My starting caveat that this perspective is highly influenced by, and may be specific to, my corner of UCSF and the people in similar positions at other schools of medicine in the US. It’s based on what I learned writing career development award applications, having been funded by them for the last few years, conversations with colleagues and mentors, and my own forays into mentoring.

Primary mentors for early-career career development awards (such as K01s, K76s, or foundation-funded equivalents) are the people you meet with every 1-2 weeks and are most often senior author on your papers.

Co-mentors may have specific topical and methods expertise such that you meet with them monthly and they may be senior authors for a small fraction of your papers.

Advisors on career development awards are the people you need to meet with quarterly, or send a few emails, who might be middle authors on papers and/or connect you to training or research resources.

Pragmatically, there are often 3 stages to figuring out mentoring/advising teams and relationships for career development awards.

1. There’s the initial application submission, where perhaps you follow the advice of your primary mentor most closely.

2. For most people there’s a resubmission where you respond to what the reviewers recommend (e.g. adding advisors to fill gaps in methods or content expertise).

3. After funding is awarded (fingers crossed) there's how things evolve in real life as your ideas and the availability of potential collaborators evolve.

One challenge for everyone involved is that career development awards requires mentoring yet doesn’t fund the time of mentors. A second challenge is that (from what I’ve seen) the research and training proposed in these awards often exceeds the budget available.

As a result, in soft-money environments, it can be wise to choose mentors & co-mentors who have (or are building towards) grants that specifically aim to support mentoring time. For example, NIH K24s can support 25-50% of the mentor’s time for 5-10 years and provides up to $50k/year that can be used by mentor or mentees for research or career development. Faculty with K24s are being assessed on the achievements of their mentees and can support mentees with a wider range of interests. In addition, if you are proposing research that takes more resources than your career development award allocates (e.g. if you need to buy or generate data), it may be important to identify mentors who have research resources and proven generosity in using it to support mentee research.

In contrast, faculty without mentoring-specific funding have to make time for mentoring/advising by using their “free” time (e.g. instead of sleep, family time, exercise, hobbies, etc), role-specific time (e.g. fellowship director, which may or may not be funded), or project-funded time. As a result, such mentors may have to be more selective in who they support (e.g. people whose research falls within the scope of their own research awards) or may not have the time to fully address your needs.

Mentoring is a two-way gift, where ideally each individual learns and grows and experiences career benefit. Many of these gifts are intangible, others are visible on CVs. More on this in the future.