Explore New Research Areas with CEMB

The CEMB provides opportunities for faculty and trainees at CEMB research and educational institutions to explore new research areas and learn new techniques. Seed grants allow new faculty members to become faculty scholars in CEMB and are expected to become active participants in Center activities. Pilot grants give trainees the opportunity to propose and manage their own interdisciplinary research projects. Both CEMB investigators and trainees are eligible to apply for short-term “Sabbatical” funds to facilitate exchange with other CEMB labs to foster collaborations.

Funding for
CEMB
Trainees

Trainee Pilot Awards

Travel funds for CEMB Fellows

CEMB Faculty and Trainee Research Exchange

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

CEMB grant for trainee-led projects

Funding for
New Principal Investigators

Unfortunately, we are no longer able to support seed grants.

Funding Opportunities for Diversity at CEMB Partner Institutions

National Funding Opportunities

Funding Opportunities for NSF Grant Programs

Funding Opportunities for Diversity, Equity
and Inclusion at CEMB Partner Institutions

GEM Ph.D. Engineering and Science Fellowships

The objective of these programs is to offer doctoral fellowships to underrepresented minority students who have either completed, are currently engineering or natural sciences programs, or received admittance into a PhD program directly from a bachelor’s degree program. Fellowships may be used at any participating GEM Member University where the GEM Fellow is admitted.

Participating CEMB Universities:

Fontaine Fellowship for Ph.D. students

Fontaine Fellowships support the education of the most underrepresented groups in PhD education at University of Pennsylvania. Originally restricted to students from groups “traditionally and historically underrepresented” in higher education – specifically U.S. African American, Native American, and Hispanic students – diversity is now more broadly defined, and may include, for example, first-generation college students who are from low income families, or students whose backgrounds are most underrepresented in a specific discipline or field.

Participating CEMB University:

Chancellor’s Graduate Fellowship

Established in 1991, the CGF provides academic, professional, and personal support for academically excellent graduate students interested in enhancing diversity at Washington University and in the professoriate. The CGF cultivates a sense of community and service among our fellows and within Washington University and the St. Louis communities. By leveraging relationships and resources, the Fellowship is uniquely positioned to foster networking and interdisciplinary collaborations among current fellows and alumni.

Participating CEMB University:

Olin Fellowship for Women in Graduate Study

Since 1974, the Olin Fellowship Program at Washington University at St. Louis has made it possible for women of exceptional promise to become leaders in society. Olin Fellows have become professors, doctors, artists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and public servants, and continue to make a difference in our world.

Participating CEMB University:

Graduate and Postdoctoral Fellowships at NJIT

NJIT has fellowship opportunities for biomedical engineering students, underrepresented minorities, and women pursuing graduate studies.

Fellowships include: ASEE/NSF Small Business Postdoctoral Diversity Fellowship, Anthony Kahn Diversity Fellowship, Executive Women of NJ Fellowship.

Participating CEMB University:

Clare Boothe Luce Program for Graduate Students

The Clare Boothe Luce Program of the Henry Luce Foundation supports a limited number of Graduate Fellowships for women students in the fields of the Physical and Life Sciences, Mathematics, Engineering, and Computer Science at Boston University.

Participating CEMB University:

Postdoctoral Fellowship for Academic Diversity

The Postdoctoral Fellowship for Academic Diversity is a competitive program with a goal of increasing the diversity of the community of scholars devoted to academic research at both the University of Pennsylvania and The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).

Both organizations seek to attract promising researchers and educators from different backgrounds, races, ethnic groups, and other diverse populations whose life experience, research experience and employment background will contribute significantly to their academic missions.

Candidates from the STEM fields are encouraged to apply. Successful candidates will receive a generous annual stipend and health insurance for three years, mentored scholarly and research training as well as courses and workshops to enhance their research success skills and prepare them for a faculty position in a major university.

Participating CEMB University:

PennPORT Program

Penn – Postdoctoral Opportunities in Research and Teaching (PennPORT), an NIH sponsored, Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Award (IRACDA) postdoctoral fellowship, supported by the NIH division of NIGMS awarded August 2007.

The NIH sponsored PennPORT program combines a traditional mentored postdoctoral research experience at the University of Pennsylvania with a mentored teaching experience at a partnering institution. The Program is designed to provide an opportunity for postdoctoral appointees to develop their teaching skills. Postdocs will also be able to take advantage of the many research and career success skills training programs provided by Biomedical Postdoctoral Programs (BPP).

The partnering institutions are Delaware County Community College, Lincoln University and Rutgers University Camden Campus. Since we wish to provide role models for the undergraduates at our partner institutions, candidates from underrepresented groups are encouraged to apply.

Participating CEMB University:

President’s & Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program

The Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (CPFP) offers postdoctoral research fellowships and faculty mentoring to outstanding scholars whose research, teaching, and service will contribute to diversity and equal opportunity at the University of California.

UCLA awards CPFP fellowships each year. The program is administered in parallel with the UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (PPFP). To be considered for a CPFP fellowship, all interested candidates MUST first apply to PPFP; applicants who identified potential mentors at UCLA and received a top-tier rating from PPFP reviewers will be considered for the CPFP.

The program seeks applicants who have the potential to bring to their academic and research careers critical perspectives that based on their educational background or their understanding of the experiences of members of groups that have been historically underrepresented in higher education in the United States.

Participating CEMB University:

UCLA UPLIFT

The UPLIFT Program at UCLA supports postdoctoral scholars in the biological sciences who have a demonstrated interest in teaching, research, mentoring, and supporting diversity in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. UPLIFT combines a traditional mentored postdoctoral research experience with an opportunity to develop academic skills, including teaching, with pedagogical training provided through CEILS workshops and CIRTL courses, as well as faculty mentored teaching assignments at our partner institution, California State University Los Angeles (CSULA). The program is expected to facilitate the progress of postdoctoral candidates toward research and teaching careers in academia. The program is sponsored through Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Award (IRACDA), supported by the division of NIGMS at NIH.

Participating CEMB University:

National Funding Opportunities

Ford Foundation Fellowships (for predoctoral, dissertation, and postdoctoral stages)

Through its program of fellowships, the Ford Foundation seeks to increase the diversity of the nation’s college and university faculties by increasing their ethnic and racial diversity, maximize the educational benefits of diversity, and increase the number of professors who can and will use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students.

Predoctoral, Dissertation, and Postdoctoral fellowships will be awarded in a national competition administered by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on behalf of the Ford Foundation.

Eligibility to apply for a Ford fellowship is limited to:

  • All U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, and U.S. permanent residents (holders of a Permanent Resident Card); individuals granted deferred action status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program;1 Indigenous individuals exercising rights associated with the Jay Treaty of 1794; individuals granted Temporary Protected Status; asylees; and refugees, regardless of race, national origin, religion, gender, age, disability, or sexual orientation;
  • Individuals with evidence of superior academic achievement (such as grade point average, class rank, honors or other designations); and
  • Individuals committed to a career in teaching and research at the college or university level in the U.S.1Eligibility includes individuals with current status under the DACA Program, as well as individuals whose status may have lapsed but who continue to meet all the USCIS guidelines for DACA.

Receipt of the fellowship award is conditioned upon awardees providing satisfactory documentation that they meet all the eligibility requirements.

Awards will be made for study in research-based Ph.D. or Sc.D. programs; practice oriented degree programs are not eligible for support (see eligible fields). Prospective applicants should carefully carefully the eligibility requirements, the terms of the fellowship awards, application instructions and other information pertaining to the individual fellowship (Predoctoral, Dissertation, or Postdoctoral) for which they are applying.

In addition to the fellowship award, new Ford Fellows are invited to attend the Conference of Ford Fellows, a unique national conference of a select group of high-achieving scholars committed to diversifying the professoriate and using diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students.

HHMI Gilliam Fellowship for Advanced Studies

The goals of the Gilliam program are to ensure that populations historically excluded from and underrepresented in science are prepared to assume leadership roles, including as college and university faculty, and to foster the development of a healthier, more inclusive academic scientific ecosystem. The program provides awards to pairs of dissertation advisers and their graduate students based on what HHMI values and considers essential components of the environment, particularly the institution and adviser’s commitment to advance diversity and inclusion in the sciences and the student’s potential for scientific leadership.

HHMI Freeman Hrabowski Scholars Program

For US science, one of today’s most pressing challenges is to maximize scientific impact by building a workforce that fully reflects our increasingly diverse country. HHMI is committed to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in academic science at key points along career pathways, from undergraduate to tenured faculty.

HHMI is seeking creative and innovative early career faculty for our new Freeman Hrabowski Scholars Program. We are looking for outstanding basic researchers, including physician-scientists, who have strong potential to become leaders in their fields and to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion through their mentorship and understanding of the experiences of trainees from races and ethnicities underrepresented in US science.

Scholars will prioritize scientific excellence in their own research while creating an equitable and inclusive lab climate that values diversity and serves as a model within their own institutions and beyond. Eligible research areas include all basic biomedical science disciplines, as well as plant biology, evolutionary biology, biophysics, chemical biology, biomedical engineering, and computational biology.

Up to 30 Freeman Hrabowski Scholars will be selected in 2023, with future competitions anticipated every other year.

NIH F31- Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Grant

The purpose of the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Predoctoral Fellowship (Parent F31) award is to enable promising predoctoral students to obtain individualized, mentored research training from outstanding faculty sponsors while conducting dissertation research in scientific health-related fields relevant to the missions of the participating NIH Institutes and Centers. The proposed mentored research training must reflect the candidate’s dissertation research project and is expected to clearly enhance the individual’s potential to develop into a productive, independent research scientist.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is designed specifically for candidates proposing research that does not involve leading an independent clinical trial, a clinical trial feasibility study, or an ancillary clinical trial, but does allow candidates to propose research experience in a clinical trial led by a sponsor or co-sponsor.

NIH F32- Postdoctoral Individual National Research Service Award

The purpose of the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship (Parent F32) is to support research training of highly promising postdoctoral candidates who have the potential to become productive, independent investigators in scientific health-related research fields relevant to the missions of the participating NIH Institutes and Centers.  Applications are expected to incorporate exceptional mentorship.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is designed specifically for candidates proposing research that does not involve leading an independent clinical trial, a clinical trial feasibility study, or an ancillary clinical trial, but does allow candidates to propose research experience in a clinical trial led by a sponsor or co-sponsor.

NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology

The Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO) awards Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology (PRFB) to recent recipients of the doctoral degree for research and training in selected areas supported by BIO and with special goals for human resource development in biology.  For applications under this solicitation, these areas are (1) Broadening Participation of Groups Underrepresented in Biology, (2) Integrative Research Investigating the Rules of Life Governing Interactions Between Genomes, Environment and Phenotypes, and (3) Plant Genome Postdoctoral Research Fellowships.

The fellowships encourage independence at an early stage of the research career to permit Fellows to pursue their research and training goals in the most appropriate research locations in collaboration with sponsoring scientists.  It is expected that the sponsoring scientists will actively mentor the Fellows and will greatly benefit from collaborating with these talented early-career scientists and incorporating them into their research groups. The research and training plan of each fellowship must address important scientific questions within the scope of BIO and the specific guidelines in this fellowship program solicitation. Because the fellowships are offered to postdoctoral scientists only early in their careers, NSF encourages doctoral students to discuss the availability of these postdoctoral fellowships with their doctoral mentors and potential postdoctoral sponsors early in their doctoral programs to take advantage of this funding opportunity. Fellowships are awards to individuals, not institutions, and are administered by the Fellows.

Additional Funding Opportunities

NSF Grant Programs: Science and Engineering

Biomechanics and Mechanobiology (BMMB)

Integrated and Organismal Systems (IOS)

Plant Biotic Interactions

Physiological and Structural Systems

Physics (PHY)

Advanced Technological Education (ATE)

Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL)

Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP)

Facilitating Research at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions

Faculty Early Development Career Development Program (CAREER)

Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)

Graduate Research Internship Program (GRIP)

Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (NSF INCLUDES)

Innovation Corps – Nodes (I-Corps Nodes)

Innovation Corps – National Innovation Network Teams (I-Corps TM Teams)

Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP)

Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE)

Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU)

Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)

Small Business Technology Transfer Program (STTR)