Funder: David & Lucile Packard Foundation
Due Dates (Anticipated): March 2027 (Nominations) | April 2027 (Applications and reference letters)
Funding Amounts: $875,000 over five years ($175,000 annually); 20 fellowships awarded annually
Summary: Flexible research funding helps early-career scientists and engineers take risks and explore new frontiers.
Key Information: Candidates must be nominated by one of 50 invited universities, each limited to two nominees.
Description
Established in 1988, the David & Lucile Packard Foundation’s Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering support promising early-career faculty pursuing creative research in the natural and physical sciences or engineering. The program strengthens university-based research and graduate education by giving researchers freedom to take risks, explore uncharted directions, and approach complex questions with fresh perspectives.
The Foundation emphasizes innovative individual research involving Fellows, their students, and junior colleagues, rather than extensions or components of large-scale, ongoing research programs. Fellowships offer substantial flexibility in how funds advance research, with few funding restrictions and limited paperwork. Supported fields range from biology and chemistry to mathematics, astronomy, computer science, earth and ocean sciences, and engineering.
