early career

Request Ticket (include lab and approval message from lab's PI) // Limit: 1 predoc, postdoc, or faculty member per lab

Limiting Language
Only one applicant per lab may apply in the Drug Delivery Program. Labs must select either a predoc, a postdoc, or a faculty member.

Request Ticket (include lab and approval message from lab's PI) // Limit: 1 predoc, postdoc, or faculty member per lab

Limiting Language
Only one applicant per lab may apply in the Drug Delivery Program. Labs must select either a predoc, a postdoc, or a faculty member.

Apply to Internal Competition // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1

Limiting Language
For the 2027 award, one nomination will be invited from each of the participating institutions listed at the bottom of this page.

Program Overview
The Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences provides funding to young investigators of outstanding promise in science relevant to the advancement of human health. The program makes grants to selected academic institutions to support the independent research of outstanding individuals who are in their first few years of their appointment at the assistant professor level.

Based on their performance during their education and training, candidates should demonstrate outstanding promise as contributors in science relevant to human health. This program does not fund clinical trials research. Strong proposals will incorporate particularly creative and pioneering approaches to basic, translational, and applied biomedical research. Candidates whose work is based on biomedical principles but who bring in concepts and theories from more diverse fields are encouraged to apply.

Ideas with the potential to produce an unusually high impact are encouraged. Selection of the successful candidates will be based on a detailed description of the work that the applicant proposes to undertake, evaluations of the candidate’s performance, and notable past accomplishments, including honors, awards, and publications. In evaluating the candidates, the National Advisory Committee gives considerable weight to both the project proposal and the researcher, including evidence that the candidate is a successful independent investigator and has the skill set needed to carry out their high-impact proposal.

Funding from the NIH, other government sources, and project grants from nonprofit associations do not pose a conflict with the Pew scholars program. If you have questions concerning eligibility, please contact Pew Biomedical Programs (scholarsapp@pewtrusts.org) in advance of applying.

Eligibility

• Hold a doctorate in biomedical sciences, medicine, or a related field, including engineering or the physical sciences.
• As of Sept. 3, 2026, run an independent lab and hold a full-time appointment at the rank of assistant professor. (Appointments such as research assistant professor, adjunct assistant professor, assistant professor research track, visiting professor, or instructor are not eligible).
• Current appointments such as research assistant professor, adjunct assistant professor, assistant professor research track, visiting professor, or instructor are not eligible to apply.
• Must not have been appointed as an assistant professor and run an independent lab at any institution prior to June 10, 2023, whether or not such an appointment was on a tenure track. Time spent in clinical internships, residencies, in work toward board certification, or on parental leave does not count as part of this three-year limit. Candidates who need an exception on the three-year limit should contact Pew’s program office to ensure that application reviewers are aware an exception has been given.
• May apply to the program a maximum of two times. All applicants must be nominated by their institution and must complete the 2027 online application.
• If applicants have appointments at more than one eligible nominating institution or affiliate, they may not reapply in a subsequent year from a different nominating entity.
• May not be nominated for the Pew Scholars Program and the Pew-Stewart Scholars Program for Cancer Research in the same year.

Apply to Internal Competition // Limit: 1 nomination per major division 

Limiting Language
Each year, only one applicant may be nominated from a major division (e.g., College of Arts and Sciences, Medical School) of an institution.

Program Overview
The William T. Grant Scholars Program supports career development for promising early-career researchers. The program funds five-year research and mentoring plans that significantly expand researchers’ expertise in new disciplines, methods, and content areas. 

Applicants should have a track record of conducting high-quality research and an interest in pursuing a significant shift in their trajectories as researchers. We recognize that early-career researchers are rarely given incentives or support to take measured risks in their work, so this award includes a mentoring component, as well as a supportive academic community.

The Foundation supports research in two distinct focus areas: 1) Reducing inequality in youth outcomes, and 2) Improving the use of research evidence in policy and practice. Proposed research must address questions that align with one of these areas.

Focus Areas:

• Reducing Inequality
  • In this focus area, we fund research studies that aim to build, test, or increase understanding of programs, policies, or practices to reduce inequality in the academic, social, behavioral, or economic outcomes of young people ages 5–25 in the United States, along dimensions of race, ethnicity, economic standing, sexual or gender minority status, language minority status, or immigrant origins.
• Improving the Use of Research Evidence
  • In this focus area, we support research on strategies focused on improving the use of research evidence in ways that benefit young people ages 5-25 in the United States. We want to know what it takes to get research used by decision-makers and what happens when research is used. We welcome letters of inquiry for studies that pursue one of these broad aims.
    
    While an extensive body of knowledge provides a rich understanding of specific conditions that foster the use of research evidence, we lack robust, validated strategies for cultivating them. What is required to create structural and social conditions that support research use? What infrastructure is needed, and what will it look like? What supports and incentives foster research use? And, ultimately, how do youth outcomes fare when research evidence is used? This is where new research can make a difference.

Nomination Statement Requirements
This statement from the Dean or chairperson of the nominating division should describe why the applicant was selected; an assessment of the applicant’s plan; the applicant’s current and expected future roles in the division; the supporting resources available; the applicant’s current source and amount of salary; and the appointment, promotion, and institutional support plans for the applicant, including a guarantee that 50 percent of the applicant’s paid time will be devoted to research. (Successful examples of nominating statements can be found on the Foundation’s website.)

Eligible Applicants 

• Applicants must be nominated by their institutions. Major divisions of an institution (e.g., College of Arts and Sciences, Medical School) may nominate only one applicant each year.  In addition to the eligibility criteria below, deans and directors of those divisions should refer to the Review Criteria to aid them in choosing their nominees. Applicants of any discipline are eligible. 

• Applicants must have received their doctorate within seven years of submitting their application. We calculate this by adding seven to the year the doctorate was conferred. In medicine, the seven-year maximum is dated from the completion of the first residency. The month in which the degree was conferred or residency completed  does not matter for this calculation. 

• Applicants must be employed in career-ladder positions. For many applicants, this means holding a tenure-track position in a university. Applicants in other types of organizations should be in positions in which there is a pathway to advancement in a research career at the organization and the organization is fiscally responsible for the applicant’s position. The award may not be used as a post-doctoral fellowship. 

• Applicants outside the United States are eligible. As with U.S. applicants, they must pursue research that has compelling policy or practice implications for youth in the United States. 

• We strive to support a diverse group of researchers in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, and seniority, and we encourage research projects led by Black or African American, Indigenous, Latinx, and/or Asian or Pacific Islander American  researchers.

Apply to Internal Competition // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1

Limiting Language
Institutions may submit one proposal per session. Interested candidates should work through their sponsored projects office.

Grant Guidelines
The mission of the Foundation is to support early stage investigators engaged in basic biomedical research that has the potential to significantly advance the understanding, diagnosis or treatment of disease.

The funds are designed to provide to tenure track faculty members in their first to fourth year, at American Institutions, who hold M.D. and/or Ph.D. degrees, start-up support to move the project forward to the point where R01 or other independent funding can be obtained.  Applicants with current R01 or similar funding should not apply.  

Limit: 4* (see below) // Tickets Available: 3

Cancer Data Science // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1

Cancer Control Science // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 0
​J. Llavona-Ortiz (Cancer Center) 

Molecular Precision/Cancer Prevention // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1 

Other Cancer Research // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1

Number of Applications
Each eligible institution (defined as having a unique UEI number or NIH IPF number) may submit up to a combined total of four applications (one in Cancer Data Science, one in Cancer Control Science, one in Molecular/Precision Cancer Prevention, and one in Other Cancer Research) to any companion NOFO or any combination of companion NOFOs (PAR-23-286, PAR-23-287, and/or PAR-23-288).

Scientific Areas

Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 0

A. Favela (Plant Science)

Limiting Language
Institutions may submit one nominee to the New Innovator Award program.

Eligibility 

• FFAR welcomes applications from all applicants who meet the following eligibility criteria:
• The nominated faculty member must have been hired on or after August 1, 2022, for a tenure-track or equivalent position and may work in any discipline or any department within the institution.   
  Preference will be given to individuals near the onset of their independent research career and who are within eight (8) years of receiving a Ph.D. or equivalent degree.   
• Individuals with significant research experience prior to obtaining their faculty position will not be considered for this award. For this funding opportunity, significant research experience is defined as a nominee that has been awarded a substantial research grant (three to five years of support) or has received project funding totaling over $1M within the time of their tenure position or has been awarded similar career development awards with similar budgetary scopes.
• The proposed research application must directly benefit U.S. agricultural interests. 

FFAR recognizes that agriculture and food sciences are highly complex, requiring individuals from a variety of disciplines to realize the potential in each field or research area. Particularly for early-stage investigators, collaborators are often essential for success. While this award is given to an outstanding early-career investigator, applicants should include information regarding any essential collaborators and include letters of support from those collaborators. In these letters, the collaborators should comment on the potential of the individual to achieve success. 

Research must align with one of the following priority areas:

• Cultivating thriving production systems
• Sustaining vibrant agroecosystems
• Bolstering healthy food systems
• Strengthening the scientific workforce 

Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 0

A. Josephson (Agricultural and Resource Economics)

Limiting Language
Institutions are expected to run their own internal competitions and may only forward one nomination to the Foundation

Overview 
One of the core aims of Mellon's Higher Learning Program is to elevate the knowledge that informs fuller narratives of the human experience. Supporting the expansion and evolution of humanities disciplines through investing in the range and productivity of exceptional faculty is crucial to this objective. New Directions Fellows undertake systematic training outside their fields of specialization to acquire the competencies required for advanced cross-disciplinary research – research that goes beyond traditional boundaries and offers innovative and effective ways of bringing humanistic knowledge to bear on social challenges. 

With this objective in view, Higher Learning invites nominations of highly qualified scholars in the humanities or humanistic social sciences who received their doctorates between 2013 and 2019. This by-invitation competition will provide grants of up to $300,000 over three years. We anticipate allocating up to $4 million for this call; the final number of proposals selected will depend on the number and substance of the submissions. 

Eligibility
Eligible candidates will be faculty members who were awarded a doctorate in the humanities or humanistic social sciences within the last six to twelve years (2013-2019) and whose research interests call for formal training in a discipline other than the one in which they are an expert. Terminal degree holders, such as MFAs, are ineligible. 

The proposed field of study must be a foray into a new area of intellectual inquiry and not just an enhancement to go further into the primary field. Language study, technical writing, or skill acquisition such as GIP mapping do not, by themselves, constitute as a new direction. 

Limit: 4* (see below) // Tickets Available: 3

Cancer Data Science // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1

Cancer Control Science // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 0
S. Yeo (Public Health - Competitive Resubmission) 

Molecular Precision/Cancer Prevention // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1 

Other Cancer Research // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1

Number of Applications
Applicant organizations may submit more than one application, provided that each application is scientifically distinct, and each is from a different candidate.

Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 0

M.M. Kaelberer (Physiology)

Program Overview
The Searle Scholars Program supports research of outstanding individuals who have recently begun their appointment at the assistant professor level, and whose appointment is their first tenure-track position at a participating academic or research institution. Today, 168 institutions are invited to participate in the Program.

The Program was established at The Chicago Community Trust in 1980 and has been administered by Kinship Foundation since 1996. The Program is funded from the estates of Mr. and Mrs. John G. Searle. Mr. Searle was the grandson of the founder of the world-wide pharmaceutical company, G.D. Searle & Company. It was Mr. Searle's wish that certain funds be used to support "...research in medicine, chemistry, and the biological sciences."

Each year 15 new individuals are named Searle Scholars. Awards are currently set at $100,000 per year for three years. Since its inception, 617 Scholars have been named and over $174 million has been awarded.

Eligibility
The Searle Scholars Scientific Advisory Board is primarily interested in the potential of applicants to make innovative and high-impact contributions to research over an extended period of time.

Applicants for the 2026 competition (awards which will be activated on July 1, 2026) are expected to be pursuing independent research careers in biochemistry, cell biology, genetics, immunology, neuroscience, pharmacology, and related areas in chemistry, medicine, and the biological sciences.

Applicants should have begun their appointment as an independent investigator at the assistant professor level on or after May 1, 2024. The appointment must be their first tenure-track position (or its nearest equivalent).

Institutions which do not have tenure-track appointments should consult with the Scientific Director of the Program regarding eligibility of selected applicants PRIOR to nominating such individuals.

The Searle Scholars Program does not ordinarily support purely clinical research but has supported research programs that include both clinical and basic components. Potential applicants who are unsure if their research is appropriate for our Program are encouraged to examine the research interests of present and former Searle Scholars on this website.

Applicants who were nominated for awards in the previous competition year but were not awarded may still meet the eligibility criteria for the current competition. Institutions should consult with the Scientific Director of the Program regarding renomination of such individuals.