A: It's very important when you are applying for your first K to start early. It takes much more time than you think. Below is a suggested timeline covering things you need to be doing and thinking about before you submit. (One caveat ñ by June 2007, NIH plans to require electronic submission for K-awards. We will update this article at a later point to reflect this change in policy).

At least 7 months before deadline:
• Collect and read through previous K's to get a flavor for the style they're written in.
• Read through the NIH guide for how K's are evaluated. Review categories unique to the K including: candidate, environment, career, mentor, research plan. The primary guide can be found at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-00-019.html
• Read the additional guidelines given to NIH reviewers who are commenting on a K-award (http://cms.csr.nih.gov/NR/rdonlyres/0660C631-CE8D-4324-
B192-AC8BD4DA9429/10404/K01ReviewGuidelines051106.pdf)
• Be a reviewer for your colleagues' K's through your research committee or any other available venues.
• Start thinking about the topic you want to study in your K.
• If you need more pilot data, collect it now.
• Choose and contact a mentor. This is not as easy a decision as it may sound — it's often useful to have someone as your mentor who was not your post-doctoral mentor. It shows that you're growing in a new direction. Some useful (i.e., fundable and practical) qualities for mentors include: a track record of mentorship, a big name in the area you're transitioning to (remember, the K is about moving into new territory), and a personality you think you could deal with for the next 5 years.
• Read the excellent NIH website on getting grants at http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/grant_tips.htm
• Check out the excellent resource: "Career development center for postdocs and junior faculty" at http://nextwave.sciencemag.org/cdc/index.shtml, particularly their "how to write an R01" toolkit and advice from "The GrantDoctor: Advice for Grant Seekers."

6 months before deadline:
• Write an abstract and 2 page summary of your research plan.
• Get reviews of the abstract and proposal from your mentor, close faculty, other post-docs or junior-faculty, specifically, if possible, other K-awardees.
• Take stock of the sections that will be necessary for your K. Use the Table of Contents from the PHS398 augmented with relevant sections for Career awards as your guide. The packet can be obtained from: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/phs398/phs398.html
• Discuss the proposal with a program person at NIH to see whether it's likely to fly. Also discuss the type of award it should be (K01, K08...). The program person for NIH K-awards for each branch of NIH is listed at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/contacts/pa-06-001_contacts.htm

4 months before deadline:
• Finish a first draft of the career development plan.
• Contact potential consultants. Ask them for letters of support and their 3 page biosketches. It's often useful to offer to write a first draft of a letter for them.
• Contact individuals to write letters of reference for you. Near as I can tell, they shouldn't be your consultants. I'm told that it may be useful for at least one of them to be at your institution.
• Find out when your local grants office needs to know you'll be submitting something, and what they'll need from you when. Different institutions function differently, but it's often useful to give them a heads up and to begin discussing the budget with them early.

3 months before deadline:
• Finish a first draft of the research plan.
• Pass the career and research plans by your mentor, other postdocs and K-awardees.
• Send a draft to your program person at NIH.
• Send first drafts of letters to your K consultants who've asked for them. In writing first drafts of letters, feel free to be very positive about yourself and your research — they can always edit out anything they don't agree with.

2 months before deadline:
• Start meeting with grants people about getting the budget into shape.
• Talk with your NIH program person. Ask for their suggestions and what committee it should go to. Have them help you write a cover letter so that it gets to that committee.
• Look up the committee you're targeting on the web and see who's on it. Tailor the application to the committee members likely to review it (i.e., cite them and have their interests in mind)
• Distribute K to your research committee, or if you don't have a research committee, distribute it to some faculty who've written grants before. Ideally you'll want to obtain about 3 reviews. It's useful to scrap pride as a concept and go for the toughest most brutal reviews you can get before sending the grant out to NIH. If they're done in-house there's less for the NIH reviewers to pick on.
• Set up a meeting with your chairman to discuss the K, and send him or her 1) a cover letter, 2) a draft, 3) your CV. It's also courteous to prepare a draft of a support letter.
• If you haven't fulfilled all your university's requirements for eligibility for submitting grants (esp. on-line research ethics courses, conflict of interest forms) make sure you do. And make sure your mentor has fulfilled them too.
• If you haven't written your NIH 4-page biosketch, do that. Note that the new NIH biosketch format requires an ERA Commons ID. These are generally dispensed by someone at your university ñ often the grants office will know how to get one if no one else does.

1 month before deadline:
• Make suggested revisions.
• Pass it by at least your mentor and one other faculty member again.
• Acquire syllabi for the courses you've proposed for inclusion as appendices.
• Work with your mentor on your letter of support. There's no law or taboo against their taking an active role in the preparation of this document. Rather, you may have seen more K's than your mentor, and thus may have a better idea of what such a letter should include.
• Bug consultants for their letters and biosketches.
• Reread the guidelines given to NIH reviewers who are commenting on a K-award and review your own award. Doing a written critique of your own work can be sobering.
• Work with your grants office to deal with your budget. Make sure that all necessary subaccounts and subcontracts are in place. As part of this process, give them a signed face sheet. Make sure that "New Investigator" is checked.

1 week before deadline:
• Work with staff to package the whole business and get stuff sent off to the grants office for signatures.
• Write your cover letter. Your program person can help you construct this letter so it's directed towards the most appropriate committee and to his or her branch.
• Copy your appendices (up to 5 reprints, course syllabi, and your department's facilities description from the grants office — it's a million pages but allegedly helps)

2 days before deadline:
• Make sure you have all your consultant and reference letters.
• Make sure you have all your budget papers. This may take legwork. If need be, consider hand-carrying it through these steps rather than have the grants office do it for you.

1 day before deadline:
• Fed-ex out the grant.