NINDS's Building Up the Nerve

Episode 9: Resubmission

February 07, 2020 NINDS Season 1 Episode 9
NINDS's Building Up the Nerve
Episode 9: Resubmission
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Learn how to approach resubmitting a grant from Program Directors Drs. Laura Mamounas and Beth-Anne Sieber, and Program Manager Dr. Shardell Spriggs.

Building Up the Nerve is a podcast from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke 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!

Transcript: http://ninds.buzzsprout.com/558574/2645557-episode-9-resubmission

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.

Marguerite M:

Hello, I'm Marguerite Matthews, a Health program specialist at NINDS

Laura Mamounas:

And I'm Lauren Ullrich, a scientific program manager at NINDS, and we're your hosts today. So last episode we discussed the council review process

Marguerite M:

and today we're going to talk about the resubmission of your grant application. As always, I want to state the disclaimer that everything we talk about today may only be relevant to NINDS. So if you're applying to a different NIH Institute or center, it's always best to check with them about their policies.

Lauren Ullrich:

Joining us for this episode are Dr. Laura Mamounas, a program director in the neurogenetics cluster, Dr Beth-Anne Sieber, a program director in the neurodegeneration cluster and Dr Shardell Spriggs, a program manager in the division of translational research. So let's start with introductions.

Laura Mamounas:

So I'm Laura Mamounas and I'm a program director in the neurogenetics cluster at NINDS and my portfolio, my grants portfolio includes, um, some basic neurodevelopment as well as, um, grants in pediatric neurodevelopmental disorders that are associated with autism, intellectual disability, ans epilepsy, um, disorders such as Rett syndrome, fragile X, Phelan-McDermott syndrome, tuberous sclerosis complex. I joined the NINDS in 2001 and um, before that I was an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and I worked on basic neuro-development, neurotrophic factors, and monoamine neurons. And, um, in fact, I, I'll say this, that the grant I had, Beth-Anne Sieber was my program director at the time. So that was kind of fun. Um, my passion, my hobbies and passions. Well I love spending time with my, my husband and my daughters, they're in their twenties and I love to travel to really cool places. For example, my, my father's side of the family is from Greece and every couple of years we go to Greece and visit the islands, different islands. So that's, that's what I, I like doing.

Lauren Ullrich:

Beth-Anne?

Beth-Anne S:

Hi, I'm Beth-Anne Sieber. I'm a program director in the neurodegeneration cluster. I have been at NINDS since October of 2007 as a program director. And my portfolio here encompasses Parkinson's disease research in general. Before I started here, I was a program director at the National Institute of Mental Health for several years and I had the good fortune of having Dr Mamounas as one of my early grantees and I've known her since then.

Laura Mamounas:

and I was really difficult to deal with.[laughter]

Beth-Anne S:

She was a wonderful and great to work with and still is. Um, and so my research area of interest was dopamine neuropharmacology and toxicology and I worked on animal models of Parkinson's disease, um, at the time. One of my hobbies or let's say passions outside of work right now is I'm a huge Washington Nationals fan.

Shardell S:

Hello, I'm Shardell Spriggs. I am a program officer in the division of translational research and I have a portfolio there. I'm also the program manager for the NIH Countermeasures Against Chemical Threats program. And that's where the bulk of my portfolio is. I mainly work with grants to deal with neurotoxins and cellular metabolic poisons and developing countermeasures for those in mass casualty situations. I've been here for about four years and immediately before I came to the dark side, I was in my post doc at the school of medicine at the University of Maryland. Uh, one of my hobbies or passions are, uh, I guess I volunteer a lot at my kids' schools. I absolutely love crafting and will try to repurpose almost anything. And I love making soaps, soaps, that's my newest passion. I do that a lot.

Lauren Ullrich:

What should an applicant do if they don't get funded on their, if their application doesn't get funded?

Shardell S:

So first they should understand that most people do not get funded statistically speaking. So they should not take this as a defeat, but rather look at it as a way to improve their application. And in the end, possibly the science that they do once they get the money. My advice would always be to resubmit the application. Uh, two ways to do this through NIH would be through a resubmission, which is to put forward the same application which you would get a chance to address your review or critiques or put forth a new application wherein you would not address the previous application or reviewer critiques. A third option is always to apply for funding outside of NIH. There are a couple of key resources you can look at when looking at the first two NIH options. The first thing you want to look at is your summary statement. You want to critically take a look at that without emotion. It may even help to have someone else read it, too and see if the problems are fixable. Uh, some fixable problems could be insufficient information. Is there extra data you can provide? Did the reviewer misunderstand something that you can now easily explain, for grantsmanship? Things like that. Also consider if your significance score was a good score, like were they excited about the application itself or the science that you want to do and just consider the flaws or the critiques as things that you can improve on. The second key resource is your program officer. You should definitely contact your program officer. All of us here have sat on many reviews, either in person or on the phone and we can help provide some insight into that review such as positive or negative comments that didn't make it into the summary statement. So in the end, my advice would always be to resubmit, but look at all the information in hand to see how you move forward with that.

Laura Mamounas:

Well, I'd like to agree with that. This is Laura Mamounas, definitely, you know, don't get discouraged, just regroup, talk to your colleagues, to your mentors and you know, just try to talk to your program official and try to figure out how you can make your application better because the data shows that, um, resubmission really does improve your chances of eventually getting funded.

Lauren Ullrich:

If an applicant is trying to make the decision between submitting a resubmission and a new application, what are the things that they should take into account when making that decision?

Laura Mamounas:

So yeah, that, that's a, that's a tough one and it really is going to depend upon the specific critiques and the specific application in front of us--in front of you. So, you know, I always kind of look at the critiques and are the concerns, are they really fixable, are they technical? And you can sort of address them pretty easily and uh, address the reviewers concerns or do you have to go back to the drawing board and really, really in a big way revise the application and resubmit it. So, you know, if you really have to go back to the drawing board and revise, you know, and change your experiments and it really looks like it's a whole new application, then you could consider putting in a new application. You could even consider, and we'll talk about this later, um, submitting to a different study section. If you think that the study section is really not the best for your application. So it's going to be a really, um, you know, a tough question and it's going to really depend on your specific critiques and your particular proposal and your program director, program official can really help you sort through that.

Marguerite M:

So, um, what we learned in the last episode that not all applications are actually discussed during the study section. So if I'm an applicant and my application was never discussed, should I even bother to resubmit if I don't have extra information to um, improve my application?

Beth-Anne S:

I think that's, that's a really important question. Um, as I'd like to emphasize that Shardell said earlier, reading the summary statement will tell you a lot about the temperature of that committee for your application, even though it's unscored or not discussed and you don't have the benefit of a summary of the discussion. You can tell a lot about the temperature of the, the enthusiasm of the committee from the summary statement that you have in front of, that you have in front of you. Okay. So one of the questions I would ask is how unscored is it? So how--you can look at the criteria in scores for each of the elements through each of the reviewers for clues about what is, what they were positive about and what they didn't like about your application. So I think that that will tell you whether or not, give you some clues about whether or not you should try to fix the application or submit a new application. What I would also add is, is emphasize the importance of talking to your program officer because we can go over the summary statement with you and provide guidance on where to fix the application. So for example, are there issues with your research plan? Did they not like the experiments that you planned? Can we fix those? Was there something about your mentoring team that they had an issue with? Can we improve that by putting additional mentors on your team? There are a lot of ways to fix an application even though it's unscored. And what I would encourage you to do is again, talk to your program officer and you know, we're there to go over it with you and talk to your mentors about what they think and you'll come up with a plan to move forward.

Shardell S:

One other thing I wanted to say about the not discussed applications is that if you think the problems are not fixable, you can still resubmit it, but you would resubmit it as a new application. And that way you can still use all of the information that you get in the summary statement to tweak and kind of improve that application.

Lauren Ullrich:

Right. Without having to carry sort of the baggage of having to respond to their critique into the, into the next step.

Shardell S:

Exactly. If you don't want the next review session to see what all the reviewers said about you in the last one come in as a new application, use the information you have and prove it and start anew.

Marguerite M:

So just to be clear, when you resubmit an application that has already been reviewed and scored for a true resubmission, you're actually addressing the comments that reviewers made. So this, there's actually some sort of a history or record of what was previously submitted and the resubmission would require you to address reviewer comments. Is that correct?

Shardell S:

That's right. So if you come in through a true resubmission, the next review panel will also see your summary statement. And so they will have your summary statement and in your new resubmission there's an introduction that the investigator will write that should address all of those critiques that were brought up in that summary statement.

Lauren Ullrich:

And sometimes that's a positive thing. If you've done a really good job and you've addressed all of the critiques and they can see a clear strengthening of the application, that can actually work in your favor.

Shardell S:

Yeah. Laura brought up that the success rates for resubmissions are actually higher than they are for new applications.

Laura Mamounas:

And this is Laura again and you know on a resubmission you have an extra one page with which to respond and you should do this very politely and respectfully to the critiques and explain how you have addressed them. So you get an actually extra page in your application. And you know, again, as program officials, we have sat in on thousands of study sections and went through thousands of summary statements, or at least it seems I have. And you know, we get sort of a sense as to, you know, what were those score driving concerns and we can help you to sort through those and figure out should you just go back to the drawing board or these really addressable, fixable kinds of uh, concerns.

Lauren Ullrich:

And so when it comes to that conversation, having that conversation with your program officer, what kinds of questions should applicants be asking and are there any questions that maybe aren't as productive?

Shardell S:

So as program officers, we're here for you. We're here for the principal investigator, we're here to try to help them. And we all touched on this a little earlier when we say we could provide insight into review, we see things, we hear things that don't always make it into the summary statement. And so I would always say you should have that discussion with your program officer. After each review, just send the email, set up some time and have that discussion. And I would say you could potentially ask us anything that's on your mind about your application or with the review. Of course we can only give you our opinion and we can not guarantee an outcome. We cannot say if you do everything that we say, you will have, you know, your grant, the next council round. But one such instance that we can help you on if there is a lengthy debate, say 50% of the time in which your application was discussed was on one topic, but there's only one sentence on that topic in your summary statement, we can tell you, please fix this one thing, do what you want with the other stuff, but also consider this. This was really what they just harped on. That could be helpful. As far as not productive questions--any question trying to get us to disclose which reviewers were assigned to and reviewed your application is definitely off limits. Uh, the reviewers anonymity is protected. Uh, even when I take notes, I don't write down which reviewer is commenting to help add an extra layer to that. And also finally, I just want to mention if you're a trainee, you may also want to contact the office directly to discuss your eligibility for certain funding opportunity announcements. Uh, we know there's a career sensitive timeline there and even if you're in eligible, sometimes they can point you to other opportunities either outside of NIH or things that you just may not have known about.

Beth-Anne S:

One other suggestion that I think we might all agree with is that when you'd like to speak to us immediately after the review, when you have a score and you're eager to talk to us, we'd like to talk with you to; the most productive time for us to talk to you is after the summary statement has been released. And I think it's great if you send us an email with your availability and we'll set up a time to talk then because what we do as a Shardell and Laura have said is that we synthesize the information from the discussion and that's also written down in the summary statement to be able to give you the best feedback that we can on the process. So please wait until the summary statements out and then send us an email and we're happy to set up a time to talk with you about the reviews.

Laura Mamounas:

Right. And if your application unfortunately was not discussed, we will have no feedback to provide until we get the summary statement because we don't have any notes that we've, you know, we haven't been able to hear the uh, discussion of your application.

Marguerite M:

Okay. So once an applicant has reviewed their summary statement and they've talked to their program official about the comments made on their application, how should an applicant approach actually going about revising their grant?

Beth-Anne S:

I would say the first thing is take a deep breath, just, you know, just process. And don't take it personally. Um, if you need to just take a step back for a little bit, send your program officer and email and set up a time to talk to us. Um, I would recommend actually if, if you're thinking of revising or resubmitting a grant application, I would start with the one page introduction that was mentioned earlier. I think it's a really good way to order your thoughts and start thinking about how you would respond to the critiques. And actually you can send us a draft of that one page introduction and we'll talk about that with you as well to see if we agree, whether you're hitting all the main points in the, in the critiques, in the summary statement. And also we also read for things like tone. So for example, it's always really good to thank the review committee for their helpful critiques. And we look for red flags such as, you know, the review committee are a bunch of whatevers[ laughter]. We don't recommend that.

Marguerite M:

Don't be combative.

Beth-Anne S:

That's a great way to say it. Um, and there's an sort of an art to writing the introduction to get people on your side. And I do think it's a good way to frame your thoughts and there's sort of a, a clarity of explanation and response that you can have in the introduction that sets the tone for the entire grant application. And a lot of reviewers tend to look at that page to see whether you've been responsive to the prior critique. So it's an art. Um, your mentors and colleagues can help you with that. We can take a look at it and I suggest that that's the first step.

Shardell S:

To add to that, I would just say too, to make sure you respond to each and every critique that is meaningful in your summary statement, do not ignore their comments, do not dismiss them. Please use that introduction extra page that Laura and Beth-Anne have mentioned wisely.

Laura Mamounas:

I just like to add that I advise my applicants to put up a like a paper board and write down all of the critiques so that you don't miss them, or highlight them on your summary statement. Because as Shardell mentioned, it's really important that you address all of the, the uh, concerns that are raised in one way or another.

Lauren Ullrich:

What if reviewers disagree about a part of your application? So one thinks its a very good idea and one thinks its a bad idea. How would you approach responding in that situation?

Laura Mamounas:

That's a challenge where you have reviewers that, you know, one loves a particular aim and another one doesn't. And so you just really have to then juggle and um, figure out, okay, how can I take these comments and improve my application? And that's always what you need to do in a revision is make your application better.

Marguerite M:

So what is the best way to deal with a reviewer that you disagree with or say there were three reviewers that you think may be just completely missed the point of what you were trying to convey. How do you respond to those types of comments?

Laura Mamounas:

So you know, in your career you are going to get reviews and you're going to go, my God, those reviewers are idiots.[laughter] You know, and you're going to be really mad. So when you get that summary statement, you get those critiques, scream, yell, throw darts on the wall and write a whole nasty, nasty letter and then ball it up, tear it up, and then calm down and say, okay, my job now is to make my application better. So the first thing is to figure out why do the reviewers disagree with you? Was it because you didn't make your points clear enough? Is it a grantsmanship issue? And in your revision you can make your aims and your approach and design clear to the reviewers. Is it a difference of opinion? You know, and that happens a lot where they got it, but they just don't agree with you or they're suggesting something that you know is not gonna work. And I always tell my applicants, make your application better based on the critiques. Take the stuff that you agree with and improve it. If there's something you really don't agree with, then talk to your colleagues, talk to your mentor. You know, am I missing something here? Am I not seeing the whole picture? And if all, if your team all agrees that the approach you're taking is the right one and the reviewer is suggesting something that's not going to work, then don't change your application, just, uh, you know, unless you really agree that it's going to make a stronger proposal. And the reason for that is that you're not guaranteed in the next review to have all three of those reviewers. You know, you'll probably get at least one reviewer. You may get two, but it's very unlikely you'll get three. And I have seen too many times where in the revision, a new reviewer will say, well, I don't like this change. I thought the original approach was the best. So you need to improve and make your application better. That doesn't mean you ignore the criticism. And what you can do is politely say, yes, you know, we can, we have considered this approach. We've tried it, it doesn't work for these reasons. However, we're going to try to address this concern by adding these other elements to the proposal. So don't ignore it, but just you and your mentor and team need to make your application better.

Marguerite M:

So it's not about pleasing the old reviewers, it's about really thinking about how to make the application stronger and possibly even make more sense for you and for the science. So I think that's really good advice.

Laura Mamounas:

And clearer. If it's a grantsmanship issue, you know, maybe you can add more preliminary data to address some of the concerns that were raised that you might not agree with. You need to justify the approach, be polite, be respectful, but make your application better because you are not, you're unlikely you'll get all three of those reviewers, you, you know, and you you're going to have a new panel there and you need to have a stronger application put in front of them.

Lauren Ullrich:

Um, so one of the things that we talked about in a previous episode was choosing which Institute or which study section you should send your application to. And so we talked about that you can always request certain institutes or, or study sections. Um, that's not a guarantee, but they try to, CSR tries to honor that when possible. When should an applicant consider trying to go to a different Institute or a different study section on their, either their resubmission or their new submission of an application.

Laura Mamounas:

So I'll start with talking about study sections. So again, and we talked about this earlier, you need to work with your program director to figure out what are the nature of the criticisms. So if the reviewers really liked the overall approach, they think is significant, exciting, you know, they think that um, you're a great applicant, your mentoring team is really, really good and you feel like you can respond well to the critiques in your resubmission then you want to go back to that same study section, right? But if you get the sense that it was, you know, that study section just doesn't get it; they're just, and no matter what I do, they're not going to get it. Then that's the time to talk to your program director and your team, your investigator team, and your mentor about whether a new study section would be more appropriate. But it's a tough one because then you have to ask yourself, do I submit a revised application but go to a new study section or do I start from scratch and put in a new application? And you know, these are tough questions because there's pros and cons to doing both. If you put in a revised application that it goes to a new study section, you're pretty much guaranteed with starting with a whole new review team and they're going to have their own culture and their own take. They're going to have their own criticisms that you know you didn't have previously and this is your last chance on the resubmission for this particular application. Um, and so, you know, you might want to think, well, maybe I'll put in a new application. However, with a new application, you know, you don't have really the opportunity to respond to the critiques and the reviewers aren't going to see your response and how well you've addressed them. So it's a really tough sort of question and you know, it's going to be on a proposal by proposal basis and it's going to have, you know, involve you and your co-investigators and your mentor, um, to kind of sort through that and make that decision. In terms of institutes, hopefully you will have selected the right or it will be assigned and you will have selected the right Institute to start with. And it's, it's very rare, fortunately, that, you know, at the resubmission stage, um, you, you come to the realization that your Institute is not the right one. It can happen. And, um, it may be that, you know, you got a really good score and your Institute says, well, we're just not interested in this area and no matter what score you get, your, we're not going to fund it. Now, fortunately, this almost never happens at NINDS. We, you know, when we're very agnostic about, about areas of research, if we have accepted an application and it does well in review, it's very rare we wouldn't fund it. But there may be other institutes that uh, you know, do make these kinds of decisions independent of the score. And in that case, you know, you need to talk to the program director of that Institute and you also need to talk to the program director at the new Institute because it's a very, um, involved, complicated process of transferring an application that's in mid, in mid review of the speak.

Lauren Ullrich:

And I should note that for a lot of like training and fellowship applications, you really have no choice. There's one study section that reviews all of those applications and it's them or the highway, but when you're thinking about say, the R01 space, you have a lot more flexibility in terms of of where you're directing your application.

Beth-Anne S:

I would say that it's always good to know program officers across different institutes as well as other information including the funding level that each Institute is is funding toward. I think on a resubmission, for NINDS as mentioned, we have very broad interest in neuroscience. If there's a really significant change in your aims, if you completely rehaul them--and to give you an example, let's say that you're doing research on Parkinson's disease and you switch, based on reviewer critiques, to a real focus on aging, we would still accept that and the National Institute on Aging may also be interested. So there are areas of overlap and I think it's very important, I'll say this probably three more times during the podcast, to contact your program officers and to understand what your options are. We're all here to work with you. We're not going to, you know, get upset if you ask questions about another Institute. We all, all program officers know each other. We've worked together and we refer people across institutes all the time. What's most important to us is that you're successful as an applicant. We want you to get that grant. We want you to do your research and we will help you make the contacts, interpret your summary statement, do whatever we can do on our end to get you through this process.

Laura Mamounas:

I want to agree with that. I mean our goal is not that NINDS funds your application, but just that the NIH funds your application and we're, we're happy if another Institute is really interested in your proposal and they have a better pay line or funding level than we do. We're more than happy to have you, you know, work with that other Institute.

Marguerite M:

Yeah, it all contributes to the greater research enterprise. Well, thank you all for joining us today and sharing your wisdom on resubmitting an application. Can I ask each of you to give our listeners one last piece of advice?

Shardell S:

My advice would be to resubmit and, and just take advantage of the resubmission process by resubmitting your application. If you're not successful, do not accept it as a defeat. Look at that summary statement, answer those critiques and you know, revise and put in a better application.

Beth-Anne S:

My advice is to do what Shardell says and also to please call us. We're here to help you as much as we can.

Laura Mamounas:

And I would say, you know, if for whatever reason you don't get your fellowship or your career award, don't despair. It's not the end of your career. You know, when you go on and you're an assistant professor or, and you're putting in your R01, no one's going to look back and say, Oh my gosh, you didn't get that F 31 or 32 or the K award. You're, you'll be fine. And you'll have learned a lot in the process of writing a grant. It will help you throughout your whole career

Marguerite M:

and you'll be able to help your mentees that are working in your lab. Lauren, what about you?

Lauren Ullrich:

Um, I guess I would say from my perspective, one of the most important things is making sure to build the resubmission into your timeline. Because everything we just talked about is a moot point if you time out. Um, especially in the training space, you're often eligible only for a limited window. I talk to applicants all the time that say, Oh, I just need to do one more experiment or I'm not quite ready. And then they keep pushing it and pushing it and pushing it, and then they only have one submission cycle that they're really eligible for and they, if they don't get it on that try, they don't have the chance to take advantage of all of the ways in which the resubmission process makes your science stronger. Um, and then also realize that you can't usually resubmit the exact next cycle. You often don't get the summary statement back in time. And so you have to actually plan to submit two cycles. So if you submit in the spring, you won't be able to resubmit until the fall of that year. So it's a long time to be thinking ahead and making sure that you are able to do that resubmission

Laura Mamounas:

and I'd like to follow up on timelines and one thing that I think we didn't bring up, and that is when you're doing your, either your initial application or your resubmission, give yourself plenty of time to work on that. Get it done well before the grant deadline so that you can have your colleagues and your mentors and maybe your worst enemies look through it, critique it, tear it apart,

Marguerite M:

be the reviewer number three,

Laura Mamounas:

be the reviewer number three, so that you don't--you know, because you're really involved in writing this, you're, you're, you're in the middle of the weeds. But somebody else you know who may not be a perfect expert in your area will say, I don't understand this or this isn't clear and give you a chance to put in a much better application.

Lauren Ullrich:

And Marguerite, your advice.

Marguerite M:

Yes. So my grad advisor recently tweeted, the thing she noticed when she's looking at grants is that inexperienced grant writers aim to impress while experienced grant writers aim to explain. So if you're trying to impress, you will take it personally if the reviewers don't like your application or they find flaws. Um, but if you're aiming to explain, you'll take those, um, that summary statement as constructive feedback and a way for you to improve your application. Um, and perhaps it's just a question of not explaining it, um, in a manner that really was helpful or maybe you could have been more clear or maybe the science as strong as it could be and now is an opportunity for you really to be able to show your ideas in a different way. Um, so again, try not to take this personally. You know, as, as Laura mentioned, be upset about it. You know, you didn't get funded, it sucks. It's not a good feeling. And then pick yourself right back up and go ahead and do what you need to do. Because if you want a career in research, this is going to be part of your life and you're always going to have to try to explain to others why your research is valuable. So the sooner you start and build sort of, um, a resilience, you'll, you'll see that it is not a, no one is out to get you. Um, they just want to make you a better researcher and, and have stronger research.

Lauren Ullrich:

So that's all we have time for today on Building Up the Nerve. Thank you again to our guests for sharing their expertise. And thank you also to program director, Dr Bob Riddle for our theme song and music. We'll see you next episode when we tackle the issuance of the grant award. You can find past episodes of this podcast and many more grant application resources on the web at ninds.nih.gov.

Speaker 6:

be sure to follow us on Twitter@NINDSdiversity and@NINDSfunding. Email us questions at NINDSNervePod@NIH.gov And be sure to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app so you don't miss an episode. We'll see you next time.

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