What Contributes to the Success of Early Career Scientists? – A NIAID Look

At NIH, we are heavily invested in our workforce and in understanding the barriers they face. What characteristics do they share? How do they compete in the current hypercompetitive environment? When do they stop applying to NIH (drop out), even after receiving their first award? Staff from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) delve into these questions in a paper published recently in PLOS ONE , whose findings I’d like to highlight today. Here, Drs. Patricia Haggerty and Matthew Fenton looked at factors that may contribute to the success of early-career investigators and if these factors affect all junior researchers equally. This analysis focused on a cohort of investigators who received their first NIH R01-equivalent research grant (referred to as R01-e) awards (which included R01s, program projects and cooperative agreements) specifically from NIAID between fiscal years 2003 and 2010 (n=1,496). By following their subsequent grant applications through 2016 (or through their final application, whichever came first), our colleagues tracked funding outcomes of this cohort of investigators – referred to as “Early NIH-funded Investigators” (ENI) in the paper. ENI who obtained another R01-e award (from any NIH research Institute) were referred to as “successful” or “funded” ENI, whereas those did not were referred to as “unfunded” ENI. As Table 1 shows, 57 percent of the cohort ENI were successful – that is, they obtained at lea...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus - Category: Research Authors: Tags: blog Open Mike Uncategorized biomedical research workforce Biomedical Workforce Early Stage Investigators Funding data funding rate Source Type: funding