The Warren Alpert Distinguished Scholar Awards Fellowship

Warren Alpert Award: https://www.warrenalpertfoundation.org/awards/

2025-26 Cohort Call for Nominations

UC San Diego has been invited to submit nominations for the The Warren Alpert Distinguished Scholar Awards. The Warren Alpert Distinguished Scholars Award program enables a postdoctoral researcher to advance to become a full-time faculty member at the Assistant Professor level or higher and to promote the development of a laboratory program that will lead to independent funding. 

Award Details

The fellowship award will be disbursed annually at the beginning of each academic year, and are conditional upon the Scholar’s full time employment. 

• The medical school, research institute, or academic hospital appointing the scholar will be awarded $200,000 annually for two years.
• Award is intended to cover salary, lab costs, and related expenses.  Under certain circumstances, the awardee may transfer funding to support their beginning faculty position. 
• Indirect costs of up to 15% of direct costs, may be included in the $200,000.
• Internship opportunities during their fellowship*

  *Internship offers are dependent on postdoctoral scholars status, and contingent upon necessary requirements for employment being met according to relevant employment law. 

Nominees must meet the following criteria to be considered:

• • Must have an MD, PhD, or both.
  • Proposed research must be in the field of neuroscience.
  • Must hold a postdoctoral research position at a United States medical school, research institute, or academic institution.
  • Must have completed a minimum of 3 years and no more than 6 years of a postdoctoral fellowship by July 1, 2025.
  • Must commit to at least 75% effort for the duration of the fellowship.

Scholars will be chosen on the basis of the success in their prior postdoctoral work and other research as well as in the importance and creativity of their proposed future research. 

• This is a limited-submission opportunity. UC San Diego may nominate a total of one (1) postdoctoral scholar to the Warren Alpert Foundation. The GEPA Fellowship Review Committee will decide which postdoctoral scholar will become the campus nominee to represent UC San Diego, and GEPA will submit the selected nomination to the Warren Alpert Foundation on the nominee's behalf.
• Each nominated postdoctoral scholar must be submitted for a unique neuroscience research topic. 
• An individual nominee’s underrepresented group status will not be collected in the application by Warren Alpert, and applications will be reviewed based solely on the strength of the submitted materials.

Nomination Materials

Please submit the following materials for each postdoctoral scholar's nomination:

• • Completed nomination form, including the following information:
    
    • Project title and summary (250 words max.)
    • Statement on the background of the applicant and the special characteristics that they have for implementing the project and career plan (350 word count).
  • Research proposal that includes an introduction to the project and methods, description of likely results, and articulation of the importance of the project (max. 4 pages);
  • Bibliography;
  • Biosketch (submit in NIH format - max. 5 pages);
    
  • Letter of nomination;
  • In addition to letter of nomination, three (3) letters of recommendation;
  • Proposed budget and budget justification submitted in NIH G300 format;
  • Documents must be submitted as one (1) PDF with the file naming convention:
    • LastName_FirstName_WarrenFellowship_2526