With the goal of doing either translational or disease oriented research, I am wondering what is life going to be like for the years between the end of fellowship and my first K award? How much protected time would I have for research? Where would I get my funding to do research? What would my title be? How much freedom would I get to choose my own research directions? How much would I be making? Thanks a lot!
Time between end of fellowship and first K award
- Thread starter echod
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This is extremely variable between fields and institutions. Ideally, an application for the K award is submitted before the end of fellowship. More commonly, however, it is not or is not funded for 1-3 years after fellowship. Most commonly, a new faculty will be given the title of assistant professor and given an appropriate starting faculty salary. Many places provide startup funding as well. If one is staying in the same place as fellowship, it is common to continue working under the original mentor for a while while setting up the K-award funded research. If moving, one may be given some start-up lab money or more commonly put within your "pending" mentors lab. As far as research topic, it would generally be to do research to help support the pending K application, not branching off into something different.
YMMV as there are lots of variations on this theme depending on the field and one's work.
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I've been told pretty much what Tildy said - ideally you want to use your fellowship research time to get the seed data for a grant, usually a K. Professional societies have smaller grants that can help the new investigator buy down their time too.
fellow -> Asst prof -> assoc prof -> full prof
fellow -> Asst prof -> assoc prof -> full prof
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This is true and I should have mentioned it. Depending on the field of medicine and research, groups like the American Heart Association and many other disease oriented groups have small-medium career starting and other grants. These can be extremely helpful in starting up and getting the data needed for NIH grants.
I have noticed at my school that for some researchers who don't get enough data during their fellowship to win a plum faculty position and K grant, they get sent to purgatory as Adjunct Assistant Professor or something along those lines. In that role they are attendings but spend most of their time doing research and trying desperately to get the plum job. It seems like most people only stay in purgatory for a couple years, but I'm not sure if that is self-selection or if the positions are time-limited. It seems pretty degrading to be Adjunct Anything when you are 35+ and have been busting ass for over a decade to actually be a PI, so I wonder if a lot of people just give up after a couple years and go attend full-time as Assistant Clinical Professor if the research doesn't pan out. Thoughts?
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Yes, a good number of folks aren't fortunate enough to get enough data and don't make the transition to R01/landed faculty. That's one reason why the MD/PhD programs came about - it was to help produce a stream of residents and attendings that had the skills to get that first R01. But the data supporting that idea has been mixed to my understanding (anyone can comment).
That's another reason why medicine is a good career - if you can't get the research side of things up and running, you can always go 100% clinical and at least make some money.
I want to get involved in research from day one of residency. Hopefully the extra time will increase my chances of having some data I can develop through to a K and make the transition to faculty and then R01.
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