CANCER IMMUNOLOGY & HEMATOLOGY
NEWSLETTER
Volume 4, Number 2
August 2002
CIHB HAPPENINGS
by Susan McCarthy
2nd Annual New Grantee Workshop
The Division of Cancer Biology (DCB) of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) hosted its second annual New Grantee Workshop in Rockville, Maryland on May 16 and 17, 2002. Of the 101 grantees we invited, 75 were able to attend and participate in the formal and informal activities. Based on our observations and feedback from our grantees, the workshop was a big success.
The workshop began with presentations by NIH experts on how the system works, and how grantees can make the system work for them. Virtually all grantees said that they learned something valuable about NIH resources available to them, about how to find the right person to help them with specific questions, and/or about how to avoid common pitfalls with administrative processes such as non-competing renewal applications.
A second topic of the workshop was the NIH peer-review process, led by an NIH SRA and two study section members, with an emphasis on issues related to competitive renewal applications. Many grantees asked many questions in this session, mainly focusing on what the reviewers expect in a first competitive renewal application, how to balance ongoing specific aims vs new directions in a competitive renewal application, and how a grantee should decide its time to submit a second new grant application on a related-but-distinct project. We also had representatives from the programs that review and administer minority scientist fellowship supplements to NIH-funded grants, since new investigators may be able to use this program to recruit additional students and post-doctoral fellows into their laboratories.
Grantees spent the afternoon of the first day in break-out sessions with DCB Program Directors. Each DCB branch met separately with its grantees; the larger branches sub-divided themselves further for more personal contact time. A number of grantees cited this session as their favorite, since it gave them the chance to get to know the extremely cool folks in DCB (the feeling was definitely mutual). Our hope and plan is that grantees will feel more comfortable contacting us for advice, help, a sympathetic ear, a reality check, etc., now that they know us.
Dinner the first evening was followed by a seminar by Dr. Eileen White, who is an NCI MERIT Award recipient. Dr. White talked about her own
research on cellular apoptotic and oncogenic processes as well as her insights into the cancer research field and how new investigators can thrive and
contribute to it. The grantees were not shy about probing her expertise in both areas, and her comments continued to be a topic of conversation
throughout the evening and into the next day. We have now established the tradition of having NCI MERIT Award recipients join us for New Grantee
Workshops, to provide this type of stimulating long-term perspective for our grantees.
The second morning of the workshop focused on how new grantees can best balance their research efforts with their other professional responsibilities. Dr. Michael Zigmond and Beth Fisher, from the Survival Skills and Ethics for Researchers program at the University of Pittsburgh, discussed issues related to growing and maintaining a lab group, dealing with lab conflicts, managing financial lab matters, balancing scientific independence vs collaborations (especially in these days of big science), balancing research vs teaching vs service time commitments, being a good departmental citizen, preparing for performance and promotion evaluations, identifying and building relationships with senior mentors, etc. Many of the grantees commented on the fact they were relieved to learn that they are not alone in finding these issues among the most difficult they have to handle in their careers. Hopefully, the contacts initiated with their colleagues at the workshop will give our grantees a network of people to help them negotiate these tricky waters successfully.
We expect to make this workshop a yearly event, to be held in the late spring. The next workshop will include New Grantees whose award start dates range from summer 2002 to spring 2003