I participated in a K-awards panel last month hosted by the Stanford Grant Writing Academy. Here are 5 of the most important pieces of advice I took away from the experience.

#1. Don’t forget to work with your institute months in advance to prepare your K-grant for submission via Grants.gov.
K-grants are a lot of work, but don’t forget to work with the university to facilitate the grant submission.

• NIH K award application computer workshop (months in advance): A 3-hour computer lab session where you will work with Research Process Managers (from the Stanford Research Management Group) to prepare your K-grant application via Grants.gov. This is a mandatory workshop where the Research Process Managers literally walk you through the application process. Sign up for this workshop early to get it out of the way! To prepare for this workshop, all you need is to know the K-award deadline you are preparing your application for. You will start a new application, but do not need to upload any finalized application materials.

• Identify and contact your Research Process Manager at the Stanford Research Management Group (2-3 months in advance): On the Stanford RMG website, find your department’s Research Process Manager and send them an email to (1) introduce yourself and (2) let them know that you will be submitting a K-award for a specific cycle. The Research Process Managers are incredibly helpful and knowledgeable and will be your allies in completing your K-award with all the documents included and formatting adhered to. As the K-award deadline approaches (around a month prior to submission) you will work with your Research Process Manager to create a budget for your K-grant.

• Submit a PI waiver (6 weeks in advance): You will be the PI on the K-grant. Submitting a grant as a PI for an individual that is not a member of Stanford University’s academic council requires approval by the department chair and dean of research. Thus, you need to submit a PI waiver. Thankfully, the details of this are clear on the RMG website. Download the “PI waiver template,” fill in the appropriate information, have the PI waiver signed by your department chair, and then submit this signed letter to your Research Process Manager (who will then review it and submit it to the School of Medicine Dean of Research for final approval). In short, a very easy process, but one that potentially takes a lot of time, so do early to avoid unnecessary application submission stress.

• Request a letter of institutional support from your department head (at least a month in advance): This is required for many (perhaps all) of the K-grants.

• Submit your K-grant 5 business days ahead of the K-award due date: Don’t forget that you have to submit all your application materials to your Research Process Manager 5 business days ahead of the NIH due date.

#2. Don’t neglect other non-research components of your grant
Many members of the panel noted that one reason they did not get a good score on their K-grants for the first round was because they were criticized for having a poor training plan. So, while it is tempting to spend all your time working on the research strategy, don’t neglect the other grant components.

K99 applications are assessed across the following five criteria:
For more details on the review criteria, use the link above to read Section V of the grant announcement.

• Candidate

• Career development plan/career goals/plan to provide mentoring

• Research plan

• Mentor(s), co-mentor(s), consultant(s), collaborator(s)

• Environment and institutional commitment to the candidate

#3. Weave a clear and consistent story into your application
A consistent theme was to stay on point for your scientific story: (i) where you came from, (ii) what kind of training the K-award will fund, and (iii) how this training will facilitate your independent research (get you ready for writing R-grants). Write your K-grant with the understanding that reviewers are busy and will likely only commit ~30 minutes to reviewing the application you spent months crafting. Make sure that you weave your scientific story into as many components of your grant as possible… project summary/abstract, specific aims, mentor letters, career plan, etc. In addition make sure your details line up. If you say in your career plan that you will meet with your PI every month, then make sure this detail is consistent in your mentor’s letter.

#4. Build a strong and impenetrable mentoring team for your training phase
Make sure you build a strong mentoring team that will not only facilitate the success of your scientific research, but also your scientific career.

Your team will consist of:

• Mentor(s) and co-mentor(s) (6 pages): I have heard that it is helpful if your mentor (or co-mentor) has an active R-award at the NIH institute you are applying to. In addition, take a look at your mentor’s alumni list. If your mentor is still an assistant professor or has not helped many postdocs transition to PIs, then you will probably need a more experienced co-mentor to fill this role. Reviewers seem to be very suspicious of “fake” co-mentors that are only included in the application for this purpose, so make sure your co-mentor’s letter is very strong and that you incorporate them into many aspects of your research.

• Collaborators and consultants (6 pages): For the K99 application, you have the opportunity to include 6 pages of support letters… use this opportunity to its fullest. Seek collaborators and consultants that will help you complete experiments that are outside the expertise of your home lab.

• Institutional letter of support (1 page): Emphasizes the institution’s commitment to the scientific development of the applicant.

• Reference letters (at least 3, but no more than 5): This isn’t really a part of your mentoring team, but you generally want to choose (i) senior investigators from any period of your scientific career that (ii) have been involved in your training and (iii) can speak highly of your research career potential.

#5. Be kind to your reviewers
Reviewers are busy PIs that are forced to take time out of their packed schedules to read grants. Often grants are read late at night or on the plane on the way to the NIH review meeting. Thus, while you may spend months crafting your application, a reviewer will only spend ~30 minutes (at best) reading your application. In short, make reading your grant a pleasant experience. A few key tips from experienced reviewers include:

• Read and then re-read your application to minimize grammatical errors and spelling mistakes.

• Include white space on your pages, because a wall of text is intimidating and unappealing to read.

• Incorporate in figures to simplify ideas and concepts. Figures also help to break up text.

• Write clearly and concisely.

• Write for a general audience. Don’t assume that the reviewer has the appropriate background knowledge to understand what you are doing. Especially for F-awards and K-awards, the review groups are from a broad background.

• Minimize abbreviations if possible.