Scholar Awards FAQ

Ambition and intellectual risk can be high, but the proposed approach should be credible. There should be a compelling reason to believe that the central ideas can be tested. If the work takes you in a significantly new direction, evidence of feasibility is helpful. Preliminary data is not essential but helpful to show that the system, conceptual framework, or critical experiment is feasible. Applicants do not necessarily require expertise in every technique they propose but should suggest a path to carrying out the critical experiments.

Below is a six-point checklist that could be helpful. Are the following items clear in your application:

1. You have a central scientific question. Is that easy to figure out in your application?

2. Why should someone from outside of your field care about your research.

3. You have a distinctive scientific viewpoint.

4. You have clearly outlined the best-case scenario about what we will better understand about the brain if your research is successful.

5. You have a concrete plan for executing the research and for interpreting the results.

6. You have shown us that your lab can achieve results. That could be publications, or conference presentations, or things done independently as a post-doc that you can bring to this work.

Yes, we are asking you to expand on your most innovative ideas, independent of additional funding for the work. We actually often don’t consider additional funding mechanisms, we’re really trying to focus on how to best support exceptional science.

Helping people early in their career get a start can have a huge impact. Early success breeds success. If you do something really exciting early, that will help you get the next set of really good students and postdocs. It’ll help you get the next set of funding. It’ll help you get invited to give talks. The foundation is committed to helping people early when that extra boost can really have the biggest impact.

We currently only allow exceptions to the five-year eligibility window for parental leave. We do not allow exceptions for other reasons such as lab closure due to Covid or otherwise. For parental leave, we would ask for documentation of the length of the leave, and simply add that time to your clock for eligibility. If you think you would qualify to apply with parental leave exception, please reach out to Joel Krogstad immediately to discuss your situation before you put a lot of time into an application.

You can apply at any time within the five-year window of eligibility. If you have an idea right at the outset and you really can articulate and propose a crisp novel idea, there is no need to wait. One of the requirements is that you can only apply twice in that five-year period. So you need to use your judgment to evaluate whether your ideas are sufficiently well formulated, or if it’s better to wait a year or two when you will have a clearer vision of where your science will take you.

Yes, the committee is also interested in tenure-track investigators from outside of R1 universities which would include liberal arts colleges. What matters more is if the investigator can convince the committee that they are working on an important question that could change the field, and less so that they necessarily have to have access to state-of-the-art techniques or graduate students.

The overall mission of the Scholars program is to fund basic neuroscience. But that doesn’t mean we don’t consider clinical or translational science. There are other facets of neuroscience that are not so often represented in past awardees that we would definitely consider, especially as there are new methods and new kinds of ways to address questions that would be very impactful and still provide insight into the kind of broader understanding of basic neural mechanisms.

Yes, the committee is also interested in related systems that focus on work outside the brain. For example, studies focusing on the retina, or also jellyfish which don’t even have a traditional brain or nervous system.

Again, we really welcome all facets of neuroscience. It depends on whether this particular avenue is something that you can highlight why the drug discovery, or chemical biology/ synthesis would provide unique insight into some fundamental aspect of the nervous system. We’re looking for, what is your unique angle? What is the creative approach you’re taking? And how is it going to have broad impact?

Pilot data are not required in the way they are for the like an RO1 application. But you want to convince us that this idea is plausible. So pilot data is one way to do that. Your track record of doing things that are different than the incremental work of your previous labs could also be evidence. Then there are the letters. We’re going to be asking, is this a unique idea, and is there some chance it’s going to work in your hands?

The level of detail is on a need-to-know basis. Ask yourself, do you need to tell us that detail in order to convince that you can answer the big question?

You do not need to constrain your thinking from thinking about what is your most impactful approach.  This is only a three year grant, so it can’t support an ambitious vision over many years, so if there is an overlap with federal funding that is not a concern to the committee.

We strive to equally consider those who have won no major awards to those who have already received recognition.  We seek to focus on the proposal, and not on previous recognition. We fund a range of proposals of those that are technologically savvy and those which are not, but all are innovative in some key way.

Either can work. The letters of reference really can be used as a mechanism for other people to convey what they know about you. I think it’s very common for people to have letters from their former mentors as postdoctoral mentors, for example. But it’s also very compelling to have letters from people in the field, maybe, who have not worked with you directly as long as they can speak in depth about your strengths. We would like to hear about you, not about the field. It’s important to consider that they should know you well, and know your science well to be the most compelling, and to have the most impact. These letters all say everybody’s smart and hardworking and has done good things to get to the point of having a faculty position. So anything that your letters can provide that’s specific about why you would be good at doing something, that is, you know, really pushing the boundaries of science and making it work. Those specific examples can really have a lot of impact.

We have in the past awarded scholars who are moving into neuroscience as a field from other areas, and who were able again to articulate how their background in some other subdiscipline, for example, cell biology or structural biology or other areas, and would actually be able to open up new insights into neuroscience. So we would encourage people from all related disciplines to apply. Neuroscience is increasingly interdisciplinary. There are many different ways to think about how to tackle the fundamental mechanisms of the brain. We think it actually provides the greatest kind of diversity in the community, and the most kind of flow of different ideas if we have people coming into neuroscience with a kind of distinct lens.

Candidates need not publish anything independently from their own lab before applying, but we strongly recommend that your postdoctoral work be in press to be competitive. If you’re in your first year of your faculty position, it’s very rare that you have a last author publication, we don’t think you should necessarily wait to that point. It is worth applying if you can demonstrate again that you have a question that’s ripe for discovery, you can articulate it, and you can say that this is something that you should be implementing and tackling at this moment. If you are pretty far along in your assistant professorship, then we may expect to see some evidence that in your own lab, you can produce and get the science complete and out. So it really depends on how much we would weigh that based on where you are in your position.

We want to hear about your unique or creative vision and sometimes that’s not totally compatible with a 3-year timeline. We recognize the fact that $225,000 over a 3-year period may or may not fund a whole new research trajectory in your lab. The benefits of the award are numerous in many ways for the longevity of your career. Very often it’s good to try to not to constrain yourself to ask, okay, what can I accomplish in the next 3 years that I could put down onto paper. We would rather see something that is a direction your lab is taking. It’s a direction that is a foundation, a kind of runway for many other questions that you’ll be able to work on down the road. And that kind of longer-term vision is really what is most exciting to hear about.

In recent years we have received between 50 and 150 applications. We then invite about 20 to virtually interview in person in a second round. We’ve also increased the number of scholars awarded yearly to ten, from what was previously six or seven. So that also improves your chances as well. We hope you will consider applying!

No, Scholar Awards are singularly awarded and are designed to recognize the work of a specific person who has shown they have incredible potential to influence the field. Our other award program, Neurobiology of Brain Disorders, can have more than one PI per award.

Please visit our How to Apply page for step-by-step instructions.