Thanks for all the questions.
Can you comment on how this will change your career direction? Switching from clinical to tenure track?
At my institution the de facto rule is no tenure track for faculty who see patients. They want you to earn tenure on the clinical track and then just switch from clinical track to tenured. This generally requires two R01 equivalents over time. It's uncommon but I've seen it happen to maybe one person per year at the University across all departments.
Tenure doesn't do anything for you to my knowledge. Sure they can't fire you but they almost never fire clinical faculty anyway. Tenure guarantees some small percentage of clinical salary but that's kind of meaningless for faculty who see patients because they can always see more patients and keep up their salary.
I'm told that I can switch to tenure track if I want but it's just more of a headache with all the pressures of tenure track and no real benefits for clinical faculty.
More dedicated research time?
This is negotiated. I'm at 40% clinical for now. I'm a little worried that may be too much. Whatever the number is, my experience has been that I always end up more clinical than the percentage suggests. There's some nuances to my specialty that cause this as well.
Yes. I negotiated that with the R01. I also had another higher paying offer in hand. I'm not sure they would have paid me more without that competing offer.
The story in my case was that I was significantly underpaid compared to my more clinical counterparts because of my K grant. Essentially I hadn't had a pay raise in many years because of the K and my bonus potential was lower than my clinical colleagues. I was accepting of that while I was 25% clinical. It was a strain on my family because I have two young children and live in a very high cost of living location.
When I came off my K, they didn't know when or how much my pay would be raised, so I started looking. I got an offer that wanted me with or without the R grant, though obviously the R makes me even more competitive to leave. When I got the R I told them to either raise my pay or I was taking it with me. As a result of that negotiation I've been promised what a productive clinical colleague would make at my institution with bonuses and directorship. That hasn't yet materialized because this is very recent.
Ability to hire techs/postdocs to do your bidding?
I already had that from my K and startup package. I wasn't hired with a startup package and essentially got the K with shared equipment, extra hard work, and some volunteer help from students.
When I got the K, I got a startup package with the K that covered essentially two people including the K. They're continuing the startup package with the R01 which is nice of them. I'm using that money to develop second and third R01 data.
Ability to pursue the research questions you find interesting?
Nobody ever told me what to do research on. My specific area of research is not otherwise researched in my department or institution, though you can find some others outside my department in the same broad areas who have mentored and collaborated. Mentorship over the years has been crucial to shape the questions I'm asking in the right ways.
However, I should make it clear that I do translational research. This shapes my research questions. To overly simplify, I started my faculty position thinking that I was going to treat one disease, but demand was for me to treat something else. So I pivoted early on and got the K and R in my new patient population.
I always strongly recommend to do research on the patients you're seeing. It gives you a niche that nobody else has.
Are you doing wet lab or dry lab work? How many "pre-RO1" grants did you obtain (career development awards, K08, etc.), and how many times did you submit R01 before you were funded?
Most of my work is dry lab in imaging, though it's very hands on with patients and technique development. I have an increasing wet lab trajectory with patient samples from the diseases I'm studying and treating.
I was writing a K08 when a K12 program became available. I got the K12 on the first try. I was co-I on two larger grants that were multi-institutional and headed from outside my university. I also got two small competitive internal grants. In a sheer stroke of luck for me, one of my patients happened to be from a very rich family. We have a great relationship and they now donate to my lab as well.
The R01 was my first attempt. I got a very good score the first time that was close to funding. The resubmission was well within funding range. I'm hoping for R37 MERIT as well.
