Grant Programs

Grants Guide

In February 2010, Burroughs Wellcome Fund concluded a five-year plan for its grantmaking strategies. The results of the planning are summarized in this article.

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund's grantmaking strategies are to support biomedical scientists at the beginning of their careers and to make grants in areas of science that are poised for significant advancement but currently undervalued and underfunded. Within this overall strategy, BWF makes grants within several focus areas:

Biomedical Sciences

Career Guidance

Diversity in Science

Infectious Disease

Interfaces in Science

Population and Laboratory Based Sciences

Regulatory Science

Reproductive Sciences

Science Education

BWF has programs which support primary and secondary students, science and mathematics teachers, institutions, and academic scientists: postdoctoral-faculty bridging awards, and faculty awards.

The majority of the BWF ’s grantmaking is through competitive award programs. Most awards are made to degree-granting institutions in the United States and Canada on behalf of individual researchers, who must be nominated by their institution. All institutions receiving awards must be tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organizations.

Each program has an Advisory Committee consisting of members who are external peer reviewers that lend their expertise and time to reviewing and assessing applications for BWF programs. BWF selects members of these committees for their scientific and educational expertise in the program areas. The committee meets, for some programs, to interview potential nominees, and make recommendations based on their experiences to the BWF Board of Directors. Members of the various advisory committees are complete and separate bodies from the BWF Board of Directors.

To apply for the competitive award programs, select the program above and follow the guidelines and application requirements. All applications must be submitted by 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

To complement these competitive award programs, we also make modest grants on an "ad hoc" basis to nonprofit organizations conducting activities intended to improve the general environment for science. These noncompetitive grants are for activities closely related to our focus areas identified above.

Awards Supporting Primary and Secondary Students

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund is committed to supporting science education for primary and secondary students and has partnered with various organizations to help develop an infrastructure for improving science, mathematics, and technology education across North Carolina.

Student Science Enrichment Program
Expected deadline: April 16, 2013

These awards are targeted for career-oriented and practical programs intended to provide creative science enrichment activities for students in K-12 education who have shown exceptional skills and invest in science and mathematics, as well as those perceived to have high potential.

Awards Supporting Academic Scientists

Awards for Postdoctoral Fellows

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund is committed to supporting the early careers of promising scientists. Toward this end, BWF has developed two programs that are designed for advanced postdoctoral scientists to help make the transition to a faculty appointment:

Career Awards for Medical Scientists
Deadline: October 1, 2012

These awards are targeted toward medically trained individuals whose research proposal is in basic biomedical, disease-oriented, translational, or molecular, genetic, or pharmacological epidemiology research, and who intend to pursue careers in academia.

Career Awards at the Scientific Interface
Deadline:
Preproposal - September 4, 2012
Invited Application - January 10, 2013

These awards are targeted toward researchers whose doctoral training is in one of the physical, chemical or computational sciences and who intend to pursue academic research doing work that addresses biological questions.

Awards for Faculty

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund has three programs for which faculty of degree-granting institutions in the United States and Canada are eligible:

Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease
Deadline: November 1, 2012

These awards are targeted toward assistant professors for the study of pathogenesis, with a focus on the intersection of human and pathogen biology. The program is intended to shed light on the overarching issues of how human hosts handle infectious challenge.

Preterm Birth Initiative
Deadline: December 3, 2012

These awards are targeted toward faculty whose work will increase the understanding of the biological mechanisms underlying parturition and spontaneous preterm birth. This program is also intended to bring together a diverse interdisciplinary group with expertise in genetics/genomics, immunology, microbiology, and proteomics along with the more traditional areas of parturition research such as maternal fetal medicine, obstetrics, and pediatrics to address the scientific issues related to preterm birth.

Awards for Institutions

Institutional Program Unifying Population and Laboratory Based Sciences
Deadline:
Preproposal: TBD
Invited Proposal: TBD

These awards are targeted toward institutions which provide training to bridge the gap between the population and computational sciences and the laboratory-based biological sciences. The award will support the training of researchers between existing concentrations of research strength in population approaches to human health and in basic biological sciences. The goal is to establish training programs by partnering researchers working in schools of medicine and schools (or academic divisions) of public health.

Career Guidance for Trainees
Deadline: TBD

These awards promote BWF's investment in the human capital of the research enterprise by supporting the development of new approaches to improving trainees' preparedness for jobs at and away from the bench.