Competition

* Unless explicitly noted, all times indicated for deadlines are for the appropriate NL timezone (NST or NDT)

***Please note that the Application Portal for the HFSP Fellowships in ProposalCentral is not yet open. The portal will open in March 2026***

The HFSP fellowship program supports proposals for frontier, potentially transformative research in the life sciences. Applications for high-risk projects are particularly encouraged. The projects should be interdisciplinary in nature and should challenge existing paradigms by using novel approaches and techniques. Scientifically, they should address an important problem or a barrier to progress in the field.

HFSP postdoctoral fellowships encourage early career scientists to broaden their research skills by moving into new areas of study while working in a new country.

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 no (or little) experience in the life sciences.

There is only one competition per year for HFSP Fellowships. Applications for the 2027 HFSP Long-Term and Cross-Disciplinary Fellowships (to start in 2027) 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.

Deadlines

• Initiation of a Letter of Intent by May 5, 2026 at 9:00 am (09:00, Eastern US Time). Instructions can be found in the Application Guidelines (above) and in the ProposalCentral instructions (pdf)

• Submission of a Letter of Intent by May 12, 2026 at 9:00 am (09:00, Eastern US Time) via ProposalCentral

  • 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 September 24, 2026 at 9:00 am (09:00, Eastern US Time) via ProposalCentral.

For this competition, applicants submit directly to the  funding agency as per their instructions. Applications are not submitted through Memorial's Researcher Portal, nor to the Faculty of HSS, or Research, Initiatives and Services (RIS). 

If invited to submit a full application for a fellowship at Memorial University, please contact the HSS GFOs.

If you plan to apply to this competition or other research funding opportunities (as either PI or CI), e-mail an HSS Grants Facilitator, Heather C. O’Brien (HSSResearchAdmin@mun.ca or 864-8603) or Matthew Milner (HSSResearchGrants@mun.ca or 864-8050), to notify the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of your intent to apply. E-mailing the intent to apply as early as possible will help to facilitate an efficient review. A Grants Facilitator can answer any questions you may have about internal or external submission procedures and may also be able to help with proposal development.