Course Description

The mentored K Series is often an applicant’s first contact with the NIH grant process. It can be a steep and intimidating learning curve. We will help you think carefully about whether the K is right for you, as its pursuit may use much of your ESI time. We will discuss how to prepare for and write each section, offering examples of sections from recently funded grant submissions. This writing course may be of particular interest to medical centers seeking to create a robust physician-scientist training pipeline.

Unsure of R vs. K? We suggest that you purchase Master the K (and F) Series writing course, as the Research Strategy portion is identical to Master the R Series.

F applicants: Master the K (and F) Series will help you write a persuasive F-series submission, given the overlap between the two mechanisms. It will also help you hone NIH grantsmanship skills that will improve your applications for years to come.

Updated: March 28, 2024

Preview an Excerpt of This Course

Helping over 3000+ learners from all skill levels

Our students have grown their skills by taking our courses. Here are just a few of their stories.

It is very informational and sets a good foundation for my grant writing. I wish I had attended earlier than now and could have gone very far with my grant application.

Eyitayo O. Owolabi PhD, RN
Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow

R1 Research Institution

Very, very helpful. In particular, the specific, detailed, and actionable recommendations regarding elements and language to include in the grant is invaluable.

Katharine Collier MD
Medical Oncology Fellow

Top 5 Largest Cancer Hospital

Excellent training. As someone not familiar with the K mechanism, this really helped me understand what goes into K specific materials, like the career development plan. The emphasis and explanation of rigor criteria was also helpful in understanding how to address these in the application. The example materials provided throughout were incredibly useful and clarifying.

Kellie Gross PhD
Faculty Research Training and Development Specialist

Top 5 Largest Cancer Hospital

I completed your K-series course last spring and wrote/submitted my first MOSAIC K99/R00 application in the third cycle. I was beyond thrilled when I received my notice of award. Thank you for providing this wonderful resource – it really helped me prepare for writing a competitive K99 grant application.

Dr. Iris Smith
Top 3 World's Best Hospital

Thank you for all you do in instructing researchers on successful grantsmanship as well as keeping us informed with the latest NIH landscape. I have benefitted greatly from taking your K training and ultimately was awarded an NIGMS MOSAIC K99/R00.

Iris Smith PhD, Instructor, Department of Molecular Medicine

Cleveland Clinic Foundation

Course Details

Who: For those preparing to write an NIH K-series submission, and the people who advise them.

When:  Available on demand

Cost: $1500

Summary of Course Sections

1. Preparation
Our most successful clients spend a lot of time preparing to write a grant submission. We discuss strategies for optimizing success on your NIH submission, including familiarizing yourself with NIH’s funding priorities; finding your niche in the funding portfolio via the Reporter website; discussing your mentoring team, project, and options with program officers; and shopping your draft Aims to find the best possible IC and FOA fit.

2. Specific Aims
The one-page Aims document is arguably the most important narrative section of an NIH submission. It must quickly convey what you are doing, why you are doing it, and the impact your results will have on clinical care. I offer lots of templates and funded samples of aims pages to help guide your writing.

3. Significance and Innovation
The Significance and Innovation sections are all about persuading your reviewers about the merits of your project. You must concisely describe the disease burden, Rigor of Prior Research, knowledge gap, and how your project will fill the knowledge gap and reduce the disease burden. You must also clearly articulate your competitive advantages over previous and current approaches. I describe a writing strategy to help reviewers quickly grasp the key points of these important sections, which are part of your scored Research Plan. I provide templates, funded examples, and exercises to help you edit and write more persuasively. 

4. Approach
This section is based on the classic IMRAD writing style (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion), which most researchers have used since their high school lab reports and continue to use in their publications. That said, it is not easy to write this section well, and K grantees must be careful that a poor score on the Research Plan does not drag down their Mentoring Plan score as well, given that a poorly designed project is often blamed on a lack of mentoring. I will discuss strategies for structuring this important section and describe the reviewer comments I typically see.

5. Overview of the K Series
Should you apply for a K, and if so, which one? To which institute? Is the training plan and mentoring team sound? Does your project fit the training plan? We begin with an overview of the Career Development Awards, the available funding mechanisms, how to choose support by career stage and eligibility, and how to structure your thinking about training topics, mentors, and your project. 

6. Candidate Section
We examine step-by-step how to write each of the 3 parts of the Candidate Section. Packed with an array of templates and funded samples from across a wide range of K mechanisms. 

7. Letters
I will discuss how to draft the Letters from mentors, co-mentors, collaborators, contributors, and consultants — which unbeknownst to most K grantees are written in large part by the grantee. We review reference letters and how all these letters differ from one another. We also examine the contents of a winning institutional letter. 

8. Mistakes Commonly Made
I present mistakes I typically see on K submissions based on my assessment of recent Summary Statements from my K grantees.

Course Learning Objectives

At the end of 4 hours 45 minutes of coursework, you will: 

  1. Identify and employ crucial steps to take to prepare to write an NIH grant application
  2. Acquire key information about effective NIH writing strategies
  3. Apply NIH effective strategies to writing and revising a draft submission
  4. Utilize learned skills to critique peer drafts to hone their own skills
  5. Develop better grantwriting skills that will carry forward on all submissions, whether to NIH or other funding agencies


Content Disclaimer

Course content updated March 28, 2024. Content of this course was updated and re-recorded on this date. The content was accurate at that time. We recommend that you search for changes that may have occurred to the content since the recording date.

Note that the course title may have been modified slightly since the recording.