Significant Impact: from K Award to Your First Big R01
For women faculty, transitioning from a Career Development (K) Award to your first NIH R01 is about more than just writing a fundable grant. Host and expert NIH grant consultant Sarah Dobson guides early career researchers through the roadmap for overcoming the hurdles of being a woman in academia and avoiding the K cliff. She’s ready to see passionate and tenacious women K Award recipients level up to R01 funding and build impactful, thriving, and fulfilling research careers. Visit https://sarahdobson.co to learn more.
Episodes
110 episodes
The Skills That Transfer No Matter Where the Funding Comes From
If you're a K award recipient, chances are your career has been geared towards securing NIH funding. In this episode, I make the case that the skills you're building as you transition from mentored researcher to independent investigator — clari...
When Every Funding Opportunity Feels Urgent (And How to Know Which Ones Actually Are)
If you're a K award recipient right now, your inbox probably feels like a minefield of "opportunities" — RFAs, collaboration requests, suggestions from mentors — and every single one feels urgent. Meanwhile, you're toggling between two competin...
Featured K to R Essentials Graduate: Deanne Tibbitts, PhD
The K-to-R transition asks you to do something that sounds simple but isn't: zoom out from the project you've been working on and start seeing yourself as someone with a research program. That shift is harder than it looks — and it's exactly wh...
[Greatest Hits] There's More Than One Road to a Successful Research Career
The rules you inherited about academic success—churn out more grants, stick to the old playbook, be grateful to be here—can shrink your career. In another of our Greatest Hits episodes, we flip that script with a simple, powerful idea: create t...
[Greatest Hits] Your Research Career Needs a Compass
Feeling pulled into every committee, side project, and “quick favor” while trying to make the K-to-R leap? In another of our greatest hits episodes, we explore one of the most powerful tools you can deploy in your research career.We sta...
[Greatest Hits] How Unconscious Decision-Making Can Derail Your Career
Fear, pressure, and momentum can quietly shape a career you never meant to build. In another of our greatest hits episodes, we take a clear-eyed look at how unconscious choices creep into your career, leading to unintended consequences....
[Greatest Hits] How to Free Yourself From the Mentee Mindset
You don’t become a PI after you get funded; you get funded after you start thinking and acting like a PI. In another one of our show's greatest hits, this episode unpacks the crucial mindset shift from mentee to independent leader: focusing on ...
[Greatest Hits] 3 Things You Need to Know About The K to R Transition That Have Nothing to do With Writing an R01
Ready for a candid look at the K‑to‑R leap no one warns you about? In a replay of our most popular episode of all time, we go straight at the hidden work behind a fundable R01: reshaping priorities, setting boundaries that stick, and building t...
Finding Your Footing: Reflection Questions To Close A Hard Year And Step Into The Next
In a moment when the funding landscape has been unstable, institutions have been unpredictable, and many of you have been carrying more emotional and intellectual weight than ever, it can feel self-indulgent to pause and look back. But this pra...
Featured K to R Essentials Graduate: Sunny Lin, PhD
What do you do when a grant that anchors your research disappears overnight? We sit down with Sunny Lin, PhD to explore the real work of rebuilding after a canceled K Award. Our conversation moves through the full arc of the K-to-R journey. We ...
Uncharted Academia Part 6: Sustainable Ambition
We wrap our Uncharted Academia series by making a clear case for sustainable ambition—ambition that draws strength from purpose, alignment, and hope, not from fear or constant approval-seeking. Across a turbulent funding climate and shifting in...
Uncharted Academia Part 5: Redefining Success
In Part 5 of this series, Sarah explores how external metrics create an illusion of certainty—and how to replace it with something sturdier: your own clear metrics, aligned with work that genuinely matters. In this episode, we talk...
Uncharted Academia Part 4: Building Research And Career Networks That Last
In Part 4 of this series Sarah explores an essential way to navigate uncertainty—one built on intentional collaborations, reciprocal networks, and leadership that starts with self-stewardship.We explore how to choose fruitful collaborat...
Uncharted Academia Part 3: Protecting and Leveraging Excellence
In Part 3 of this series, Sarah maps a practical way through turbulence by protecting the two skills that matter most: resilience, rooted in purpose and self-belief, and communication, the ability to show the value of your research with precisi...
Uncharted Academia Part 2: Finding Strategic Clarity
The ground is shifting under research funding, and we’re not waiting around for “normal” to return. In Part 2 of Uncharted Academia, Sarah lays out a practical path for early career investigators to stay steady and keep moving: cultivate resili...
Uncharted Academia Part 1: The End of the Old Rulebook?
The ground under academic research careers is shifting fast—and waiting for a return to “normal” is costing time, energy, and momentum.In this first episode of Uncharted Academia, Sarah names what has changed: shrinking NIH budg...
Introducing a Special Series: Uncharted Academia
This is a quick preview of my new six-part series, Uncharted Academia — about navigating research careers in a time of transformation. Over six episodes, we’ll talk about clarity, boundaries, leadership, and redefining success in a sys...
Featured K to R Essentials Graduate: Kalisha Bonds Johnson PhD, RN, PMHNP-BC
Navigating the leap from K Award to R01 funding demands more than scientific expertise—it requires discovering your authentic research voice and purpose. In this revealing conversation with Dr. Kalisha Bonds Johnson, we explore how finding your...
Featured K to R Essentials Graduate: Haixia Zheng, PhD
Transitioning from K to R grant funding demands more than just technical knowledge—it requires a fundamental shift in scientific identity and leadership. K to R Essentials graduate Haixia Zheng, PhD shares her journey from K Award success to pr...
Featured K to R Essentials Graduate: Caitlin Rancher PhD
K to R Essentials graduate Caitlin Rancher, PhD shares her journey navigating the K99-R00 transition while developing essential skills for independent faculty success. She discusses how applying a scientific mindset to career challenges transfo...
Reclaiming Control Over Your Academic Career
When your grant funding suddenly vanishes, panic isn't just common—it's expected. But how you respond to that panic could determine whether your research vision survives or gets sacrificed in the scramble.Drawing from recent conversatio...
Tempted to Use AI to Write Your Grant? Here's What To Consider
The ever-expanding presence of artificial intelligence in our professional lives has reached the sacred territory of research grant writing, raising profound questions about scientific integrity and the nature of academic work. As someone who's...
Introspection as a Career Strategy: Wayfinding Without a Map
This episode gets a bit personal! Rediscovering a 12-year-old journal unexpectedly transformed my understanding of the work I do now. For weeks, I found myself immersed in the pages of my younger self's thoughts, witnessing my struggles to defi...
Featured K to R Essentials Graduate: Amy LeClair, PhD
In this episode, I sit down with Amy LeClair, PhD — a medical sociologist and recent K to R Essentials graduate — for a powerful conversation about moving from being a perpetual collaborator to pursuing independent research, describing how she ...
You Can't Do It Alone: Finding Your People During the K to R Transition
Have you ever tried to navigate a major life change completely on your own? As someone who once proudly wore the "I'll figure it out myself" badge, I've learned through experience that community isn't just helpful during transitions—it's absolu...