Paving the Pathway to Success for Junior Faculty Members

The road from fellow to faculty is more challenging than ever for physician-scientists as they run the gantlet of applying for research funding, keeping up with ongoing training, and meeting the demands of the clinic, which compete with protected time in the research lab.

Mount Sinai’s Department of Medicine is working exceptionally hard to ease that burden through supportive programs and tailored pathways designed to give junior faculty members the traction, confidence, and resources they need to launch their professional careers.

“Our field is losing large numbers of physician-scientists at a time when we should be nurturing more of them,” says Benjamin K. Chen, MD, PhD, Vice Chair for Research of the Department of Medicine, and Irene and Dr. Arthur M. Fishberg Professor of Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “The Department of Medicine has invested heavily in developing and transitioning our junior faculty through mentoring, grant-writing, and other creative ways to support them along the long road to becoming independent researchers.”

Among the most vital ways is the Junior Faculty Mentorship Program. Senior faculty mentors, most of whom are specially trained for these roles, serve as mentors and advisors. They help mentees put together a thoughtful Individual Development Plan (IDP), similar to what the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has incorporated into its degree-granting programs. “We try to tailor these IDPs to the more advanced research needs of junior faculty as they transition to their new role of independent investigator,” explains Dr. Chen.

To that end, the main goal of the program is to put junior faculty researchers on a track that makes them competitive for independent grant funding. Mount Sinai is paving the way through a range of constructive programs, including grant-writing workshops, which bring in outside experts to help junior faculty hone their grant-writing skills through both classroom and individual instruction. This training is especially geared to the NIH K series of career development awards, which are typically awarded in the early stages of a scientist's career.

Reinforcing that effort is a unique Grants-Work-In-Progress program, a biweekly series of seminars that allow grant applicants to air their ideas and get valuable feedback from junior faculty peers at the same level of training, as well as from their own mentors or, in many cases, team of mentors.

That training can again prove crucial once they have a career development (K-type) award in hand and are now making the “K to R” transition to independent researcher, vying for R01 grants. To further bolster the pipeline of new physician-scientists, the Department of Medicine is planning a new supportive program for medical residents through a program known as StARR (Stimulating Access to Research during Residency). Expected soon through this vehicle is funding for a National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute grant that ensures protected research time during residency training.

Junior faculty development is also being leveraged to help the Department of Medicine achieve a more diverse investigative team. The mainstay here is the NIH FIRST (Faculty Institutional Recruitment for Sustainable Transformation) Program, which Mount Sinai departments actively participate in to recruit and hire 12 early stage investigators from underrepresented groups for biomedical research.

“Because our FIRST faculty members are often straight from postdoc programs and haven’t necessarily written grant proposals, we provide them with individualized transition support as we do for our junior faculty,” notes Dr. Chen, who co-leads Mount Sinai’s FIRST Faculty Development Core implementing training, mentorship, and networking activities for FIRST faculty across the institution. “Through FIRST we’ve been able to get some amazingly accomplished junior faculty, and we’re working to ensure they have access to the resources they need—particularly grant training—to make the leap to independence.”

The support network Dr. Chen and his team have put in place has yielded impressive results for all junior faculty. “We’ve enjoyed ongoing success by maintaining a robust pipeline of K awards, as well as a strong K-to-R transition rate,” he observes. “But we’re always trying to do better.”