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Postdoctoral Enrichment Program

Burroughs Wellcome Fund

The Postdoctoral Enrichment Program (PDEP) provides a total of $60,000 over three years to support the career development activities for postdoctoral fellows at a degree granting institution in the United States or Canada whose training and professional development are guided by mentors committed to helping them advance to stellar careers in biomedical or medical research. For this cycle, up to 30 awards will be granted for enrichment activities annually. This grant is meant to supplement the training of postdocs whose research activities are already supported. It is not a research grant.

Beginning with the 2023-2024 grant cycle, BWF and the Charles H. Revson Foundation announced a collaboration aimed at expanding equal opportunity efforts in the scientific research community. This partnership expands the advancement of scientists and enhances their contributions to various fields of research.

Through PDEP, the Charles H. Revson Foundation funds up to five additional fellowships to postdoctoral researchers at institutions located within the New York Metro area. PDEP award recipients being supported by the Charles H. Revson Foundation will be recognized as BWF PDEP/ Revson Scholars.

The program provides a total of $60,000 over three years as follows:

Year one: $20,000 will be granted to support enrichment activities of the postdoctoral fellow ($10,000 for research supplies or equipment uniquely required to enhance the postdoctoral fellow’s research and $10,000 for education and training, including for mentors in the research lab where the postdoctoral fellow is assigned.) The PDEP award cannot be used to support salary expenses or indirect costs. (Refer to “Terms of Grant” for information on indirect costs and other requirements for use of funds.)

Year two: $20,000 (same allocation as year one)

Year three: $20,000 will be granted to help the postdoctoral fellow advance research efforts towards the professoriate. The funds must be used to develop independent, innovative areas of research.

AI Based Application Success Predictor

✅ 1. Investigator-first orientation

BWF funds people, not just projects.

Winning profiles show:

self-directed independence

demonstrated creativity

track record of initiative

original intellectual contributions (not extension of PI’s program)

Letters must strongly emphasize leadership potential.

✅ 2. Cross-disciplinary fluency

BWF celebrates hybrid scientists:

physics/CS → biology

engineering → medicine

quantitative → immunology

computational + experimental fluency

Monoculture CVs rarely stand out.

✅ 3. Conceptual originality

Committees respond to:

new paradigms

non-incremental questions

reframing of field assumptions

Being merely technically clever is insufficient.

✅ 4. Strong publication “signal”

Patterns among winners:

first/second-author papers in high-impact journals OR

computational/tool papers with broad adoption

unusually innovative work, even if N < 3 papers

Trajectory matters more than sheer volume.

✅ 5. Intellectual independence from mentors

Winning dossiers demonstrate:

divergently framed hypotheses

distinct research niches

original conceptual architecture

Dependency on mentor’s program → risk flag.

✅ 6. High-risk / high-reward — with mitigation

BWF tolerates conceptual risk only if:

technical fail-safes are present

alternative readouts prepared

endpoint feasibility shown

No contingency = panel anxiety.

✅ 7. Narrative of impact beyond lab

BWF favors scientists who:

build platforms

form communities

democratize methods

translate concepts across silos

They’re investing in future leaders.

✅ 8. Strong mentorship environment

Winning applications consistently:

articulate structured mentorship committees

describe milestone-based guidance

demonstrate institutional support (protected time)

Weak departmental signals reduce confidence.

✅ 9. Infectious enthusiasm & vision

Panelists repeatedly emphasize:

clarity of scientific “why”

storytelling that frames the problem, not just technique

boldness grounded in logic

Dry proposals underperform.

✅ 10. Clear differentiation from funding peers

Applicants who highlight:

what only they can uniquely do

their niche in the ecosystem
score disproportionately well.

🔬 Program-Specific Signals

CASI (Career Awards at the Scientific Interface)

Successful threads:

computational tool development

single-cell analysis frameworks

generative modeling of biological systems

causal network inference

synthetic biology design algorithms

Engineering/quantitative novelty matters.

PATH (Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease)

Patterns:

host–pathogen interaction mechanisms

immune evasion logic

cell-state transitions

pathogen-driven signaling perturbations

Pure descriptive pathogenomics underperforms.

CAMS (Career Awards for Medical Scientists)

Strong signals:

direct patient relevance

bridging clinical and mechanistic work

unmet medical needs

longitudinal sample access

Clinic-based feasibility is scrutinized.

Innovation in Regulatory Science

Funded proposals often:

quantify off-target risk

build predictive toxicity models

develop ML-based safety algorithms

improve regulatory trial design

Policy/analytics hybrids excel.

🚀 Other Strong Predictors

✅ Ability to articulate a 5–10 year trajectory

Where is the field going, and how will you shape it?

✅ Societal relevance (without mission drift)

Ethical, equitable, scalable impact matters.

✅ Demonstrated teaching, mentoring, outreach

“Community builder” signals predict success.

📉 Common Reviewer Critiques (predictors of failure)

✘ Incremental extension of mentor’s science
✘ Too descriptive — weak mechanistic hypothesis
✘ Excessive technical ambition without fallback
✘ Unclear independence trajectory
✘ Vague institutional support
✘ Narrow skillset (no cross-disciplinary element)
✘ No narrative arc linking projects to identity

🎭 Unwritten cultural biases

The applicant is the product.

Conceptual creativity outweighs technical virtuosity.

Leadership potential > publication count.

Interdisciplinarity is not optional.

👥 Awardee Profile Patterns

Funded individuals often show:

one “signature” paper/tool

original pipeline or assay

public resource contribution

conference presence outside home domain

evidence of thought leadership (reviews, workshops)

🧵 Winning Aim Structure (Meta-Model)

Aim 1 — Foundational mechanistic question
Aim 2 — Causal perturbation to test generality
Aim 3 — Computational or technological platform extension
(with contingency fallback)

Two deep aims > three superficial ones.

💰 Budget Success Patterns

Boards like budgets that:

invest in innovation infrastructure

modestly support personnel

avoid large equipment asks

include computational cost clarity

Consumes aligned with risk mitigation are viewed favorably.

⚠️ Reviewer red-flag words

Avoid emphasizing:

incremental improvement

exploratory correlation

feasibility unknown

descriptive profiling

Replace with:

causal testing

model-driven interrogation

generalizable frameworks

🏁 Condensed Success Fingerprint

A competitive BWF candidate:

✅ cross-disciplinary thinker
✅ independently conceptualized research niche
✅ bold, causal questions
✅ fallback strategies for high-risk tasks
✅ strong mentorship ecosystem
✅ trajectory toward scientific leadership
✅ platform or tool projected impact
✅ community-building ethos

Specialties

Clinical Trials

Others

Eligibility Requirements

Applicants for the Postdoctoral Enrichment Award:

n must have no more than 48 months of postdoctoral research experience (in a research laboratory) at the time of application and not be more than 5 years from his/her Ph.D.

n must be nominated by a qualified mentor at the degree-granting institution and/or their affiliates where the applicant will conduct the postdoctoral/fellowship training. Applications must be approved by an official responsible for sponsored programs (generally from the grants office, office of research, or office of sponsored programs) at the degree-granting institution.

n must have secured a postdoctoral position with funding (including support by the mentor’s existing research grants) at a degree-granting institution in the United States or Canada and must begin the postdoctoral position on or by the designated award commencement date.

n must have demonstrated a commitment to promoting equal access and opportunity through their activities, background and life experiences, which may be informed by someone’s membership in groups that have been historically underrepresented in the sciences.

n must be citizens of the United States or Canada (at the time of application).

n must devote at least 75% of time to research.

In addition to the PDEP awards funded by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, up to five additional PDEP awards will be funded by the Charles H. Revson Foundation. These awards will be recognized as the BWF PDEP Revson Scholars. This designation is in recognition of postdoctoral researchers at institutions located within the New York Metro area receiving the BWF PDEP award. All elements of the PDEP award and programming are consistent with ALL PDEP awardees except in the case of some additional engagement of New York Metro awardees with the Charles H. Revson Foundation.

The program seeks to support postdoctoral fellows with Ph.D.s in the biomedical or medical sciences. Applications should focus on foundational, curiosity-driven research in the biological/biomedical sciences. Applicants with M.D. degrees who have secured a postdoctoral research appointment beyond clinical fellowship will be considered for this program. DDS, DVM, and PharmD candidates may be eligible, but should contact BWF prior to applying. Proposals in health services research or involving large-scale clinical trials are ineligible.

Sponsor Details

Sponsor Institute/Organizations: Burroughs Wellcome Fund

Sponsor Type: Corporate/Non-Profit

Address: 21 T.W. Alexander Drive Durham, NC 27713-2847 919-991-5100

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