An Applicant’s Guide to Research-Oriented
Postdoctoral Fellowships
Jonathan
P. Stange, Ph.D.
I am a
postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of
Illinois at Chicago. I completed my PhD
in clinical psychology at Temple University in 2016. I’m writing to provide one perspective on
different types of research-oriented postdoctoral fellowships that are
available, since finding a postdoc and understanding the different types of
positions can be confusing.
As a brief
caveat, this is not an exhaustive list of information about postdocs, so I
recommend checking with other people you know who may have had different
experiences. This also is targeted for
people who are aiming to have primarily research-oriented careers. Therefore, I do not consider full-time
clinical postdocs (in which the majority of your time is spent doing clinical
work) here in detail, nor do I consider sub-disciplines (e.g., neuropsychology)
in which there is a postdoc match process.
1. Investigator-Funded Research Postdoc. This is probably the most common type of
research postdoc, one in which the PI provides funding via a grant (e.g., an
R01) for you to work in his/her lab. The
specific duties of the job may vary but typically involve data collection and
analysis, manuscript preparation, assistance in managing the lab, and helping the
PI with grant writing. There are several
ways you might find out about these positions.
PIs often will post advertisements on listservs (e.g., SSCP, SRP, APA
Divisions, ABCT), or they jobs may be listed on the Wiki Psych Jobs or APS
postdoc exchange websites (links below).
However, not all postdoc jobs are posted. Some investigators may even have funding that
they would choose to use on the right postdoc but would not advertise such a
position if they do not need to fill it.
Alternatively, PIs might be expecting to have a vacancy for a postdoc
position coming up even if they have not officially posted an ad yet. So, it pays to do some networking to find out
if you might be able to make a position work with a PI whose work interests
you. You could work through your graduate
mentor’s contacts (e.g., asking your mentor to contact PIs you’re interested in
but do not know, if your advisor knows them), or even cold-email people to
express interest. If you have a strong
research match with a PI at the location in which you are completing your
clinical internship, this may give you a foot in the door to obtain a postdoc
should the PI have funding when your internship ends. (For some research-oriented internship
applicants, consideration of whether internship sites have possible research
mentors with postdoc funding could influence internship rankings. Among other
reasons, it is nice not to have to move after a year of internship!)
2. National Research Service Award
Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship (F32).
A second form of research postdoc is the F32/NRSA grant. These grants pay for your salary for up to
three years of postdoc. They are
designed to “enhance the research training of promising postdoctoral candidates
who have the potential to become productive, independent investigators in
scientific health-related research fields relevant to the missions of the
participating NIH Institutes.” Applicants
often take a new angle in mining a PI’s existing data while obtaining new
relevant training. These grants can be a
great way to get the additional research training you need before starting an
independent research career. They also
can provide good training to set you up to apply for an NIH K award, if you
don’t think you will be ready to submit a K award in the first year or so after
your internship. One major benefit of
the F32 is that for the most part, your time should be protected to work on the
project you proposed and to acquire the skills you need. In contrast, in investigator-funded postdocs
there may be more pressure to work as an employee of the PI, doing
administrative tasks that are not always oriented toward your career
development. In theory, for an F32 you
could apply to work with any PI (at any institution) who is willing to serve as
your mentor on the grant, which gives you considerable flexibility. The difficult thing about F32s is the timing,
and the need to plan well in advance. If
you start thinking about submitting an F32 during your internship year, most
likely you would need to submit in the first half of the year (e.g., by the
December deadline) in order to find out if your score on the first round will
be fundable in time to start a postdoc on July 1 (depending on when your
internship ends). If your F32 isn’t
funded on the first round but you want to resubmit, you may have a gap between
the end of your internship and the start of the grant, if it gets funded the
second time around, and you would have to find some way to pay your salary for
that gap (or go unpaid until you find out about your revision score, which is a
risky proposition). The safest way to
apply for an F32 probably is to first obtain an investigator-funded research
postdoc (as I described above), and then to apply for the F32 knowing that you
have the investigator-funded postdoc as a safety net in the event that your F32
is not funded (or if it is not funded on the first round). To find out more about F32s, you can ask
around in your professional network to see if you know anyone who has applied
for or received one. You also can check
out the NIH Reporter website and search for individuals who have received F32s
from the institutes you’re interested in (e.g., NIMH, NIDA, etc.) to get a
sense of what kinds of things have been funded: https://projectreporter.nih.gov/reporter.cfm. For more information about the F32, see http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-16-307.html.
3. Institutional National Research Service
Award (T32). The T32 is another form
of postdoc that is a grant that an institution receives for the purpose of
training individuals in research in areas in which NIH has specified that there
is a shortage of young investigators. To
obtain these positions, the applicant applies to the institution, rather than
applying to NIH. I have heard that it
often helps to have established a relationship with the mentor for the grant. Perhaps for this reason, many individuals who
receive T32 postdocs had been working at the institution already before they
received the fellowship. For example,
some clinical internship sites also hold T32 grants, which allows some interns
to transition from internship into the T32 postdoctoral fellowship,
particularly if the intern was able to establish a relationship with the mentor
by working on a research project together during the internship year. Although not necessarily stated explicitly,
institutions seem to use T32 grants to transition psychologist trainees from interns
to postdocs to faculty members. In many
cases, individuals who successfully obtain a T32 position plan to write a K
award application, which facilitates the transition to faculty if the K is
funded. Some T32s may also involve
clinical training components or providing research training in the contexts of
treatment settings.
4. Foundation Fellowships. There also are a number of opportunities
to have postdoctoral fellowships funded by private research foundations that
are funded by donors. For example, the
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has postdoctoral research
fellowships that pay for your salary for two years at an institution in which
you have a research mentor: https://afsp.org/our-work/research/grant-information/. The Klingenstein Third Generation Foundation
also provides some funding for postdocs in the areas of child depression, ADHD,
and access to care: http://www.ktgf.org/fellowship_prog.html. These types of applications also take some
time for planning as they may be due in the fall in order to allow enough time
for review of applications prior to July 1 start dates. It is worth keeping an eye out for these types
of opportunities.
5. VA MIRECC fellowship. 26 VA sites offer this research-oriented fellowship, and it's a great fit for people who are aiming for VA-based research careers. You can learn more here: http://www.mirecc.va.gov/
Other issues to consider:
What is your ultimate career goal? Your ultimate goal for your career (e.g., a
tenure-track faculty position) should influence what type of postdoc you
take. If you want to obtain a faculty
job but you have not published much, you may want to seek a postdoc in which
you will have time to publish or in which the PI will allow you to publish with
his/her data. If you already have
substantial publication experience but want to learn a new skill set to use in
your ultimate job, look for postdocs that will allow you to do something new
while building on your existing skills, rather than continuing on in an area in
which you already have demonstrated competency.
If you want to work in a Psychiatry department, in some cases postdocs
may provide an opportunity to establish relationships with a mentor and to apply
for training grants such as K awards that would facilitate transition to
faculty at the same institution. These
are factors to consider when selecting postdoc.
Do you want to obtain licensure? Most states require supervised post-doctoral
clinical work prior to being eligible for licensure. If you want to be licensed, if you choose to
take a research postdoc, you will want to find out about how much time is
available for obtaining the required clinical hours for licensure. You also may want to know whether you can use
your regular working hours to do clinical work, or whether your PI expects that
all of your clinical work will happen outside of typical work hours (which
makes for long work days). Often, this
is negotiable, as PIs understand the desire to obtain licensure, as long as you
fulfill your employment obligations.
Additional resources:
APS Postdoc
Exchange – aggregates psychology postdoc job ads: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/post-doc-exchange
Wiki Psych
Jobs – also aggregates psychology postdoc job ads:
http://psychjobsearch.wikidot.com/#toc17
Other
postdoc guides that may be helpful (for full disclosure, most of these I found
only after writing the above):
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Good luck on
your search! While there may not be a perfect solution, I hope the above
information helps you to balance the many different factors in making the best
possible choice.
postdocify.com
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