Drug Discovery Postdoctoral Fellowship
Supports multidisciplinary postdoctoral research in innovative drug discovery with translational potential at U.S. universities.
Funder: PhRMA Foundation
Due Dates: April 15, 2026 (Letter of Intent) | August 26, 2026 (Full application, by invitation)
Funding Amounts: $60,000/year for up to 2 years; stipend only, not for tuition/benefits/indirects
Summary: Supports multidisciplinary postdoctoral research in drug discovery with strong translational potential at accredited U.S. universities.
Key Information: Applicants must have received their doctorate on or after January 1, 2024 and have at least two first-author publications.
Description
This fellowship supports postdoctoral researchers engaged in innovative, early-stage drug discovery projects at accredited U.S. universities. The program emphasizes multidisciplinary, collaborative research with clear translational relevance to human health. Eligible projects may span target identification/validation, disease mechanism mapping, hit/lead identification, protein biochemistry, structural biology, molecular biology, pharmacological profiling, biomedical imaging, and AI/computational approaches that directly advance therapeutic hypotheses. Projects must articulate a therapeutically relevant hypothesis, and computational proposals must include a feasible plan for translational validation. Proposals focused solely on assay development, chemistry without therapeutic evaluation, or biomarker/diagnostic identification without clinical context are not eligible.
