The NIH headquarters, known as the “NIH campus” to the local community, is located in Bethesda, Maryland. Pictured above is the entrance to the Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center. Credit: Courtesy of National Institutes of Health
Ohio State received a $4.3 million, five-year grant in August from the National Institutes of Health to fund a program that provides training to four emerging clinical and translational faculty scientists looking to advance their research.
Translational research is the process of using research results to develop means of treating and diagnosing diseases.
The Clinical and Translational Science Institute K12 program was created to provide opportunities for junior faculty members across all colleges to pursue their own specialized research projects with support through mentorship, external resources and financial coverage, K. Luan Phan, professor and chair in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health, said.
“This K12 program is a vehicle that allows young scientists, young investigators, young clinicians, to have a platform to develop their research ideas alongside with developing skills that they may need to fully implement and become an independent investigator,” said Phan, also the Jeffrey Schottenstein Endowed Chair of Psychiatry and Resilience at the Wexner Medical Center.
Every year, the K12 program opens an application process to select two new faculty to join the program and receive the K12 award. Kayla Herbell — an assistant professor in the Martha S. Pitzer Center for Women, Children and Youth at the College of Nursing — said she received the award in 2022 and started a three-year research project based on optimizing and understanding residential treatment for adolescents.
“The K12 has been completely pivotal in my career,” Herbell said. “It has allowed me to have the time to think really meaningfully about what the next step is for this population and for my research.”
Though the university offers many training programs to aid students and postdoctoral fellows, there are very few that exclusively support junior faculty, Phan said. Faculty who receive this award are usually the ones who missed out on mentorship and training opportunities as a graduate student and are looking for a second-chance opportunity to advance their research skills, he said.
“It allows a faculty member to almost go back to graduate school of sorts, to focus on their own development,” Phan said.
The K12 program also supports financial coverage of researchers’ salaries, hoping to eliminate worries surrounding the possible financial toll(s) pursuing a research project may have, Phan said. Therefore, the program allows participating researchers to fully immerse themselves in their individualized research projects without making a huge financial sacrifice.
“Most faculty don’t have protected time to develop their own ideas, and their own skills and their own professional development,” Phan said. “Oftentimes, faculty are obliged to teach and/or take care of patients and be a part of a group that does research.”
Pushed to the next level by a team of like-minded individuals, researchers benefit from having consistent mentorship across their projects’ durations, permitting them to obtain fresh knowledge from passionate and experienced support, Phan said.
While working on her team-based research project, Herbell said observing how her mentor led a team gave her a thorough understanding of how to keep a project’s direction clear.
“A big piece of it is having that time with a mentor, somebody who you really admire, who is doing the type of work that you want to be doing or are doing,” Herbell said. “And so, having that time to really be integrated into my mentor’s team and to see how she does things has also been really pivotal.”
This program has ultimately opened a window of opportunity for junior faculty to set aside time to rediscover themselves in the context of research, collaboration and creation, Phan said. Herbell said she appreciates what the program has done and continues to do for junior faculty members like herself.
“As a person who’s newer to being a professor, being early career, your time can get bogged down with a lot of other things, and there’s a lot of distractions out there, especially being at a big place like Ohio State,” Herbell said. “And so having that time kind of earmarked for research is just, I can’t say enough positive things about it.”
