Important Dates
Application Deadline:
Date of interviews:
Application Materials
Application Link(s): Apply Here!(link is external)
- Notification to short-listed applicants for interviews: July 2025
- Interviews of short list: August 07, 2025
- Notification of Awards: End of August
- Award start date: September 01, 2025 (cannot be changed)
- Funding Period: September 01, 2025 through August 31, 2026
- Funding Level: $100,000
Katharine D. McCormick Distinguished Lecture Series
List of McCormick Fellows and their Research
Eligibility requirements
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Current Postdoc at Stanford School of Medicine.
- Instructors and Research Associates not eligible.
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Foreign scholars must hold a J1 visa or an F1 visa in OPT status.
- Holders of H1B, TN, J2, O1, or other visas ineligible.
- The scholar's faculty mentor must have a primary appointment in the SoM. Acting, consulting, and courtesy faculty are ineligible.
- Commitment between applicant and faculty mentor to hold monthly mentorship meetings with a focus on the job search process and starting as an assistant professor.
- Candidate’s willingness to present their work to a large scientific audience.
- Progress report required at the end of fellowship.
Application Process
- Complete application
- NIH Biosketch
- Complete CV
- Research proposal: Two page limit, including tables/figures. Proposal is written by the fellow and reviewed by faculty sponsor. These two pages include a brief statement of proposed investigation in the following sections: background, goals, hypothesis, and experimental methods. Any references must fit within the two pages.
- Three reference letters. One from the Stanford faculty sponsor (mentor). Two letters from other faculty, at Stanford or elsewhere, who are familiar with the candidate’s work and will likely serve as references for the candidate’s job search. Letters are submitted online by the reference writer directly to the application. Letters are due the same day as the application, so request letters at the beginning of the application process via the online application.
Applications are due by 11:59 PM PST on the application deadline.
Selection Process
- Academic qualifications including scientific track record, publications, presentations, and mentoring of others such as undergraduate/graduate students. For male applicants, this includes mentoring women in academic medicine.
- Readiness for academic faculty positions: years of postdoc training; past participation in, and future plan towards, job preparation such as courses/workshops attended; formal/informal meetings and networking; and teaching statement for candidates interested in teaching careers.
- Quality of research proposal: Does the proposal present a research direction that the scholar may continue after Stanford? What progress has been made on the proposal to date? What are two aims to be achieved during the fellowship year?
- Support of women in academic medicine: How has the candidate supported (through professional association) the advancement of women in medicine and/or medical research?
- Reference letters: Do they support the application and proposal? Letters should address the candidate’s productivity and quality of research work to date, readiness for assistant professorship positions in the coming 12-18 months, and the candidate’s personal qualities regarding leadership in academic medicine. The letter from the Stanford faculty mentor addresses how the mentor plans to work with the candidate towards independence and in the job selection process.
- Additional criteria include the applicant’s record of winning competitive fellowships/grants, the faculty mentor’s record of other trainees in faculty positions, and personal or professional circumstances overcome during graduate studies or postdoctoral training.
Program Requirements
Each fellowship includes both $80,000, paid as stipend in 12 equal payments from January 2024 through December 2024, and an additional $20,000 of funding to be used for health premiums, travel, and certain other approved expenses. Fellows are required to submit estimated budgets for the additional funding.
Awards are made as stipends to support the proposal. The fellowship may not support faculty sponsor’s research; the fellowship aims to facilitate the recipient’s development of their research agenda with the goal of preparing the recipients for their move toward independent labs.
Fellows must be active postdocs at the SoM for the duration of the award.
If the proposed research involves animal and/or human subjects/protocols, applicants should apply for the required protocols at the time of submission and not wait to be funded. Funding of the fellowship cannot begin until all protocols are approved. Protocols must list the School of Medicine Katharine McCormick Committee to Support Women in Medical Careers Postdoctoral Fellowship as a possible funding source.
This Fellowship is intended to offset existing support from other sources rather than add to existing support.
In accepting this award, the postdoc's department is responsible for adhering to the funding requirements/guidelines. If guidelines are ignored, the postdoc may be asked to return all or part of the fellowship, if:
- overspending occurs,
- incorrect expenditure code(s) are used, or
- falsified or misrepresented information that effects eligibility is discovered.
Other Concurrent Fellowship Support and Combination of Awards
If a Fellow receives another fellowship, OPA must be notified. If the two awards combined do not exceed the total support committed to the scholar as part of the terms of appointment, the McCormick Fellowship may be retained. If the two awards combined exceed the agreed-upon support for the scholar at the time of reviewing the application, the McCormick award is adjusted accordingly, up to a complete forfeiture of the award. The committee expects postdoc recipients and faculty mentors to report to OPA, in writing, additional external support during the award period or towards the same research proposal or conference trip.