The Helen Hay Whitney Foundation supports early postdoctoral research training in all basic biomedical sciences.
To attain its ultimate goal of increasing the number of imaginative, well-trained and dedicated medical scientists, the Foundation grants financial support of sufficient duration to help further the careers of young men and women engaged in biological or medical research.
Deadline: June 16, 2025
Before approaching the funder or submitting an application, prospective applicants from Duke should contact:
Steve Murray
Associate Director, Foundation Relations
Applicants are eligible for Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellowships if:
(1) they have received a Ph.D. (or D.Phil. or equivalent) degree no more than two years before the application deadline, or an M.D. (or M.D.-Ph.D.) degree no more than four years before the deadline
AND
(2) they have been employed in their postdoctoral laboratory for no more than one year before the application deadline.
An applicant’s “postdoctoral laboratory” is the laboratory in which they propose to be appointed as a HHW fellow. If an applicant has remained in their Ph.D. laboratory for some months to finish up work there, this time does not count against the one year of “postdoctoral time”. Thus, for example, if an applicant received their Ph.D. in January, then stayed in the Ph.D. laboratory until the end of September, and finally moved to their postdoctoral laboratory on October 1, the one year of “postdoctoral laboratory” time would begin on October 1. Applicants with a Ph.D. degree or equivalent who applied before arriving in their postdoctoral laboratory but did not receive an award are eligible to apply again in the following year. For applicants with M.D. (or M.D.-Ph.D.) degrees, the four-year post-degree interval should include only clinical training and no more than one year in the postdoctoral laboratory.
The Foundation does not ordinarily consider applicants who plan tenure of the fellowship in the laboratory in which they have already received extensive predoctoral or postdoctoral training. The aim of the fellowship is to broaden postdoctoral training and experience, and a change of laboratory is usually advisable.
The Foundation will not make more than one award per year for training with a given supervisor. Should we receive more than one application from a single laboratory, we will review only one, as chosen by the Chair of the SAC, and decline the other(s) administratively. We urge the heads of laboratories to make this choice for us. We also do not support more than two fellows per laboratory at the same time, so that if we make awards to applicants from a particular laboratory in two successive years, applicants from that laboratory are ineligible in the third year.
Fellowships may be awarded to US citizens planning to work in laboratories either in the US, Canada, or abroad and also to foreign citizens for research in laboratories in the US only. We expect that most applicants will reside in North America at the time of application. Foreign Students will need to obtain appropriate visa documentation, as required by US Immigration.