3 Steps To Convert Your K Award Into Your First NIH R01
Prioritize. Plan. Persuade.
These three P’s are the key to helping you move from your K award toward achieving your first R01.
Taking this leap is one of the most rewarding parts of your research career, so it’s one you want to get right.
Let’s break down how each of these steps works in the grant writing process.
Prioritizing
We start with prioritizing for a reason. Why?
When you're in career development mode, it’s easy to fall into the habit of checking off the boxes and doing all the things that helped you earn your K award.
But you’re on a different path now. What got you to your Career Development Award won’t get your R01.
This transition to becoming an independent researcher means you have to think more carefully about how you prioritize your research, your commitments, and all of the work that brings you career currency–especially your grant writing.
It’s important to start here because as you move into this independent role, you will be given a lot of new opportunities and requests for your time. And if you’re not selective, judicious, and thoughtful about what you decide to say “Yes” to and what needs a “No,” you will quickly find yourself overwhelmed without time to focus on the things that will enhance your career. You may already be there.
Some of the questions that can help you know where your priorities lie:
What am I here to do?
What matters to me?
How am I going to make sure to get these things done?
Questions like these help bring everything into perspective, so you can hold yourself accountable before you put your research on the back burner in favor of being everything else to everyone else except yourself. That road leads to a pretty unfulfilling career.
Your career is your priority, so as hard as it may be, you have the right to be ruthless about how you spend your time and what you spend your time doing when it comes to making your K-to-R transition.
Planning
One of the most important things you need to do before you start writing your R01 is to get crystal clear on your program of research, the big problem you are dedicated to solving, and the gaps in knowledge you plan to fill.
These are the questions you need to answer before you write a single word of your R01 because they will serve as your barometer to make sure what you put in your grant is aligned with your true goals and intentions.
Another vital part of your pre-grant writing strategy is to get clear on the right home for your grant application. You want to submit to the institute or center most likely to get excited and fund the type of research you’re doing.
In addition to this, you want to begin assembling a team that can pull off this project. You don’t just want to consider people you know or researchers who are the best at what they do. You want to choose the people who are right for your specific project.
Overall, this planning process is answering the three key questions going through every reviewer's head:
Is the research worth doing?
Is this the right team to do the work?
Is this project feasible?
I go into depth in this article about how you can ensure your R01 answers these three with flying colors.
Once your multiple strategy sessions reveals the answers to these questions, then you can move on to the final step.
Persuasion
It’s time to make your case to reviewers. This is your chance to use all that planning and research to make a persuasive argument that compels your reviewers to support your grant.
To do that effectively, detach and put yourself in your reviewer’s shoes. Looking and thinking like a reviewer frees your mind to figure out the best way to explain your proposed idea, minus any assumptions of their subject matter knowledge.
Let me reinforce this point for a moment.
Assumptions happen when researchers take for granted that everybody else thinks like they think. It happens to so many first-time and experienced grant writers because you get so immersed in your own work that you lose perspective and forget other people didn’t share your focus on this particular subject–and they definitely can’t read your mind.
So when making your argument, ask yourself, what assumptions are you making about those who are reading your grant for the first time, and what are they actually seeing?
This is a skill you’ll develop over time, but it’s crucial to get as efficient as you can, as fast as you can.
The better you get at addressing assumptions, the more persuasive your argument is going to be.
This practice of seeing your R01 from the perspective of your reviewer will pay huge dividends when it’s time for scoring and possible funding. Your persuasive argument will have anticipated and addressed possible objections, misunderstandings, and questions reviewers may have before they even get a chance to think of any themselves.
Funding Begins Before You Start Writing
The early bird gets the worm, and the Early Stage Investigator who does the work before the work gets funded.
If you focus your excitement for this potential funding opportunity on prioritizing, planning, and persuading–even before you write a single word of your R01, the strength of your application will increase, and the potential of funding will be closer than you realize.
More R01 Tips
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