NIH Directors Talk Training at ASCB Council Meeting

Jon Lorsch, NIGMS Director, wants to support innovation in research and training. ASCB photo John Fleischman

Jon Lorsch, NIGMS Director, wants to support innovation in research and training. ASCB photo John Fleischman

“Science has changed dramatically in the past two decades, but graduate education has not,” Jon Lorsch, Director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), told a room full of ASCB Councilors and NIH administrators, meeting at the society’s headquarters in Bethesda on May 16. “We want to have educator-initiated experiments empower the community to innovate, experiment, and improve how we are training the next generation of scientists,” Lorsch said. “We would like to see a shift away from facts, toward an emphasis on skills.”

 

The direction of the biomedical enterprise and especially the training of its next generation of researchers was the focus at the spring ASCB Council Meeting. ASCB President Peter Walter invited Lorsch and other NIH administrators concerned with scientist training to kick off a panel presentation and discussion led by Kathleen Green, ASCB Council member and Northwestern University Professor. Besides Lorsch from NIGMS, NIH was represented by Richard Baird, Director of the Division of Interdisciplinary Training at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), Stephen Katz, Director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Disease (NIAMS), and Jonathan Wiest, Director of the Center for Cancer Training at the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

 

NIGMS is the primary funding institute for ASCB members so Lorsch led off with an overview of the NIGMS 5-year plan, which includes a pilot funding mechanism, Maximizing Investigator’s Research Award (MIRA), to support investigators instead of projects. That would give researchers the flexibility to follow data, even if it leads them off the path of R01 aims. He believes this mechanism will indirectly help trainees as well. “When a graduate student takes a gel to a PI and says, ‘Look at this weird band,’ now the PI is pressured to reply ‘That is weird, but I have to renew my grant so please get back to aim 2.3.6’,” Lorsch explained.

 

NIGMS is also looking to change the way scientists are trained by institutions, Lorsch said, promising, “A (new) T32 funding opportunity announcement that is tailored to promote the development and iterative improvement of outstanding predoctoral training programs.”

 

The T32 is one of several funding mechanisms for graduate students and postdocs. T32s for graduate students are granted to institutions so it’s up to the institution to decide who will be funded within their graduate program. A T32 gives a student support for up to two years of their first three years of training. F31s are granted to individual predoctoral students for 2-3 years based on a proposed project and mentoring plan. F32s are similar, but they are aimed at postdocs.

 

There are pros and cons to each program, according to the NIH directors. Lorsch said that, “[NIGMS] favors T32s versus F fellowships, because they have an institutional impact beyond the students who are paid for. They create greater structures and promote institutional change.” NIGMS supports about half of all NIH T32 slots.

 

NCI’s Wiest spoke up for F fellowships. “We think that the Fs are a mechanism that develop a funding history. Other [institutions] will see they’re fundable,” said Wiest. NCI is launching new funding mechanisms, like the F99/K00. “F99s will fund two years for a predoc, then they can transition to K00, up to four years as a postdoc, to make them competitive for K99. It also promotes a more defined career path,” Wiest said. Like the K99, the F99 will also be open to noncitizens.

 

NCI is also introducing an R15 to support staff scientists. Said Wiest, “There are lots of people who like doing research but don’t want to be investigators. The staff scientist is important for maintaining stability of a lab without increasing the number of trainees.” NIH itself has long relied on staff scientists in its intramural programs, Wiest said. ”We have in the intramural program at the NIH staff scientist positions that have been around for three decades, and many of us had staff scientists in our group, and we benefitted from that, and we can’t help but hear the outcry from the Future of Research and others that ‘We need this!’”

 

But are we training too many research scientists? Stephen Katz from NIAMS pointed out that, “We don’t have a predictor [of which students will be successful], and some are late bloomers, and some have not excelled in their coursework, but they have some spark.” Baird from NIBIB said there was a need for earlier career counseling. “I think a highly educated public is a laudable goal, training everyone for a tenure-track profession, not so much. We should be teaching people how to use their scientific training for other career paths early,” Baird said.

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Christina Szalinski is a science writer with a PhD in Cell Biology from the University of Pittsburgh.