Important Dates
Application Deadline:
Sunday, June 30, 2024
Application Materials
Application Link(s):
- Notification to short-listed applicants for interviews: July 26, 2024
- Interviews of short list: Tuesday, July 30, 2024 between 2pm - 5pm
- Notification of Awards: mid-August
- Award start date: September 01, 2024 (cannot be changed)
- Funding Period: September 01, 2024 through August 31, 2025
- Funding Level: $100,000
Katharine McCormick Advanced Postdoctoral Fellowships are for advanced postdocs pursuing faculty careers in academic medicine. We aim to bridge the support gap for competitive postdocs who have not yet been selected for faculty positions. We complement the SoM’s postdoc funding mechanisms of support for postdoc preparation for faculty career tracks.
Katharine D. McCormick Distinguished Lecture Series
List of McCormick Fellows and their Research
Fellowships are awarded to women or men with a PhD and/or MD pursuing careers in academic medicine. Applicants must be postdocs at the time of application, on the academic job market for assistant professorships that start within 12 months, and whose faculty sponsors are appointed in the SoM.
Each fellowship includes both $80,000, paid as stipend in 12 equal payments from September 2024 through August 2025, 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.
Finalists will be asked to participate in a virtual interview. If you will not be available to interview, you should not apply.
For questions, email kanza@stanford.edu
Eligibility
Eligibility requirements:
-
Current Postdoc at Stanford School of Medicine.
- Instructors and Research Associates not eligible.
-
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
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:
The committee reviews applications using this criteria:
- 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.
Additional Information
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.