Guest guest Posted April 16, 1999 Report Share Posted April 16, 1999 And they can't find enough money to support the TSE Lab. http://www.biomednet.com/hmsbeagle/52/labres/adapt.htm Adapt or Die LabConsumer Toolbox Product Alert Featured Lab Pages Headlines Journals Meeting Brief Opinion Web Opinions Profile Letters to the Editor Books Software Reading Room Overview Debate Participants In Situ Job Alert Web Picks Games & Contests Art Gallery Contents About/Citing Beagle What's New Contributors Beagle Masthead Library Databases Collaborations Job Exchange Shopping Mall Your Room Searching for a Tenure Track? Consider the New NIH by G. (Posted April 16, 1999 · Issue 52) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Abstract This article discusses how changes at the National Institutes of Health have created an excellent environment for tenure-track researchers. It compares the opportunities against those of university research positions, examining the intellectual environment, facilities, and finances. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- If you are a postdoc weighing your options for tenure-track career, take a close look at the new National Institutes of Health initiatives. NIH may be a far better place to start your career than you imagine. A career at NIH was once viewed as a fallback for scientists who couldn't find good positions in universities. When Harold Varmus became director in 1993, however, he set in motion a plan to revitalize the research atmosphere at NIH. Interviews with researchers in various institutes within NIH show that Varmus has indeed breathed new life into these facilities. Armed with an increased budget and a stellar reputation as a Nobel-Prize-winning researcher, Varmus has attracted new administrator-researchers who actively manage high-level labs while directing important new research-oriented initiatives. Thus, NIH is again an exciting place to do research. While it continues to fight against its earlier reputation, NIH has managed to lure into tenure-track positions postdocs who might otherwise have taken faculty posts at prestigious universities. These tenure trackers may still face frustrating obstacles at NIH. Large labs still exist there. Also, some young researchers in certain institutes find themselves struggling against rules and senior researchers from the old regime. However, tenure-track researchers at NIH can often start up their laboratories much more quickly, with equal freedom and fewer distractions, than can their university colleagues. One NIH tenure-track researcher recently put it this way: " This is a place where you can come and really hit the ground running. I had a lab up and running in two months. To gather resources from the outside to do this [at a university] would have taken me at least three years. " Because NIH researchers do not need to write grants or teach, they have more time and energy to focus on research. In addition, as a salaried employee with dependable funding, if an NIH investigator wants to change research direction, she can do so immediately. She doesn't need to justify it until her next review, conducted every three years by an outside board. The NIH tenure system also facilitates changes of direction because, compared to granting agencies, it emphasizes people's track records more and their future plans less. This flexibility has helped NIH AIDS researchers, who have had to change directions quickly as research progressed. The constant level of research funding has traditionally had its drawbacks. Tenure trackers were not able to add easily a project without dropping others. However, the NIH's National Cancer Institute has created the Intramural Research Award (IRA) program to boost research funding for three-year periods. One investigator mentioned that he wrote a five-page proposal, receiving a quick approval for an extra postdoc and additional supplies for three years. The IRA was designed to encourage collaboration between different labs within NIH. Other institutes at NIH have adopted the IRA or similar programs to encourage innovation. The opportunities for collaboration and intellectual stimulation may be far greater on the NIH campus than at universities. Colleagues are not competitors, as they are in the university setting; individuals do not vie either with other NIH scientists or with university scientists (who receive grant money from the separate extramural program) for funding. Therefore, they are freer to exchange ideas or otherwise work together. One researcher, who left a postdoc at Harvard for a tenure-track position at NIH, claims the intellectual stimulation is far greater at NIH than at Harvard. Because NIH invites world-class university researchers to lecture on its campus every day, the possibilities for meeting with extramural scientists are unsurpassed. Every NIH researcher whom I recently interviewed claimed that the current tenure-track researchers are tops. However, one tenure tracker complained about the lack of doctoral candidates in laboratories, and others complained about cramped lab space. With 2,000 postdocs, 900 tenured faculty, and 240 tenure-track researchers, the laboratories are generally small (often four to six people) and top-heavy. Graduate students, who commonly have more curiosity and less professional fear than postdocs, make unique contributions to university laboratories. Because they tend to be younger than other researchers and are less likely to have families, graduate students usually work longer hours and add a special vigor to laboratories. Although a few doctoral students work at NIH while enrolled at universities, in the absence of an intramural graduate program, many NIH laboratories do not have graduate students. If you seek to build a large lab group, you may be disappointed at NIH, where the limits of the facilities keep most labs small. Even tenured faculty members often have no more than half a dozen people in their laboratories. However, you can argue for more space if your publication record is good. In addition, relatively good funding can compensate for small labs. For example, one investigator told me that his projects have succeeded with a streamlined lab group because he can easily justify paying outside labs to sequence and generate polyclonal antibodies. This frees up his lab members for more creative work. NIH researchers get dependable money for their resources and salaries. One researcher who previously worked in a lab funded by the Medical Institute believes the funding at NIH is comparable to that at universities, but on different terms. Another researcher believed funding was a bit lower at NIH, and salaries for tenured faculty tend to be lower than at top-tier universities. A new researcher at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, for instance, arrives with 1,000 square feet of lab space, $300,000 in equipment money, $100,000 in supply money, salaries for a technician and two postdocs, and his own salary. (Other institutes at NIH may be less generous.) At universities, new hires typically get an initial large sum ($300,000 to $500,000) to pay for everything, but all future funding (except their own salaries) has to come from outside grants. How does the political aspect of working at a government institution like NIH differ from the university situation? Although politicians regularly change the allocation of money in certain areas, administrators in the intramural program try to protect their funds and researchers from major cutbacks. Because NIH is a public institution, researchers are subject to special ethical rules that are not binding at universities. Congress can always limit the ability of NIH researchers to conduct research that is " politically incorrect " from either conservative or liberal points of view; at a university, it may be possible to find private funding for controversial work. In addition, NIH researchers are theoretically compelled to reveal the details of their research to anyone who files a Freedom of Information Act request. Public ownership of research can cause other problems as well. For example, some tenured researchers have had to spend hours producing documents or making depositions because corporations or other researchers made competing patent claims against their work. Now may be an especially good time to consider taking a tenure-track position at NIH. With historically high budgets, the institutes are working to combat the high turnover rate for tenure trackers by offering new incentives. Some of the following initiatives are in place or should be shortly: higher salaries for tenured researchers; a rule allowing researchers to take their equipment with them if they leave, which should increase the incentive to risk an NIH career; special adjunct programs to boost budgets for researchers who propose worthy projects; and construction of new lab facilities and a 250-bed research hospital in the near future. If you are tempted to aim for a tenure-track spot at NIH, remember to compare the local situation at the appropriate institute with your specific alternatives at universities and other institutions. If you want a focused, intensive research career without the distractions of teaching or writing grants, NIH may be the place for you. G. is a Boston-based science management consultant, writer and editor. Andrzej Krauze is an illustrator, poster maker, cartoonist, and painter who illustrates regularly for HMS Beagle, The Guardian, The Sunday Telegraph, Bookseller, and New Statesman. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Tell us what you think. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Endlinks NIH Job Opportunities - an online resource covering senior job opportunities and tenure-track openings. Scientific Resources - the NIH's guide to on-site research, including a calendar of events and intramural research news. NIH Ethics Program - details the policies that NIH scientists must follow with respect to such topics as collaborations, outside activities, and financial disclosure. Job Alert - HMS Beagle's resource for employment listings and career information. Job Alert links to BioMedNet's Job Exchange. Research Law Fight: Right to Know, or to Squelch? - the downside of the Freedom of Information Act's role in making publicly funded research so accountable. From the April 5, 1999 issue of the Washington Post. Previous Adapt or Die Articles Pictures of Life: Using Web Images to Teach Biology by Malcolm (Posted April 1, 1999 · Issue 51) Lab Judo: Defend Against Hostile Colleagues by G. (Posted March 19, 1999 · Issue 50) Proposal Preparation without Panic by Liane Reif-Lehrer (Posted March 5, 1999 · Issue 49) Anatomy of a Rejection: Improve your Publishing Record by G. (Posted February 19, 1999 · Issue 48) One Enzyme Fits All by Malcolm (Posted February 5, 1999 · Issue 47) Meet the Press: But on Your Own Terms by G. (Posted January 22, 1999 · Issue 46) more ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- ©1999 BioMedNet Ltd. 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