HFSP Postdoctoral Fellowships

Summary

The HFSP fellowship program provides funding for innovative, potentially game-changing life sciences research projects. It welcomes applications for initiatives with a high degree of risk. The projects should be multidisciplinary in character and use cutting-edge methods and strategies to question accepted wisdom. From a scientific standpoint, they ought to tackle a significant issue or an impediment to advancement in the domain.

Early career scientists are encouraged by HFSP postdoctoral scholarships to expand their research expertise by pursuing new research endeavors and working abroad.

Two different fellowships are available:

Long-Term Fellowships (LTF) are for applicants with a PhD on a biological topic who want to embark on a novel and frontier project focussing on the life sciences.

Cross-Disciplinary Fellowships (CDF) are for applicants who hold a doctoral degree from a non-biological discipline (e.g. physics, chemistry, mathematics, engineering or computer sciences) and who have not worked in the life sciences before.

Aim and Benefits

The HFSP fellowships are for 3 years, with no possibility for renewal. 2025 fellows may interrupt HFSP support after the first year, for up to one year, while continuing their postdoctoral research funded through other sources (deferral period).

Fellows are granted a living allowance as well as a research and travel allowance. Depending on their specific situation fellows may also qualify to receive a child allowance, a parental leave allowance and a relocation allowance.

HFSP fellows cannot concurrently hold an HFSP Fellowship and another paid employment position (i.e., a position supported by a salary) or another paid fellowship from another organization. However, the HFSP Fellowship can be supplemented from other sources (e.g., from a host supervisor’s grant or from institutional funds). HFSP fellows may apply for and hold additional research grants themselves, provided those funds will not be used as a salary for the fellows and are to assist their conduct of the Fellowship research project as presented in the fellow’s successful application. HFSP fellows must devote themselves entirely to their research project in the host institution and may not engage in any other paid activity without prior agreement of HFSPO.

The PhD must have been conferred when the fellowship is activated.

HFSP fellows can either use the third fellowship year to continue to work in the host laboratory, to return to their or their spouse’s/partner’s home country, or to move to another HFSP member country.

Requirements

Important eligibility criteria:

1) Nationality

• A candidate who is not a national from one of the HFSP members (see list below) may apply to work only in a research institution in one of the member countries. A candidate who is a national of one of the member countries can apply to work in a research institution in any country.
• HFSP member countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus (EU part only), Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Republic of Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
• Candidates must propose to work in a country different to the one in which they did their PhD research or previous post-doctoral research, even if they are not a national of that country. They are not eligible to propose to move from one laboratory to another in the same country. For those institutions that are not classified as national, i.e. international or extraterritorial institutions such as EMBL, ICPT or ICGEB, the country in which the laboratory is located will be considered the host country.

2) Doctoral degree

• A research doctorate (PhD) or a doctoral-level degree comparable to a PhD with equivalent experience in basic research (e.g. a research based MD or medical PhD) must be conferred by the start of the fellowship. It is not required at the time of submission. By “conferred degree” we mean you have received your diploma for the degree. The “conferral date” is the date on the official PhD document. Please refer to the application guidelines for information in case you were not yet awarded the PhD.

3) Research publications

• Applicants must have at least one lead author publication by the submission deadline of the Letter of Intent which can be a manuscript (1) published in a recognized OA preprint repository, or (2) accepted for publication, (3) in press or (4) already published by a peer reviewed journal.

Submission of a fellowship application at the Full Proposal stage however is only possible with a published research article according to points (2) to (4) above. HFSP only accepts full-length original research publications in English that were peer reviewed and for which the applicant must either be the single author, first author or joint first author. In a joint first author paper the applicant does not need to be listed in the first position, but the equal contribution of the authors must be clearly stated in all cases.

In some cases the standard publication practice makes first authorship impossible (e.g. alphabetical listing of authors); these circumstances must be explained in the the application.

Interview date, Process and Venue

All Letters of Intent are checked for compliance with formal eligibility criteria by HFSP in accord with the criteria above. In addition, LOIs are screened by the three scientific directors of HFSP and members of the Fellowship Review Committee for alignment with the objectives of HFSP and its Fellowship schemes (e.g. basic, interdisciplinary research).

Ineligible LOIs or those with research proposals that do not align with the scientific scope of HFSP will not be sent for review and the applicants will be informed accordingly.

Eligible LOIs will then be peer-reviewed by the HFSP Fellowship Review Committee. See HERE the members of the current Fellowship Review Committee.

Please contact the Fellowship Office prior to submitting your application with any questions regarding eligibility or on the alignment of the proposed research with the scientific scope of the HFSP Fellowship program. You may also consult the FAQ section.

Scientific review

Review of Letters of Intent

Eligible LOIs will initially be assessed by two Fellowship Review Committee members. This will establish a first ranking that will result in a first cut-off. HFSP then invites the top LOIs to submit a Full Proposal. Approximately the top 15-20% of eligible LOIs will be invited.

LOI applicants will be notified between mid-August and end of August as to whether their Letter of Intent was selected or not to submit a Full Proposal.

Review of Full Proposals

The Full Proposals will be confirmed for eligibility. Eligible applications will then be sent to the same Review Committee members who reviewed the Letter of Intent. The Review Committee members will rate each of the applications assigned to them again.

The Fellowship Review Committee then meets in late January or early February. At the meeting, each full proposal will be discussed, and each of the original reviewers defends or revises their rating before all Review Committee members provide their own scores for each application. An average score for each proposal is then calculated, to generate a ranked list of proposals recommended for funding.

For details on the review process and the assessment criteria and scoring guidelines please refer to the document called ‘2025 HFSP Postdoctoral Fellowships: Information on review process and assessment criteria’, which can be found here.

Applicants are notified of the outcome of their applications once internal HFSP formalities are complete (usually towards the end of March).

Deadlines:

• Submission of a Letter of Intent by 1 PM (Eastern Time US) by May 14, 2024
• HFSP will notify fellowship applicants between mid-August and end of August as to whether their Letter of Intent was selected or not for submitting a Full Proposal.
• Submission of Full Proposals for invited applicants by 1 PM (Eastern Time US) by September 26, 2024 via ProposalCentral.

How to Apply

Interested and qualified? Go to Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) on proposalcentral.com to apply.

Before applying please read carefully the application guidelines which list the eligibility criteria. Should you have any question as to your eligibility, please contact the fellowship office.

The HFSP application portal in ProposalCentral will open on 14 March 2024 for Letters of Intent.

Information on how to submit a Letter of Intent can be found here.

There is only one competition per year for HFSP Fellowships. Applications for the 2025 HFSP Long-Term and Cross-Disciplinary Fellowships (to start in 2025) will follow a two-step submission process via the online submission platform ProposalCentral. Firstly, applicants will be asked to submit a Letter of Intent from which the review committee will select the best proposals. In a second step, successful applicants will be invited to submit a Full Proposal.

The link to the registration portal of each program will be available in the corresponding application guidelines.

The application guidelines for the 2025 cycle are available.

1.  The Long-Term Fellowship application guidelines can be found here,
2.  The Cross-Disciplinary Fellowship application guidelines can be found here.

For more details visit: http://HFSP website.