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 not worked in the life sciences before.

There is only one competition per year for HFSP Fellowships. Applications for the 2026 HFSP Long-Term and Cross-Disciplinary Fellowships (to start in 2026) 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.