NINDS's Building Up the Nerve

Building Up the Nerve Introduction

October 18, 2019 NINDS Season 1
NINDS's Building Up the Nerve
Building Up the Nerve Introduction
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Meet your hosts and learn about what's to come on this season of Building Up the Nerve.

Building Up the Nerve is a podcast for neuroscience trainees that takes you through the life cycle of a grant from idea to award at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. We know that applying for NIH funding can be daunting, but we’re here to help—it’s our job! Be sure to tune in to the entire season to learn about the NINDS grant cycle from the people who make it happen!

https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Funding/Training-Career-Development

Transcript: http://ninds.buzzsprout.com/558574/1839991-building-up-the-nerve-introduction

Lauren Ullrich:

Welcome to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke's,"Building Up The Nerve," a podcast for neuroscience trainees that takes you through the life cycle of a grant from idea to award at NINDS with the people who make it happen. We know that applying for NIH funding can be daunting, but we're here to help. It's our job. Welcome to"Building Up The Nerve," NINDS's first ever podcast.

Marguerite M.:

Woo hoo! This is going to be awesome.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah, I'm actually really excited about it. So I'm Lauren Ullrich. I'm a scientific program manager at NINDS.

Marguerite M.:

And I'm Marguerite Matthews, a health program specialist at NINDS.

Lauren Ullrich:

And on this podcast we are going to talk to a bunch of different people throughout the Institute from program directors, help program specialists, grant management specialists, the director of the institute, deputy director. Basically everybody that is involved in the grants process at NINDS, we're gonna hear from them.

Marguerite M.:

And we want to help bring NINDS closer to researchers and especially trainees and let you know that we're here to help you and we want you to succeed and we don't want there to be any surprises or secrets about this whole process. This should be something that, maybe not fun, but it's certainly a little less daunting when you're putting in your application. And that's why we've titled it"Building Up The Nerve." We want to empower you to submit the great work that you're doing in your lab and to be funded.

Lauren Ullrich:

Right. And so first, I want to say that if you have questions about this process, please email us at NINDSNervePod@nih.gov so that we can make sure to cover your burning questions during this podcast. You know, we do feel a lot of questions from trainees, so of course, the greatest hits will be on there, but if there's something in particular that you have always wondered about, please let us know and email us.

Marguerite M.:

So Lauren, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Lauren Ullrich:

Like I said, I'm a program manager at NINDS, which means that I am a program official on grants. Currently, I have in my portfolio the summer R25 program. The R25 is a research education program. It's similar to a T32 but it specifically funds summer research experiences. And I also hold the SCORE program, which is a suite of three different types of grants that are intended for investigators that are doing research at either minority serving institutions or institutions with a historical track record of training students who are underrepresented backgrounds. But then, of course, we are a small shop in the Office of Programs to Enhance Neuroscience Workforce Diversity. So I help out on all sorts of things including the blueprint program F99, K00, D-SPAN Award, our K awards for underrepresented scientists. And I do this podcast, I do webinars, I man our Twitter so a little bit of everything here, which is one of the things I like about the job. What about you Marguerite?

Marguerite M.:

I am a health program specialist at NINDS and that means that I assist our program directors manage their portfolios, and I'm particularly sort of overseeing our grants that help underrepresented trainees such as the diversity supplements to NINDS research grants, the ENDURE program, which is an R25 educational research program as well as the diversity F31, the NRSA predoctoral fellowships. I'm the new kid on the block. I have been with the Office of Programs to Enhance Neuroscience Workforce Diversity since February of 2019 so I'm still learning the lay of the land, but I have been at NIH for almost three years now. I started in the Office of Extramural Research in the Office of the Director for NIH as a AAAS science and technology policy fellow. So I was there for two years on the policy side, but still very committed to working with trainees, graduate students up through early career investigators. What about you Lauren? How long have you been at NIH?

Lauren Ullrich:

I've been at NIH for four years. All four of those years, in the Office of Programs to Enhance Neuroscience Workforce Diversity, which is why I can say the title of the office so smoothly despite the fact that it is very long. And I also started as a AAAS fellow. I did that for a year and then I was hired on, I started off as a health program specialist and now um, like I said, I'm program manager. And before I started at an NINDS, I worked at the Society for Neuroscience for three years in a bunch of different roles, uh, starting in the advocacy department, helping SfN members and particularly early career members advocate for increased funding for NIH and NSF and then shifted roles into more education sphere, working a lot on rigor and reproducibility and also branching out and figuring out how SfN could support members that worked in spheres outside of academia and how to incorporate those voices into the governance of the Society for Neuroscience.

Marguerite M.:

And Lauren, I actually met you when you were working at the Society for Neuroscience. I think I was maybe still a graduate student or a postdoc. Um, and so I had a chance to see Lauren and then I saw that she got the AAAS fellowship and picked her brain a little bit about her experiences. So... I did a postdoc for four years at the Oregon Health and Science university in Portland, Oregon, doing neuroimaging in behavioral neuroscience and um, then decided to apply for the AAAS fellowship to sort of transition more into work that would have a broader impact, for trainees especially. So we both sort of have an interesting intermingled, u m, past together now and now we get to be colleagues, which is awesome.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah. I mean, one thing that I realized very quickly about the neuroscience field is how small it is, especially when you work at a place like SfN or NINDS where you're really interfacing with a lot of different scientists. You start running into the same people over and over again, and it seems like everyone knows each other. But even, you know, as a graduate student, I was always surprised to see how large the networks of my mentors and supervisors were.

Marguerite M.:

Yeah.

Lauren Ullrich:

So one of the goals of this podcast is to show that we're real people, too, and you shouldn't be afraid to reach out to us. So we thought we could talk about one of your hobbies or passions outside of work.

Marguerite M.:

Well, I like to do a lot of nothing nowadays. I have been notoriously a busy body. Anytime I edit my CV, I look at my list of service and activities and the list is very long, both from graduate school and postdoc. So I'm usually very involved in organizations, constantly volunteering. I've used to prefer to be at home as little as possible. People thought I didn't even have an address because they said I was never home. And now I really enjoy time at home. So I like to read. My new favorite thing to do is crossword puzzles. So I do them on my phone. I have crossword puzzle books really trying to expand my vocabulary, but I also like to travel. I'm trying to get out more and hit all seven continents. So that is also something that I have been enjoying doing. So I'm going to Ghana at the end of 2019.

Lauren Ullrich:

That's exciting.

Marguerite M.:

So yeah, it'll be my first time in, uh, Africa. So I'm looking forward to, to going out there. And even though you do a lot, Lauren, you have many, many hats at work. I hope there are things that you do to relax and to kind of unwind.

Lauren Ullrich:

Yeah, I think I have too many hobbies, actually. I don't have time for them all. Um, I would say like my biggest hobbies are in the art space. So I started taking pottery almost three years ago now. My parents live nearby and my mother wanted to do it and asked me and I was like, yeah, sure, why not? You know, and now I just totally can't stop. I have to get my fix of pottery. I go every week and my house is filled with ceramics, so...

Marguerite M.:

and I have one of your pieces in my home now, so...Lauren is very, very talented.

Lauren Ullrich:

Thank you, Marguerite, you're too kind. But I do a lot of other kinds of art. I do water colors and I make jewelry and that takes up a lot of my time. But I also, I really value spending time with my friends and family. And also really like to travel. So always make time for that.

Marguerite M.:

Now that we've introduced ourselves, we look forward to introducing you to our colleagues in this season of"Building Up The Nerve". Lauren, what can our listeners expect to hear from the NINDS staff?

Lauren Ullrich:

So in this season, we are going to take you through the entirety of the grant cycle. We'll start with an introduction to NINDS and our mission from our director, Dr. Walter Koroshetz and our deputy director, Dr. Nina Schor. And then we'll get into the meat of preparing your application and then what happens after you submit? So review, program recommendation, council review, and then if you have to resubmit, how does that process work? And then once you actually get the award, what happens after that?

Marguerite M.:

So not only will we provide insight on the life cycle of an NIH grant, but you'll also get to know a little bit more about us, that we're people just like you. Most of us have been in the research world. So we really want to help you as you go along throughout your career. We hope that by getting to know more about us, you will feel comfortable with coming to us with your questions and going through the grants process.

Lauren Ullrich:

So here's a short preview of some of the great advice that you'll get this season.

Ned Talley:

You want to start by looking at the instructions for the specific program announcement that you're applying to. So for different training mechanisms, typically the evaluation is about a lot more than just the research project. It's about your capabilities as an individual, the mentoring environment, and your relationship with your mentor. And so all of those need to be covered and emphasized and you don't want to give anything short change.

Francesca B.:

The aims should make a story, so they should be tied to each other, but they should not depend on each other. And specifically don't want one aim to be dependent on the success of the previous aim because that is a big issue that always comes up in review.

Glenn Nuckols:

I think it's also important, you know, when you're developing your scientific niche that it really is something that you're excited about and too often people think that they have to put together an application that's completely based on the training that they had, something like that. And if it's not really what they're excited about doing, I think that comes through in an application.

Dave Owens:

I think our analyses we've done over many types of programs, if you stay with it, there's a very good likelihood you will succeed.

Lauren Ullrich:

So, thank you to Dr. Bob Riddle, who's a program director at NINDS for our theme song and music. We'll see you next time when we talk about the mission of NINDS. You can find all episodes of this podcast and many more grant application resources on the web ninds.nih.gov.

Marguerite M.:

Be sure to follow us on Twitter at@NINDSDiversity and@NINDSFunding. If you have any questions, email them to us NINDSNervePod@nih.gov and make sure you subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app so you won't miss an episode. We'll see you next time.

Intro
Purpose of the podcast
Meet your hosts
Preview future episodes
Outro