Papers, Preliminary Data, and NIH Grants Vs. Doing research that is relevant to your future field

[DentistScientist]

Hello, I am a DMD/PhD student interested in becoming an oral surgeon scientist. I have been working in a basic science laboratory full-time for a year before starting my combined program and then part-time for another year during my first year. Now I have multiple abstracts, co-author papers and a first author publication. Since my current mentor and I collaborate very well, I have been thinking about continue working with my current research mentor starting my first year PhD instead of doing rotations. With a lot of preliminary data and teamwork, I would be in a pretty good position in getting NIH F30 grant and multiple publications throughout my DMD/PhD years. In addition, I am planning to do a year-long clinical and translational science concentration supported by the NIH TL1 grant as well.

However, my research is not directly relevant to the oral surgery field. It's about a virus that causes oral cancer but my research topic is on the vial genes that attenuate the host immune responses and accelerates the lytic cycle. There could be a translational research project on generating potential vaccine that could specifically target certain genes or gene product so that it could thwart the spread of the virus.

Therefore, I have been thinking about working in a surgery laboratory when my PhD years begin. Unfortunately, dental faculty members do less research than medical faculty members and there aren't any oral surgeon scientists at my school. However, there is a neurosurgeon with NIH R01 grant so he could be immensely helpful and I could follow his career path to be a surgeon scientist. In addition, and there are several basic science faculty members in neurosurgery and general surgery departments. However, I need to start from scratch and also there is no guarantee that I could be in good position in getting multiple papers and NIH Grants. Doing the clinical translational science with NIH TL1 grant could be challenging due to additional years I may have to add to my 7 year program.

If you were in my shoes, if your goal is to go into the best academic surgical specialty program and to be a surgeon scientist, would you continue doing research that is distant from the surgical field and get multiple grants and papers or would you do multiple rotations to find surgeon scientists that are a bit more closer to the oral maxillofacial surgery?

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[Fencer]

Keep riding the wave right now... When you do your residency, then and only then, seek someone who is doing the kind of research that you want to do for the next 10 years of your professional life. You will have a terrific portfolio with promise for a K23 or K08 from the dental institute.

 

[dl2dp2]

Doing rotations can never hurt. You can always go back to your original plan after doing rotations. The goal of the rotations are to gain skills and relationships that might help you later on. You might waste a few months but at the end of the day this doesn't matter.

Relationship between PhD research and your eventual career trajectory is often very tenuous at best. People pivot between K and R, and often pivot after first or second R. There's a push and pull between what institutional priorities are and what investigators themselves are interested in. I would defer thinking about your current work in terms of long term interests. Now that said, some people stay in the same area throughout their career, and at times they appear to "launch" faster. You are the only person who would know if you are sufficiently committed to your current work area for the rest of your life. Trouble is, even when you think you are (like I was), you might not be 5 years down the line when you get an insiders look...

If you were in my shoes, if your goal is to go into the best academic surgical specialty program and to be a surgeon scientist, would you continue doing research that is distant from the surgical field and get multiple grants and papers or would you do multiple rotations to find surgeon scientists that are a bit more closer to the oral maxillofacial surgery?

 

[loveforsciencemed]

Hello, I am a DMD/PhD student interested in becoming an oral surgeon scientist. I have been working in a basic science laboratory full-time for a year before starting my combined program and then part-time for another year during my first year. Now I have multiple abstracts, co-author papers and a first author publication. Since my current mentor and I collaborate very well, I have been thinking about continue working with my current research mentor starting my first year PhD instead of doing rotations. With a lot of preliminary data and teamwork, I would be in a pretty good position in getting NIH F30 grant and multiple publications throughout my DMD/PhD years. In addition, I am planning to do a year-long clinical and translational science concentration supported by the NIH TL1 grant as well.

However, my research is not directly relevant to the oral surgery field. It's about a virus that causes oral cancer but my research topic is on the vial genes that attenuate the host immune responses and accelerates the lytic cycle. There could be a translational research project on generating potential vaccine that could specifically target certain genes or gene product so that it could thwart the spread of the virus.

Therefore, I have been thinking about working in a surgery laboratory when my PhD years begin. Unfortunately, dental faculty members do less research than medical faculty members and there aren't any oral surgeon scientists at my school. However, there is a neurosurgeon with NIH R01 grant so he could be immensely helpful and I could follow his career path to be a surgeon scientist. In addition, and there are several basic science faculty members in neurosurgery and general surgery departments. However, I need to start from scratch and also there is no guarantee that I could be in good position in getting multiple papers and NIH Grants. Doing the clinical translational science with NIH TL1 grant could be challenging due to additional years I may have to add to my 7 year program.

If you were in my shoes, if your goal is to go into the best academic surgical specialty program and to be a surgeon scientist, would you continue doing research that is distant from the surgical field and get multiple grants and papers or would you do multiple rotations to find surgeon scientists that are a bit more closer to the oral maxillofacial surgery?

I think there are a lot of reasons to stick with your current mentor and research track and there are some reasons to switch...
Being more productive in a research field *indirectly* related to your clinical practice is more favorable than being less productive in a *directly* related research field. At the end of the day, I think productivity speaks more concretely to your potential as a surgeon scientist than aligning research and clinic.
I starred *indirectly* because perhaps doing research in an indirectly related field (as opposed to directly related) will complement your clinical approach and effectiveness in a very useful way.

 

[Neuronix]

I did an indirectly related PhD to my clinical field and I felt like few people cared about my PhD and extensive research experience when I applied for residency and attending positions. I lost the positions I wanted to people who were much less productive but had directly related research, bubblier personalities, and better clinical metrics (i.e. AOA, higher step scores). It seems to me in my anecdotal experience that those things are the most important for your success. I suppose it depends on the specialty and YMMV.

 

[DentistScientist]

I did an indirectly related PhD to my clinical field and I felt like few people cared about my PhD and extensive research experience when I applied for residency and attending positions. I lost the positions I wanted to people who were much less productive but had directly related research, bubblier personalities, and better clinical metrics (i.e. AOA, higher step scores). It seems to me in my anecdotal experience that those things are the most important for your success. I suppose it depends on the specialty and YMMV.

Do you mind sharing what specialty is? I am in the dental field and my impression is that people in dentistry do not consider research important compared to people in the medical field. I constantly hear from my classmates "I hate research." "That person means nothing to me" when I talk about Dr. Lawrence Tabak, the principal deputy director of NIH and a dentist scientist. I mean which medical student would ever say this when someone talks about Dr. Francis Collins?

Periodontology is considered as the most research active specialty in dentistry which is probably the reason why that their journal of clinical periodontology has the highest impact factor among all dental related journals. However, the only academic periodontist with NIH R01 grant at my school is leaving because this person is a foreign dental school graduate and the department does not let this faculty member to do the US periodontology residency.

I cannot afford to spend the rest of my professional life surrounded by people who think my abilities to create knowledge through scientific method and to move discoveries in basic science level to patient care through translational science are not important. Therefore, I am also thinking about doing my PhD in surgery related labs run by MD, MD/PhD or someone in the college of medicine so that I reestablish my ties with medical people and go into one of medical fields if I unfortunately cannot find my place in dentistry. I scored 31 on my old MCAT and also got into several MD schools. But unfortunately, these schools were very clinical and community care focused, and most importantly, did not have MD/PhD programs. I could retake the new one and apply to medical schools or try to get into the MD integrated OMFS residency programs.

 

[Neuronix]

I'm in radiation oncology. There is a lot of negative sentiment towards our research also. As an MD/PhD you have to get used to a lot of negativity. It's very common to hear that MDs can't do real research (no matter what your specialty) from the PhDs and from the MDs that research is pointless or whatever. You just have to see the intrinsic value in it yourself and move on.

The way I've seen people in my generation succeed is that they have significant amounts of protected research time during training dedicated specifically to the specialty. That's the only way people can see the possible value of their research. Otherwise the people in power (typically not MD/PhDs) don't really understand what you're trying to do.

When I propose research that I think is directly translatable, people's eyes glaze over. They don't really understand it, and they don't really care. There are very few physician-scientist positions out there, so they take the safest bets. That is, what are we already doing, and what is the most directly translatable to the specialty. In my case, my area of closely related research has never overlapped with the few places actually interested in hiring physician-scientists.

The other issue is that there is no such thing as a "startup package" anymore. The jobs are--go be a clinician, we will give you nothing, and if you can bring in your own grants then you get whatever is on your grant and nothing more. Some premier institutions wouldn't even let me write a K08 grant because they're money losers. So you need either bring your own resources OR work in a lab that the institution already has. That's the only way you ever even have a chance of becoming established. In my specialty I couldn't even find a research fellowship. The fellowships that existed were all clinical fellowships. I never had a chance of bringing my own significant resources. So would there be a path for you?

You can make this work in various ways. You can find a department doing similar things to what you're doing already and hope that the existing faculty member(s) isn't threatened by your presence. You can find an institution willing to support you from another department (i.e. you get a dual appointment and resources from that basic department)--I've only seen this from people who stayed on where they trained. The stars can align and you can find a department looking to hire someone like you. Part of that comes down to--how many faculty positions are there out there in your niche and how many are looking for them?