Influence of Pre and Post Doctoral Fellowships on Autism Research Career Trajectory

Background:  Investing in the training of junior level researchers at critical points in their academic careers has been an important strategy of public and private funding agencies.   This support helps both recruit and cultivate new investigators so that they develop into the next generation of productive autism scientists.  However, tracking the short and long term activities of these researchers has not been well documented or published publically.    

Objectives:   This analysis examined data from 2010 to 2014 from both pre doctoral and postdoctoral research grants awarded from a private funding agency. Diversity of research topics as well as metrics of potential future success as researchers was analyzed and presented

Methods:  Trends across time and award type were made and compared.  Funding amount and standardized return on investment measures including number of new grants, publications, presentations to scientific and lay audiences, retention in the field of autism and documented collaborations outside the mentor/trainee relationship were recorded and tracked.    The last metric has been demonstrated previously as a method for identifying successful scientists within the field of autism (Goldstein et al, 2014).

Results:  Data was  tracked for 1 year  following the end of the award for 14 pre doctoral and 11 post doctoral fellows, who received awards from 2010-2013.    During this time period, the 14 predoctoral fellows published 6 articles in books or scientific journals, conducted 41 presentations, and established documented collaborations with 30 scientists who were outside the original pre doctoral training plan.  At the time of survey, all were still working in the field of autism.  The 11 postdoctoral fellows published 9 articles, made  46 presentations and had established connections with 33 other scientists during their fellowship.  More than half had received additional funding for autism research and all were still working in the field of autism research.    For predoctoral fellowships, the most popular field of study was molecular and cellular biology (28%); for postdoctoral fellowships it was brain function (30%). Communication and language ranked second for both groups. 

Conclusions:  These descriptive results demonstrate the critical importance of funding of early career researchers to support the career development of researchers studying ASD.   Comparison data from pre doctoral fellows who did not receive specific research and mentorship support, as well as those outside autism research, will be presented at IMFAR.   In the future, additional effort should be made to recruit fellows from additional fields of interest for training in autism-specific fields of study.