Hello my name is Andy Grand and I'm an associate professor of neurosurgery at the University of Minnesota. I've been asked to participate in the jump-start your academic career series and in particular to talk to you about how to write and organize your CV and then how to write grants during your residency. These are disclosures none of which are pertinent to this conversation or discussion. So in organizing writing your CV and writing grants. So first of all you really need to have accomplishments to put them on your CV. The other thing is you need to have a research interest to begin writing grants. I know this sounds fundamental but I think it's important and so I want to start by talking to you about what to do during your residency to begin accumulating accomplishments for your CV and then how to find research interests and then begin writing grants. And then ultimately I will talk about some specifics on how to write your CV and how to write grants. So the first thing is it's I think fundamental to find a mentor. These are there this is a collage of mentors that I've had during my career. I think you what you'll find is that there are research mentors for different aspects of your career. On this collage there are two basic scientists Masada Nakafuku and Magdalena Goetz who are great research mentors to me and then a number of others who provided mentoring during my residency for clinical aspects and beyond. The importance is find mentors. It's okay to have more than one mentor and I think importantly keep them as mentors throughout your career. So when finding a mentor it's important to understand what it is that you want long-term. Do you want to be a basic scientist and also have a clinical practice? Are you more interested in clinical trials and having a clinical practice? Maybe your interest is in having clinical expertise and publishing case series about your expertise or maybe you're interested in clinical expertise with a focus on education. Whatever it is I would encourage you to find mentors who have a career that is similar to what you're interested in. I think it's important to get exposed to organized neurosurgery. I think this creates excitement for you around neurosurgery. You begin to see the world of neurosurgery beyond where you're training and ultimately it gives you an opportunity to begin getting involved in organized neurosurgery which I think is really important and there are a lot of different neurosurgical organizations that you can get involved in. As residents I would say the most important ones are the American Association of Neurologic Surgeons or the AAMS, the Congress of Neurosurgeons, the CMS and then the Council of State Neurosurgical Societies, the CSNS. When you get on to your career as faculty you'll find that there are other organizations such as the Academy of Neurologic Surgeons, the Society of University Neurosurgeons or SUN, the Neurosurgical Society of America or NSA and then ultimately the European Association of Neurologic Surgeons. I would encourage you to go to organized neurosurgery meetings. First of all these are great meetings. They're held in phenomenal places such as San Diego. But when you're there you're going to be exposed to a lot of neurosurgeons who have done exceedingly well throughout their career and they provide inspiration and guidance for you as you're envisioning your own career. I personally have always enjoyed listening to the presidential talk. Here's Fred Boop talking about the history of neurosurgeons. And then perhaps my most memorable lecture that I heard is when Hunt Bajor invited President Bush and interviewed him. It was truly one of the most memorable things I've ever seen at one of these meetings. At the meetings there are courses. They're going to teach you new techniques and then I would encourage people to spend time on the floor with industry where you can learn about new instruments, new technologies. It's just a great opportunity to open your eyes, be exposed to just new things that you hadn't thought about before. Ultimately I think it's important as residents to get involved in organized neurosurgery and really two opportunities are through the CSNS resident fellowships and then the AANS Young Neurosurgeons Committee. It's important early on to begin writing and I would encourage people as first and second year residents to begin writing case series and review articles. I also think it's important to begin looking for grant funding and the reality is you may not think that you need the money to do the research and that's probably true but you'll find that obtaining funding, writing grants is a fundamental part of being an academic neurosurgeon and doing research. Begin to learn these skills early. There are a lot of grants that are out there that you can apply for as a resident. They may not be a lot of money. It may be only ten thousand dollars or fifteen thousand dollars. It doesn't matter. Get into this habit. So look for research opportunity through the Neurosurgery Research Education Foundation or through the National Institute of Health, the NSF. At your own institution you may find that there are funds that are available either through the institution or through the state. Here in Minnesota for instance there's money that is set aside by the state legislature through the MnDRIVE initiative for robotics, brain conditions, cancer. And then every year there's three million dollars that's available for spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury research that is only available to researchers in the state of Minnesota. And then whatever subspecialty you're interested in going into there's also funds available. As a cerebrovascular neurosurgeon I look to the American Stroke Association, the Brain Aneurysm Awareness Foundation, the Brain Aneurysm Foundation. But regardless of subspecialty you'll find that there are subspecialty specific research funds that are available to you and I would look for those. With your mentor find these grant opportunities and then begin writing grants with your mentor and do this early on. Ideally I would be doing this one to two years prior to your dedicated research time as a resident. So now that you've begun to acquire things to put on your CV, you've got a research interest, now you can start writing your CV and writing for grants. You know when you're starting to think about research I would think about diving into a research topic and becoming an expert. I would focus on one main research project during residency. Again become an expert in it, see the project through from start to finish, present it at scientific meetings, and I would focus on one high-impact research publication during residency. So I'll ask you to write grants. You know begin preparing for a grant. It depends on the research funding source. Depending on the source you're going to require this grant to be written in different ways. So what resources exist to help you write your grant? I would encourage you to attend grant writing courses either through the University, the NNS, the CNS, NIH. Your university may have a Center for Translational Research called the CTSI and they have lots of resources as well. My own personal advice, just start writing a grant. Find your research mentor, find one of these small grants that are available, and just start writing grants. So how do you prepare a CV? Well it depends on the purpose of the CV. So CVs are used for job searches, giving talks, grants. Ultimately the dean may require this annually, and then most importantly your tenure and promotion is going to require your CV and it's going to have to be written in a certain way. So I'm a photographer and in photography you'll find that you want to decide what type of camera you're going to go with early on. Canon or Nikon because that's going to dictate the lenses that you buy moving forward. And quite frankly as soon as you decide on one and you start acquiring lenses it's hard to switch. And the same thing is true about your CV. You want to decide on the organizational structure of your CV and then stick with it. And once you've decided on that it's hard to go back and change it. Ultimately people's CVs are 40, 50, 60 pages long and so you don't want to change the organizational structure of it after a couple of years. The other thing that would encourage people is to get into good habits of updating your CV. So William McRaven was head of special forces and he's famous for talking about making your bed daily. And his point here is to get into the routine of doing things. And I would encourage you to get into the routine of maintaining your CV. Just get into this habit and update it on a weekly basis, a monthly basis. And then ultimately if you can, ask your administrator to maintain it and make this an expectation of their job. So lastly I just wanted to just give you a bit of advice on transitioning from residency to practice. And that is apply for grants early. I would do this even during your residency. So you want to look for early career grants that are available for your first, second, third year up in practice. You want to plan ahead in your residency. What are the grants you're going to be writing? And begin doing that even in your residency. When you're out in practice, really focus during those early years on getting research grants. Again, the early career grants are easier to get, but they're only available to you early on. And so really focus on that more than getting your data, more than getting your publications. Really focus on writing grants. And that's my advice. People are welcome to reach out to me. My email is grand, G-R-A-N-D-E, at the University of Minnesota. And thank you for your attention.

CV writing

grant writing

residency

neurosurgery

mentors