Co-investigator question

[JETER]

Hoping to get some opinions from the esteemed doyens on this board:

In brief: MSTP grad finishing up clinical fellowship in a surgical subspecialty. I will be taking a tenure-track job next year at a large academic center, with a contract specifying very attractive start-up and protected time (increasingly rare in this field). I have a couple of ideas and research directions that I plan to pursue at the R01-level within 4-5 years.

At my fellowship institution, I am currently adjunct faculty with a loosely-associated university. The research group I have worked with this year has a remarkably-similar interest in my specific field of investigation. They submitted an R01 last year, was not funded, but close. They are planning on re-submitting this summer, and want me to be a co-investigator. Despite my limited NIH funding, they think that I might strengthen the proposal due to new collaborate options, patients, etc. There is about 70% overlap with their proposal and the direction I was planning on heading beginning next year (again, remarkably similar).

Is signing on as a Co-I a good thing? Better connections, likely quicker pilot data, etc, might give me an advantage when time to apply for my funding in a few years. Also, I might change directions some based on data that is generated. They have some capabilities here that I will not have next year

Or a bad thing -- shooting myself in the foot, i.e., using my research/time for someone else's laurels?

I appreciate the input. Thanks

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[SurfingDoctor]

Hoping to get some opinions from the esteemed doyens on this board:

In brief: MSTP grad finishing up clinical fellowship in a surgical subspecialty. I will be taking a tenure-track job next year at a large academic center, with a contract specifying very attractive start-up and protected time (increasingly rare in this field). I have a couple of ideas and research directions that I plan to pursue at the R01-level within 4-5 years.

At my fellowship institution, I am currently adjunct faculty with a loosely-associated university. The research group I have worked with this year has a remarkably-similar interest in my specific field of investigation. They submitted an R01 last year, was not funded, but close. They are planning on re-submitting this summer, and want me to be a co-investigator. Despite my limited NIH funding, they think that I might strengthen the proposal due to new collaborate options, patients, etc. There is about 70% overlap with their proposal and the direction I was planning on heading beginning next year (again, remarkably similar).

Is signing on as a Co-I a good thing? Better connections, likely quicker pilot data, etc, might give me an advantage when time to apply for my funding in a few years. Also, I might change directions some based on data that is generated. They have some capabilities here that I will not have next year

Or a bad thing -- shooting myself in the foot, i.e., using my research/time for someone else's laurels?

I appreciate the input. Thanks

Well, how much effort are they giving you. People often give 5 or 10% effort as a Co-I with little expectation of a major time commitment. More like you are helping out the PI to some degree. Likewise your division chair will like it from the standpoint that you get a salary supplement. And if it helps you get your name on a paper, all the better. I see little downside to have being a Co-I with 10% effort or less.

If you are more than that, you may be diverting more time away from your research... but you are getting paid to so it depends on your goals. The biggest downside is if they publish using your ideas because they are paying for the effort.

 

[dl2dp2]

Co-I is usually a low-cost high benefit thing, especially for junior investigators. Believe it or not, if you are officially on the same team they are LESS likely to scoop you--if you think about it for a second, the reason behind this would be obvious. This is actually the ideal strategy to avoid scooping--invite your competitor to be on the same grants/papers and share credit. This also doesn't affect your ESI status.

Generally speaking, it's not a good idea to bank your career on 1 particular direction, given that the interest of NIH ICs change, sometimes very quickly. In particular if their grant isn't funded, it's likely that this direction isn't particularly "easy" to get grants in. It's maybe an average difficulty area. In that case, there's absolutely no guarantee that when you apply in 3-4 years you'll get funded without drastic modification of strategy anyway. If I were you I'd just work with this group instead of reinventing the wheel, and then in 3-4 years write a DIFFERENT grant based on data this group collected and are NOT overlapping. If you can't come up with at least 5 more non-overlapping ideas after a substantial body of preliminary data, you should probably quit research now 🙂. The precent effort thing @SurfingDoctor pointed out is an important consideration. The only downside if they put you on the grant to do a ton of scut work (vs. high level consultative work), but this can be discussed/negotiated, especially with the assistance of your own department chair.