your background is better than many of my friends (include me), all got NIW approved recently from VSC. My advantage over you:1. work as research associate at top-3 school, 2. Work on big NIH grant 3. Strong recommend letters (3 Academy members, many big guys, from Academy, Industry, National Laboratory ...), 4. Careful preparation of documents 5. Good cover letter
What you can do is: 1. Good cover letter, try to get some expert input, 2. get more reference letters. 3. Well organize your material, highlight the points.
Sure you should be fine.