and the thinking
that goes behind the proposal, you'llfeel more confident about, you know,
your path, uh, as a student and, and whatyou want to achieve or hope to achieve.
(38:18):
And so like, if you're not comfortablekind of talking about yourself,
then at least think about it asyou kind of coaching yourself and
trying to just kind of be your,be your best advocate, kind of.
Set your goals and then thinkabout for your own sake, how
you want to achieve them.
And then the background section, youdon't think of it as like a glorified CV.
And you're just kind of talking aboutwhat you've done, but using more words and
(38:42):
talking about what you--like a reflectionessay, like what did you learn from those
experiences that make you ready to carryout the proposed work that you have?
And really, I always tell students the wayI see writing grants is like, it's kind
of like a, a handholding exercise where Ifeel like I'm, my goal as I set this whole
(39:05):
plan in front of a reviewer is just holdtheir hand and walk them through my plan.
And every time I feel like they mighthave a concern or a fear that might
come up like, okay, well, how's hegoing to do like whatever, a single
cell RNA sequencing or whatever, somecrazy technique you're proposing,
like, how's he going to do this?
Then I have an answer.
I'm going to take this workshop.
I'm going to take this class.
I'm going to collaboratewith this one person.
(39:27):
And any time you feel like theirconcerns might start bubbling up,
you just like, hold their handand be like, no, no, no, relax.
I got it figured out,I'm going to do this.
And that, this is how I'm going to learnand this is how I'm going to train, this
is how I'm going to develop that skill.
I don't know.
It's what helps me kind of think aboutwhere potential pitfalls in my plan are
and kind of addressing them preemptivelyso that I don't have to wait to get it
(39:50):
into summary statements, which is likewhat the reviewer feedback is called.
Marguerite Ma (39:55):
Ubadah, you sound like Steve Korn from season one in
the sense that he believes that thisapplication process really is about
making you a better science and not justabout the money, the money is great if
you're funded, but that's this entiregrant writing process is so much more,
(40:17):
um, it really allows you the opportunityto do some self-reflection on your
training, your goals, and how to work withyour mentor to actualize those things.
So, Lauren, what's your advice?
Lauren Ul (40:35):
Um, I think following up on what Ubadah was saying, also,
is really trying to think about whatconcerns reviewers might have, and instead
of trying to hide what you perceive asyour flaws, coming out ahead of them,
just like Ubadah said, you know, theymight have a question about X and so
(40:58):
I'm gonna like put it front and center,how I'm going to address X. So you feel
like you don't have enough publications.
Great.
What's your plan to get thosepublications within the next year?
And so too many times we see peopletrying to, um, sort of hide the
fact that they don't have a lotof publications, for example, and
(41:19):
reviewers always see through that.
So instead of trying to hide,come up with a plan to mitigate.
And what about you Marguerite?
Marguerite Matthe (41:30):
I really like the theme of utilizing the people in
your community, the people around youto help make your application better.
Asking for folks who aren't even in yoursame research area for feedback about how
you talk about yourself, is this clear?
Um, and so there are so many folks,um, who may not be on your dissertation
(41:51):
committee, who may not be yoursponsor or your direct mentor, but
who can provide a lot of value toyou in terms of support and feedback.
Um, and he should definitely tap intothose people and allow them to, um,
boost you up and help make you a betterperson, a better scientist, rather.
Lauren Ullrich (42:10):
I like that.
So that's all we have time fortoday on Building Up the Nerve.
Thank you to our guests thisweek for sharing their expertise.
And thank you to NINDS programdirector Dr. Bob Riddle, who
composed our theme song and music.
We'll see you next time when we tackledthe mentor and sponsor statement.
Marguerite Matthew (42:34):
You can find past episodes of this podcast and
many more grant application resourceson the web at NINDS.NIH.gov.
Email us with questionsat nindsnervepod@nih.gov.
Make sure you subscribe to the podcaston Apple podcast or your podcast app
(42:54):
of choice so you don't miss an episode.
We'll see you next time.
Welcome to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and
Stroke's, Building Up the Nerve, a podcastfor neuroscience trainees that takes
you through the components of a grantapplication with successful awardees.
We know that applying for NIHfunding can be daunting, but
we're here to help; it's our job.
Hi, I'm Lauren Ullrich, aprogram director at NINDS
Marguerite M (00:25):
and I'm Marguerite Matthews, a scientific program manager
at NINDS and we're your hosts today.
Lauren Ullric (00:31):
This episode will focus on the candidate or applicant's
background and goals section.
Uh, it has slightly differentname depending on whether you're
applying to an F or K mechanism,but the purpose is the same.
And we'll discuss how to define yourgoals, how to work with your mentor
on this section and how to presentyour previous research experiences
to support your application.
Marguerite Matth (00:51):
And of course, our disclaimer still applies.
Everything we talk about mayonly be relevant for NINDS.
So if you're applying to a different NIHInstitute or center, it's always best
to check with them about their policies.
Lauren Ullrich (01:11):
Our guests today are Ubadah Sabbagh, Dr. Alejandra
Fernandez and Dr. Laura Ngwenya.
So let's get startedwith our introductions.
Ubadah Sabbag (01:20):
I am a fifth year PhD student at Virginia tech.
Hopefully this is my final year,unless we have another shutdown.
This is recorded in COVID-19times, just to be clear.
So I study how the brain makessense of the world that's around us.
And specifically I work on how, uh,information that goes to the eye,
(01:42):
reaches the brain, how it's processed,how those connections between the
retina and specific parts of the brain,including in the thalamus, uh, how
those connections form, what moleculesare needed to guide their formation.
And then after they're formed, howdo they parse that visual input into
useful information for the brain?
Um, in terms of awards I've appliedto at the NIH, uh, I've applied to a
(02:06):
lot, but at the NIH, I've only appliedto one, which is the D-SPAN F99/K00.
And that's the only one that I got.
And my hobbies outside of work,besides doing like things like outreach
and stuff like that, non a workthings, are soccer and, um, running.
Running is my de-stressing activity.
Painting wasa quarantine resolution of
(02:29):
mine, but it never really took.
Lauren Ul (02:33):
I had a lot of those.
[laughter] And Alejandra?
Alejandra Fernandez (02:39):
Yeah.
So first of all, thankyou for inviting me.
And I'm a four year plus doctoralfellow at the Vollum Institute at
Oregon health and science university.
SoNIH awards that I have received
when I was in my--doing my gradwork, I received an F31, an NRSA.
(03:00):
And then during my post-doctoralfellowship, I received a K01 award.
So I'm interested in the developmentof sensory neurons within the
peripheral nervous system.
And in particular, I study how signalingpathways that are known to be altered
in autism spectrum disorders disrupt thedevelopment of sensory neurons and how
(03:23):
these defects could contribute to alteredsensation in autism spectrum disorders.
And hobbies or passions,uh, outside of work.
Uh, I have a daughter, so, um, scienceand a daughter that takes a lot of time,
uh, but I'm interested in first helpingher to understand science better and also
(03:47):
to, um, trying to figure out ways to help,like people that are not very into science
to try to better understand science.
I'm still trying to figure that out, butI think it's very important for everybody.
So that's kind of like my current passion.
Lauren Ullrich (04:02):
Ok great.
Laura (04:05):
Hi, so I'm Laura Ngwenya.
I am a neurosurgeon and a physicianscientist at the university of Cincinnati.
I'm an assistant professor.
In the past.
I've had a F31 whiledoing my graduate work.
During, um, my neurosurgery residencyI had some research time and applied
for an F 32, which I did not receive.
(04:25):
Um, and currently I have a K08.
Um, my research really is translational.
So it focuses on, um, some of thethings that I see clinically in my
traumatic brain injury patients, whichare, um, spreading depolarizations
it's, a abnormal brain activity, wesometimes call them brain tsunamis.
And we've found that, uh, these areseen in about 50 to 60% of patients
(04:47):
that have severe traumatic braininjury, but there's a lot we don't
know about these, so my K grant and mylaboratory work actually focuses on a
rat model of traumatic brain injury.
Uh, we looked at these spreadingdepolarizations and look at some of the
mechanisms behind them and look at howthey potentially influence things such as
adult neurogenesis and cognitive function.
(05:09):
Um, you know, in terms of hobbiesand passions outside of work, I
keep pretty busy as a neurosurgeonthat also has a basic science lab.
Um, I do like to travel and it's been alittle rough this year because I haven't
really been able to get any traveling in,but, um, but yeah, so that's, that's me.
Marguerite Matthews (05:25):
Wow.
Lauren Ull (05:26):
What's your favorite place that you've been to um, recently?
Laura Ngwenya (05:31):
Uh, recently, so, uh, last year I went to Japan.
I actually went to a conferencethere and then, um, finagle the
two weeks of vacation out of it.
So it was, I had never been to Japanbefore, so it was, that was pretty cool.
Marguerite Matthe (05:43):
That's great.
Did you get to travel around the country?
Laura Ngwenya (05:46):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I traveled around a bit.
Yep.
Marguerite Matthews (05:48):
Nice.
Lauren Ullrich (05:49):
Definitely on my bucket list.
Marguerite Matthews (05:55):
Alright.
Well, could each of you share yourgoals, sort of maybe more broadly
what your career goals are andspecifically how you approach defining
and refining your goals for thepurposes of your NIH grant application?
Ubadah Sabbag (06:12):
So, um, again, so I'm a PhD student, so my career and
the mechanism that I was applyingto, which is, again, the F99/K00, uh,
the DSPAN fellowship is aimed at, um,helping trainees transition from pre
doc to post doc stages of their career.
And so I stated my goals like asthreefold, actually one is to run
(06:37):
my own lab, um, after my post-docas an independent investigator.
And I specified the kind ofinstitution also that I would
ideally want to have a lab in.
I also said that one of my career goalsis to build a research program in a
lab environment that empowers trainees.
(06:57):
And so this was a really important thingfor me to say in my grants, because I
think it's something that I want to carrythrough my work throughout my career.
And so those were like kindof the overarching goals.
If you're talking about goals ofskills to develop and things like
that, that went into the training plan.
I can talk about that too.
Lauren Ullrich (07:16):
Yeah.
Why don't you expand on that a little bit?
Ubadah Sabbagh (07:19):
Okay.
So I have five main categoriesof goals that I specified, and I
spent a lot of time thinking aboutthe first of course is the obvious
one, which is technical skills.
Developing those is reallyimportant for any kind of research.
And so, uh, I was proposing work thata lot of which I was familiar with
(07:40):
how to do, and then some work that isnew to me, and some work that is new
to my lab in terms of, uh, laboratorytechniques involved in that work.
And so I talked about my goalsof learning those techniques
and how I'm gonna approach that.
Uh, whether it's taking a course,that's offered like a graduate level
course, if it's some kind of dataanalysis like computational tool,
(08:00):
then taking some training on thator collaborating with somebody.
So any, any kind of way that I candevelop those technical skills.
Another category was my criticalthinking and intellectual skills,
which are also really importantfor thinking about how to design
experiments and new questions to ask.
And those, um, can be developed bythings like journal clubs or presenting
(08:24):
talks and attending talks that areinternal and external to the institution.
Um, and then many other things like that.
And then communication skillsof course, for how to present my
work in written and oral form.
And so a lot of that comes withpractice and there's also workshops
on science, communication and datavisualization and things like that.
(08:44):
And then the fourth categorywas mentorship and training.
And that's because I, you know, oneof my goals is to be a mentor to other
students and postdocs down the line.
And so it's kind of a skill that needsto be developed, and there's nothing
inherent about the process of grad schoolor postdoc that makes you a good mentor.
And there's lots of trainingthat is out there, but you
(09:07):
kind of have to seek it out.
It's not, as I see, it's not like,uh, intrinsic to any programs that
are out there that I'm aware of.
So I talked about what kind of mentorI want to be and where I'm going to go
to start learning skills and receivetraining on how to be a better mentor.
And then the last category is teachingand pedagogy, which is another thing
(09:28):
I value as a scientist and educator.
And so I talked about TAing as a studentand also talked about guest lecturing,
um, as a student and as a post-doc.
So those were like the skill setcategories that I talked about developing.
And I think for me, they were a goodfit after thinking deeply about what
I'm lacking as a student, and then alsohaving conversations with my sponsor.
Alejandra Fernan (09:52):
So for me, um, my long-term goal is to develop, um,
independent line of research studying,uh, how altered circuits is affecting
behavioral, phenotypes in, as Isaid, I'm very interested in autism.
So the way that I divided my, mysection is I use two paragraphs
(10:13):
to pretty much state my goal.
And then I divided that in threespecific goals that I would
like to achieve with the award.
Uh, so it will be to develop thattechnical expertise, to acquire more
knowledge about the subject and to getadditional career development skills.
(10:35):
And this would be going to conferences,opportunities to talk about my research.
So that was kind of like my overallgoals that I wanted to achieve.
I also used the section to talka little bit about what made
me suitable to do the project.
(10:55):
So my expertise in the field--I'ma postdoctoral fellow, so I
wrote about my dissertationproject and how was it related.
And although it is not directlyrelated, the set of skills that
I developed as a graduate studentare useful for my research now.
So I talked about that and Ialso talk about what skills I
(11:16):
want to develop during the award.
So I'll be able to achieve mygoal for the next level, so as
an independent investigator.
That was kind of like howI divided the section.
So for that last part, I addedthat I wanted to get technical
experience on experimental design.
And I talked about how I was gonnawork with my mentor to develop the
(11:39):
experiments and what techniques arewe going to be using, and also what
pitfalls we may, encounter and then Ithink a very important thinking science
in general is quantitative data analysis.
Uh, so that's something that I, Ireally emphasize on my application,
(12:00):
what I was going to do to learn, tobe able to do the data analysis in
a statistical very significant way.
Overall, that was my focus.
So first describing my, what skills Ihad and then what I wanted to do, uh,
what I wanted to achieve and then whatI needed to do to achieve my goals
Laur (12:23):
my, uh, my goals were kind of similar to the other two speakers.
So, um, I set mine up in terms of sortof short-term and long-term goals.
So for my short term goals, I reallyfocused on sort of the additional
technical skills or, you know, kind oftechniques, um, experimental design type
of things that I wanted to learn as, aspart of my K. Um, it included, you know,
(12:47):
details on different electrophysiologicaltechniques, even learning some
bioinformatics, things like that.
And, uh, with those goals, Ihad sort of detailed ways in
which I would learn those.
So whether or not it was, you know,direct interaction with some of my
mentors versus going to particularcourses, attending seminars, et cetera.
(13:08):
And then my, my long-term goals, youknow, I want to have it independently
funded laboratory, but I have thatgoal as one, that's a laboratory
focused on translational research.
For me as a, as a neurosurgeonscientist, it's really important that
my basic science lab, um, continuesto be dedicated to, and sort of
relate it to what I do clinically.
(13:29):
Um, so I want to actually learn how toactually, uh, work on that translation and
to be successful sort of in both spheres.
Um, so I had that as one of my goals.
And then I also had as a long-termgoal that I wanted to work on being a
leader in, um, an academic neurosurgery.
This is one of the things that'simportant for me because there's very
(13:49):
few, uh, neurosurgeon scientists.
And I feel like if I'm going to takeon this role and if I'm going to be
successful, um, I have to be able tobe successful in my, in my field as a
whole, not in each sort of little silo.
So for me, it's important forme to actually get to a point
where I'm recognized as sort ofa leader in my sub-specialty.
(14:09):
Um, so I actually had in my, um,development plan things such as, um,
leadership courses and things thatwould actually help me to, to not just
learn the science, but to actuallyadvance as a leader in academics.
Lauren Ullrich (14:24):
Yeah.
That's a great point.
We're seeing a lot more incorporationof more leadership focused skills
in, especially in K awards, um, andcertainly more opportunities and
programs to get those, those skills.
So that's great that youwere ahead of the curve.
Now I want to talk a little bit aboutthe candidates background section.
(14:45):
So, you know, usually this is a summaryof your research experiences thus far, and
I wanted to talk and get your perspectiveof how you approach this section and how
did you make it exciting and engaging,especially when thinking about the
background and presenting your researchexperiences in the context of the current
(15:09):
application that you were writing, howdid you sort of tie them all together?
Or did you try to tie them all togetherand how did you approach that section?
Ubadah S (15:20):
So, in my application, uh, for the F99 K00, I kind
of started my background at myfirst summer research experience.
It was chronological.
I went into my undergraduate researchexperience, which was brief, but
very important to my development.
And then I, my graduate program hasrotations in the first year of your
PhD. And I felt that every rotation Iwas in, each lab that I, that I spent
(15:46):
time in, I learned some new techniquesor some new skills of doing research,
not just like collaboratory techniques.
And so I, I broke it down in that way.
So I had like a category of, or asection for doctoral research experience.
And I broke up that section into threesubsections that had each of my three
labs very briefly, like one paragraphfor each what I worked on there.
(16:09):
What was my goal?
What did I come out of thatexperience having learned?
I even would underline or bold.
I can't remember which, but I did,I basically highlighted somehow
the sentence, the one sentence thatsays, like what I came away from that
experience with and how that's relevantto what kind of scientist I am now and
propose to be in this, in this proposal.
(16:29):
And in fact, one of my rotations,the project was a complete failure
and I had zero data at the end of it.
Um, and it was like me tryingto do something like way, way
different than what I'm used to.
And so, uh, I talked about that and Italked about what I learned from it.
Um, and I talked about what I take fromthat experience to, to develop my current
project and my current, um, doctoral lab.
(16:51):
And then after that in the F99,because of its structure, I
talked about my current research.
There's a section in which youdiscuss your dissertation research
or your doctoral research up untilnow, uh, at the point of application.
And so I talked about that too.
What I've I worked on so far in thelab and, uh, if there's any products
from that, I mentioned those.
(17:12):
And then also what techniques I took awayfrom every project I've worked on, whether
it's writing or whether it's some new,like, I dunno, in situ hybridization or
some other like, technique, all of those.
I mentioned them.
And I think my goal during the wholeapplicant's background section, my goal
was basically to paint a picture to thereviewers, that all of my experiences
(17:35):
have been meaningful, even if they'vebeen unproductive, for example, in terms
of publications or posters, but they havebeen meaningful because I took away XYZ
things from each experience, and it showsthem that you can identify the value
and the skills that you're learning.
And also that you are learningthat you are getting training.
And so then getting more training throughsuch a fellowship would be a good thing
Alejandra Fernandez (17:59):
in my case, it's, it's similar in the K01.
Uh, so my goal for the candidatesbackground, uh, section was to try to
convince the reviewers that I am capableof doing the work that I propose to do.
So I used a session to elaborate moreon what my previous project was, my
(18:21):
dissertation project was, and thenwhat techniques and what experiments
I have gotten from my previous work.
And how was I was gonna use those to,uh, apply them to my current application.
And so for my rotations, I did, uh,very different things that were not
related to my dissertation, but atthe same time, it was very useful
(18:44):
because I got to learn differenttechniques that I didn't actually use
during my, my dissertation research.
So there was a lot of imaginginvolved and there's also a lot of
imaging involved in my current work.
So I focus on that particular point tolet the reviewers know that although
the imaging experiments that are Iwas proposing to do in the K01 were
(19:07):
not something trivial, I was able tolearn, given that I had the experience
with different, um, imaging techniques.
Laura N (19:15):
My section was, uh, was very similar to what others have said.
So I, I did also kind of do a surveyof all of the, you know, research
that I had done up to the point ofapplication, but I tried to focus it
so that it sort of filled in the gapsthat aren't necessarily sort of apparent
just in looking at my NIH biosketch.
(19:37):
So, um, for instance, if you justlook at my CV or my biosketch, it's
not necessarily clear that everythingis really related and, and how I've
gotten to the point where I am now.
So I really used the section for thecandidate information and background to
really talk about the research experiencesthat I've had, how they're related,
(19:58):
and how it brings me to this sort oftranslational research that allows me
to do research as a, as a physician.
And then I, I really tried to alsosort of explain how, um, having the
opportunity to do the K grant, um, would,would sort of enhance my knowledge,
not just in different techniques thatI would learn, but really allow me to
(20:20):
do this, this sort of translationalresearch and would, would also, um,
allow me the time to do it, cause for aK um, one of the important things is, is
that as a junior faculty, you actuallyget dedicated time to do research.
And for me as a neurosurgeon,that was super important.
So I used that background section toreally explain everything that I had
(20:40):
done up to now, how it led me to thissort of translational research and
to sort of show how I would benefitfrom having this protected time.
Marguerite Matthe (20:49):
Since each of you have an award that has a mentoring
component, how did you work withyour mentor in order to lay out many
of these things and write them out?
And is there anything that youfelt was a struggle to deal with?
You know, maybe you were not seeingeye to eye on a piece of the project,
or perhaps, um, there were somethings that you think needed to be
(21:13):
more clarified in terms of your goalsand how your mentor would fit in.
Um, what was that process like?
Laura N (21:20):
For me, um, as I worked with my mentor--I actually have kind
of a mentoring team, so, um, I havemy main mentor, but actually I have
a lot of mentors and they all, um, alot of them actually helped as I was
kind of compiling this application.
So one of the things that I struggledwith was how to, um, how to set up the
goals, because on paper it looks like Idon't need any additional training, cause
(21:44):
I'm already a neurosurgeon, I alreadyhave a PhD. So, you know, there was this,
okay, how do we set this up to show thatI'm actually going to learn from this?
And this is actually gonna help my career.
So, um, we spent a long timereally thinking about the different
techniques that I would be learning.
And, you know, my mentors worked withme in terms of, as I was writing, um,
what those goals were sort of explainingthat, you know, for instance, I talk
(22:06):
about electrophysiology and EEG.
And even though I'm a physician, I don'tcurrently actually read EGGs on patients.
So just talking about how thisactually is a, like something new that
I would be learning, that it's notsomething that I already do and already
know, and that there's value there.
And then, um, the leadership thingactually was something that, um,
(22:27):
I kind of struggled with, uh,between myself and my mentors.
We were trying to figureout what to do with that.
One of the things that, as I wasthinking about, you know, being a busy
neurosurgeon and getting a K and thinkingabout, am I going to construct a plan
that requires me to take additionalcoursework or, or go to seminars?
You know, what, what would Iactually want to be working on?
(22:47):
And I discussed with my mentor thatone of the things I really would
like to do was to take classes on,you know, leadership and so forth.
And, you know, we debated whether or notthat was something that was appropriate
for a K, but in discussing it, we finallydecided that we thought it would work.
And we, and we worked that in as a goal.
So it would allow me to, to say thatI would be taking classes and doing
(23:08):
things that were in line with stuff Iactually wanted to do so that I'm not
saying I'm going to take a bunch ofclasses that I didn't want to take.
But it did take a lot of work.
And my, my mentor workedwith me a lot on that.
Alejandra Fernan (23:20):
So for me, uh, it was, uh, a process in which, um,
my mentor was involved throughoutthe entire time that I was writing.
And we went back and forth trying toput together, um, the training plan and
write it in a way that it will make senseand will fit with the research plan.
(23:40):
So I, the first thing that I rememberdoing is that from day one, I told my
mentor, well, my goals are very specific.
This is exactly what I want todo, or I want to go and get a, uh,
an independent lab at some point.
Uh, so that was kind of like thefocus of the whole proposal, right?
(24:02):
Um, so because of the, because, becauseof the, because the research plan
doesn't--has some techniques thatI don't really, uh, have mastered,
and also the lab doesn't work inthose techniques, that was kind of
a crucial part of the, of the plan.
We needed to bring people inand have a mentorship committee.
(24:29):
So I have my, my principal mentorand then I have, uh, other professors
that are also part of the committee.
And the idea was that these otherpeople were going to contribute,
uh, to my training and that's forthe technical training and also for
(24:50):
the career development training.
Uh, so the whole process ofjust, uh, it was kind of like
a dialogue with my mentor.
So the whole process of justbuilding together the proposal,
um, just revising it over and overuntil everything fit together and
made sense, uh, that helped a lot.
(25:11):
So my mentor could also understand,uh, what my goal is in like where
the proposal should be going.
Ubadah Sabbagh (25:24):
Yeah.
So, um, much like what Alejandrajust said, I did coordinate a lot
with my mentor as, as I wrote this.
And in fact, the first thingI did was write the aims page.
And then right after that, I startedwith the training plan, um, before the
research strategy, because honestly,I think a lot of people when they're
(25:45):
writing this, they think they have anidea of the research they want to do.
They have a good idea, but the trainingplan, especially for fellowships, um,
is it really crucial component and,uh, takes a lot of thought and at least
in my case, some backwards planning.
And so I just stated mybroad goals to my mentor.
(26:06):
We talked about them a little bit.
And then, and then I just went and Istarted writing about what strategies
I will use, or what approaches I'lluse to like address each, each training
goal that I have or training objective.
How am I going to start developing that?
And then I think about--this is again,the F99/K00 is a transition mechanism.
(26:27):
And in this grant, you have to talk aboutalso your goals for your postdoctoral
phase, which you're still a grad student,you don't even have a PhD yet, but you got
to think about, which is really useful.
And so you think about what techniquesare involved in the kind of research
that you want to do as a post-doc.
And what conferences are, are, are,are around that are relevant to
your research now, and that wouldbe around to your research later.
(26:50):
Um, and so I also like even drewout an illustration of a timeline
that had, um, all the meetings thatI would want to attend, including
like Society for Neuroscience, ofcourse, but also like other like
smaller things like a Gordon researchconference or, or a course, maybe.
So I said, I wanted to attend asummer course at Cold Spring Harbor
(27:12):
that's related to my like very nichefield, which is visual neuroscience.
And then I also like plotted outwhere would I have opportunities to
give talks internally and externally?
So I set goals for myself of like, okay,I want to, I want to give talks at, um,
these internal symposia that we have, orseminar series, and also like at these
meetings, I want to aim to give talks.
(27:32):
Of course you have to have it accepted.
And then I would go back to my PIand we would talk about those goals.
And we would talk about that plan andwhether they come in at the right times
and which meetings are better thanwhich, and whether I'm overloading
my year with conferences, um, givingme very little time to do the actual
experiments that I would be presenting on.
And then of course, we talked abouthow it would break down my efforts, my
(27:55):
percent effort each year, in terms ofhow much writing, how much research, how
much mentorship and how much professionaldevelopment efforts I'll have each year.
So I used those four categoriesand it was an important discussion
also to have with my mentor.
And then the last thing, which I thinkis, uh, another like specific thing to
this mechanism is that you need to thinkabout how you're going to identify a
(28:19):
postdoctoral mentor as a PhD student.
And so that also involves, you know,ideally, conversations with your mentor
and I, and so I, I did have thoseconversations and whether it's meeting
them at conferences or whether it'snetworking, uh, when they come to your
institution and give talks, uh, you know,sometimes trainees have lunch with them
(28:39):
and stuff like that, or whether it's likesaying, you know, I'll tap into my PIs
network of colleagues, if that's still thefield that you would want to postdoc in.
And then you talk about also, what areyour criteria for a postdoc mentor?
You know, do they have the big lab, oris it small, you know, are they super
senior established investigators orare they more early career researchers?
And what kind of institutionalenvironments are you looking for?
(29:02):
And so on.
So those were also conversationsthat had to have with my PI.
And so it was constant, like, revisionand then having a conversation,
revision, having a conversation, kindof what, like, what Alejandra said.
And, um, I think that that reallyhelps develop a coherent training
plan that shows that you're being verythoughtful and very intentional about
(29:25):
the next, in my case, it was six years,which is crazy.'Cause I never think
that far ahead for anything, but likesix years of your career, you know,
what are you going to do each year?
And what, what are your goals for eachyear and how are going to achieve them?
Lauren (29:37):
So besides your mentor, was there anyone else that you asked to
give feedback on your grant and were thereany revisions that you made in response
to that feedback and especially thinkingabout this background and goals section,
was there anything that you thought wasclear that wasn't, or, you know, they
(30:00):
identified that something was missing?
Do you have any experiences like that?
Alejandra Fernan (30:05):
So for me, uh, people from the lab were, um, very
nice, uh, and instrumental, uh, whileI was revising this, because I pretty
much just ask everybody to justread, um, my, candidate's background
section and just tell me whether itwas clear, whether it made sense?
(30:27):
It is, it is sometimes, sometimeswhen you're writing, what you're
writing seems clear to you, but itmay not be clear to everybody else.
So having, uh, other members of thelab, like, from students to post-docs
everybody just look at it and saywhether it was clear or not, that
was very useful for my proposal.
(30:49):
Of course.
Uh, I had to make changes based on that,but I think that will, that exercise
made my proposal, uh, more clear.
Ubadah Sabba (30:57):
So I, I definitely echo the fact that what might be
clear to you is not going to beclear to other people necessarily.
And often I think it is not.
So I had, I have people read overmy training plan that were PIs at
my institution, including of coursemy mentor, but also people who are
not involved in my mentorship andalso are not in my field at all.
(31:20):
And so, um, I had somebody who was acardiovascular biologist read my proposal.
And, and then I also sent it to, I thinkby the time I was done with my training
plan, maybe six people had seen itand given me comments and, uh, some of
them were graduate students I know atother institutions, some of them were
(31:40):
like post-docs, uh, but again, noneof them are in my fields because the
D-SPAN F99 is a neuroscience-specificstudy section, but it's not a, um, any
kind of like discipline specific one.
And so that's why I wanted to havepeople who were not necessarily
visual neuroscientists or sensoryneuroscientists review the writing
(32:02):
and see whether it makes sense.
And I think something that I benefitedfrom that, besides people, you know,
helping me with like grammar and whateverit is, but like the explanations of what I
learned or the explanations of what I didin the, in the background section needed
to be succinct, but also informative.
And so sometimes when we're trying to besuccinct, we use more jargon because like
(32:24):
a big word is equivalent to many smallerwords, but then it doesn't make sense
to anybody unless they're in our field.
And so it was helpful to havepeople look at it that weren't
a visual neuroscientists.
And then another thing I wouldsuggest, and I advise everyone to do
this is to try to find somebody who'sgotten an award that you're applying
to and get their feedback on it.
(32:46):
Um, if they have the time, of course, youknow, see if they, if what they think of
your proposal and if it makes sense, or ifyou're writing along the lines of what's,
what's appropriate for that proposal.
Laura Ngwenya (32:58):
Yeah.
I guess, uh, my comment on this one,I'll kind of go off of the last thing
just said I had a, um, a colleague whoseoffice is next to mine who has a K23.
So, um, his is a little bit differentbecause it's clinical research,
but I had him look over the, um,candidate background section of
mine to see what his thoughts were,um, and to see if he thought that
(33:20):
the way that I had set up sort of acareer development plan made sense.
So yeah, I echo that.
I think if you know, someone that has asimilar grant and is familiar with sort
of this background section, um, havingsomebody else give it a read is, is great.
Ubadah Sab (33:33):
And if I could just, uh, I would say for the F's, at least
I know like, uh, if you know, somebodywho sat on any F grant study section
really great to have them look at it.
And also if you don't knowanybody who's ever received the
award that you're applying to,there's also, it's also, okay.
I've learned, to just likekind of cold email people.
Marguerite Matthe (34:02):
Thank you all for sharing your wisdom with us today.
Um, and since so many applicantsseem to have a problem with talking
about themselves and thinking about,um, ways in which to approach the
candidate and applicant background andgoals section, can each of you give
us one last piece of parting advice,especially as it relates to being
(34:24):
confident about approaching this section?
Laura Ng (34:27):
Yeah, so I think it is really important to be able to write
about yourself in a positive light,and also be able to show, um, your
strengths and show what you'll learnto gain from the development award.
Um, I did struggle with this a bit,and that was something that my, my
mentors were able to help me with.
In addition, you know, I think,you know, my advice to people would
(34:50):
be essentially just to, you know,write this section first, actually.
I spent, I think more time on thissection than I did on the research
strategy, um, because it, it really isharder to write and it takes some time
to really think about what are yourgoals, what's the development plan.
Um, so I, I really actually spentmore time writing this section and I
(35:11):
did this one first, just because the,the research and the science, um,
comes, comes across pretty easily.
And that's the part that, you knowthat part, but this is something that's
sort of almost weird and differentto have to think about and write.
So yeah, that would be sortof my kind of final word.
I think actually in terms of the scoring,it ends up being kind of counts as like
two sections versus the science, it'sjust sort of one section in terms of
(35:34):
the way the scoring goes for these.
So it's super important.
Alejandra Fernande (35:38):
So my advice for other trainees is to start
writing early and we hear this a lot.
At least I have heard this a lot.
And I cannot emphasize how importantit is that you start thinking
about the process and writing.
(35:59):
And this is for every section.
So what I usually do is I usually dothe specific aims page, and then I
start writing like the different parts.
And then at the end, if you don'tstart early, there's not enough
time for you to see whether thewhole application is coherent.
And I think that's very important becauseI feel that usually people just give
(36:24):
priority to the science because that'swhat you're proposing to do, right?
But what I feel is that if youconsider that every section is
important, just as important as thescience, then your application has
more chances of being successful.
So I would say yes, just start early andget the time to just work through all the
(36:49):
sections and through every single detailuntil you are happy with your application
and have enough time to send that out.
Lauren Ullrich (36:58):
Yeah.
Thank you for saying that becausethat's what we always say, but I feel
like people don't always listen to uswhen it comes to advice from NINDS.
So, um, we like to hearit from you all as well.
Ubadah Sabbagh (37:11):
Yeah.
I, I think, uh, I definitelywould say start early.
And so the question of, youknow, how do you get comfortable
talking about yourself?
I mean, time helps, but also ifit never happens, like it's okay,
but you still have to do it.
And, um, I think for PhD students,particularly because, I mean, I feel
like that's the experience I can speakto at least, you know, grant writing
(37:33):
isn't just for getting funding, althoughthat's like great and useful, but it's
also like a really good skill to learnhow to put your ideas down on paper.
And it's a really good skill to learnhow to communicate your abilities
and your skills and your background.
Because by the time you've finishedtalking about your background and
(37:56):
then finished articulating yourgoals and finished planning out how
you're going to meet those goals,you'll feel much more confident.
I feel like if you put in the effortinto like the writing and the thinking
that goes behind the proposal, you'llfeel more confident about, you know,
your path, uh, as a student and, and whatyou want to achieve or hope to achieve.
(38:18):
And so like, if you're not comfortablekind of talking about yourself,
then at least think about it asyou kind of coaching yourself and
trying to just kind of be your,be your best advocate, kind of.
Set your goals and then thinkabout for your own sake, how
you want to achieve them.
And then the background section, youdon't think of it as like a glorified CV.
And you're just kind of talking aboutwhat you've done, but using more words and
(38:42):
talking about what you--like a reflectionessay, like what did you learn from those
experiences that make you ready to carryout the proposed work that you have?
And really, I always tell students the wayI see writing grants is like, it's kind
of like a, a handholding exercise where Ifeel like I'm, my goal as I set this whole
(39:05):
plan in front of a reviewer is just holdtheir hand and walk them through my plan.
And every time I feel like they mighthave a concern or a fear that might
come up like, okay, well, how's hegoing to do like whatever, a single
cell RNA sequencing or whatever, somecrazy technique you're proposing,
like, how's he going to do this?
Then I have an answer.
I'm going to take this workshop.
I'm going to take this class.
I'm going to collaboratewith this one person.
(39:27):
And any time you feel like theirconcerns might start bubbling up,
you just like, hold their handand be like, no, no, no, relax.
I got it figured out,I'm going to do this.
And that, this is how I'm going to learnand this is how I'm going to train, this
is how I'm going to develop that skill.
I don't know.
It's what helps me kind of think aboutwhere potential pitfalls in my plan are
and kind of addressing them preemptivelyso that I don't have to wait to get it
(39:50):
into summary statements, which is likewhat the reviewer feedback is called.
Marguerite Ma (39:55):
Ubadah, you sound like Steve Korn from season one in
the sense that he believes that thisapplication process really is about
making you a better science and not justabout the money, the money is great if
you're funded, but that's this entiregrant writing process is so much more,
(40:17):
um, it really allows you the opportunityto do some self-reflection on your
training, your goals, and how to work withyour mentor to actualize those things.
So, Lauren, what's your advice?
Lauren Ul (40:35):
Um, I think following up on what Ubadah was saying, also,
is really trying to think about whatconcerns reviewers might have, and instead
of trying to hide what you perceive asyour flaws, coming out ahead of them,
just like Ubadah said, you know, theymight have a question about X and so
(40:58):
I'm gonna like put it front and center,how I'm going to address X. So you feel
like you don't have enough publications.
Great.
What's your plan to get thosepublications within the next year?
And so too many times we see peopletrying to, um, sort of hide the
fact that they don't have a lotof publications, for example, and
(41:19):
reviewers always see through that.
So instead of trying to hide,come up with a plan to mitigate.
And what about you Marguerite?
Marguerite Matthe (41:30):
I really like the theme of utilizing the people in
your community, the people around youto help make your application better.
Asking for folks who aren't even in yoursame research area for feedback about how
you talk about yourself, is this clear?
Um, and so there are so many folks,um, who may not be on your dissertation
(41:51):
committee, who may not be yoursponsor or your direct mentor, but
who can provide a lot of value toyou in terms of support and feedback.
Um, and he should definitely tap intothose people and allow them to, um,
boost you up and help make you a betterperson, a better scientist, rather.
Lauren Ullrich (42:10):
I like that.
So that's all we have time fortoday on Building Up the Nerve.
Thank you to our guests thisweek for sharing their expertise.
And thank you to NINDS programdirector Dr. Bob Riddle, who
composed our theme song and music.
We'll see you next time when we tackledthe mentor and sponsor statement.
Marguerite Matthew (42:34):
You can find past episodes of this podcast and
many more grant application resourceson the web at NINDS.NIH.gov.
Email us with questionsat nindsnervepod@nih.gov.
Make sure you subscribe to the podcaston Apple podcast or your podcast app
(42:54):
of choice so you don't miss an episode.
We'll see you next time.
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