HFSP Research Grants 2027 – Applications Invited

HFSP Research Grants 2027 – Applications Invited

HFSP RESEARCH GRANTS

Application Guidelines – Award Year 2027

Research Grant – Program and Early Career

Recent changes

Information on the scientific scope of research supported by the program has been updated.

Deadlines

The application site on ProposalCentral will open in late January 2026. The ProposalCentral guide—including instructions for creating an account and initiating/submitting a Letter of Intent—will be updated before the site opens.

• Initiation of a Letter of Intent by opening and saving the online form (which creates a 7-digit LOI ID): 17 March 2026 9:00 AM (Eastern US Time)
• Submission of a Letter of Intent: 26 March 2026 9:00 AM (Eastern US Time)
• Submission of Full Proposals: mid-September 2026, on invitation only

These guidelines provide the information necessary to submit an HFSP research grant application for the award year 2027. Please read the guidelines carefully to establish whether your project falls within the funding scope of the HFSP. See also ‘Frequently asked questions’ and ‘Writing a letter of intent’ for detailed tips. If you have further questions, please contact the HFSP Grant Office: [email protected]

1. OVERVIEW of HFSP Research Grants 2027

1.1. Objectives of HFSP Research Grants 2027

The International Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) strives to strengthen open scientific inquiry by initiating international collaborative, interdisciplinary, and cutting-edge basic research in the life sciences. The International Human Frontier Science Program Organization (HFSPO) develops and implements the Program. The aim of the Program is to promote, through international cooperation, basic research focused on the elucidation of the sophisticated and complex mechanisms of living systems, for the benefit of all humankind. It aims to complement, not duplicate, the frontier life science programs of the countries that financially support HFSPO.

HFSPO attaches highest importance to novelty, scientific merit, internationality, and interdisciplinarity. Research topics may include biological functions at all levels of analysis, for example: studies on genes and individual molecules, intracellular networks, intercellular associations in tissues and organs, and networks underlying the complex functions of entire organisms including cognitive functions, as well as populations or ecosystems.

1.2. Distinguishing Features of the HFSP Research Grant 2027 Program

• Novelty: The Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) supports projects that challenge existing paradigms and extend the frontiers of life sciences by using novel approaches and techniques. To stimulate daring ideas and development of new methods which entail risks, preliminary results are not required in research grant applications.

• Teams of scientists: HFSP supports teams of normally 2-4 scientists. Team members should not have collaborated before, they will normally not have published original research together, and the project must be significantly different from their ongoing research.

• Scientific merit: HFSP projects are potentially transformative in addressing important fundamental problems at the frontiers of the life sciences or in crossing barriers to progress in the life sciences.

• Internationality: HFSP supports novel international, preferably intercontinental, collaborations that involve scientific exchanges across national boundaries.

• Interdisciplinarity: HFSP supports interdisciplinary projects. The participation of scientists from disciplines outside the traditional life sciences such as physics, chemistry, computational biology, engineering, mathematics, nanoscience, or psychology is highly encouraged.

• HFSP offers two types of research grants, the Research Grants – Program and Research Grants – Early Career– see HFSP Research Grants

• Early career scientists: HFSP places special emphasis on encouraging scientists early in their careers – this is expressed both in a special scheme for Early Career scientists and in encouraging scientists early in their careers to participate in the Program Grants.

• Award sum: Budgets are not required. Awarded teams receive a fixed sum, over three years, depending on team size (2-member teams will receive 300,000 USD, 3-member teams 400,000 USD and 4-member teams 500,000 USD annually, if all members have their labs in different countries).

1.3. Summary of the Application Process of HFSP Research Grants 2027

The first step in the application process for Research Grants is to connect to the application site, ProposalCentral, (see How to apply and timeline) and initiate a Letter of Intent by 17 March 2026. The deadline for submission of this letter is 26 March 2026 for awards to be announced in March 2027.

Letters of Intent will be checked for the eligibility of the applicants and pre-screened by a small scientific committee (three scientists at the HFSP Secretariat and two Review Committee members) for concordance with the scientific scope and project requirements (see section 2, below). Any project that does not meet the requirements (see sections 2 and 3) will not be sent for further review, and the Principal Applicant will be informed as soon as possible.

The remaining Letters of Intent will be evaluated by the Review Committee (list of current Review Committee members, confidentiality/conflict of interest statement), following the criteria of novelty/originality/frontierness of the project, interdisciplinarity as well as the qualification and integration of the team. Thereafter, a Selection Committee will decide which applicants will be invited to submit a Full Proposal.

In July 2026, all applicants will be notified of the outcome. The deadline for submission of the invited Full Proposals will be mid-September 2026. For more details, see How to apply and timeline. Decisions on awarded grants will be announced at the end of March 2027.

2. THE PROJECT

2.1. Scientific scope of HFSP Research Grants 2027

HFSP supports projects in basic research studying fundamental problems in the life sciences. Research topics may include biological functions at all levels of analysis, for example, studies on genes and individual molecules, biophysical properties and structures of living material, intracellular networks, intercellular associations in tissues and organs, and networks underlying the complex functions of entire organisms (including cognitive functions) as well as populations and ecosystems.

Examples of funded projects indicating the broad scope of HFSP can be found on our website (2025 HFSP Research Grant Awardees).

The HFSP funds novel collaborations that bring together scientists with distinctly different expertise to focus on problems at the frontiers of the life sciences. The potential of a project to extend the frontiers of life sciences and lead to a breakthrough, is a major criterion in the review of HFSP research grants, and it is understood that projects with this potential may entail high risk.

With respect to research topics, HFSP does not fund:

• Projects of a purely applied nature, for example:

o Projects with a primarily clinical and/or pharmaceutical focus
o Projects aimed at developing or improving diagnosis or treatment of diseases, identifying
drug targets, as well as drug design and development
o Applied projects in engineering, biotechnology, or nanotechnology
o Development of novel methods that do not aim to answer a basic biological question
o Projects directly focused on solving agricultural, forestry, environmental, or conservational problems

• Purely observational or descriptive projects, including systematic screening approaches and data collection studies, for instance on genomes, transcriptomes, connectomes, populations or ecosystems.

• Proposals that are an obvious next step in the field, use standard approaches or promise only an incremental advancement in the field.

Each year, a large number of scientifically excellent projects are rejected, even though they fall within the scientific scope of HFSP. This is because they fail to fulfill one or more of the formal eligibility criteria that distinguish HFSP projects from research supported by other funding agencies. For instance, proposals representing obvious next steps in the laboratory of one or more applicants and proposals that do not represent significant changes in research direction from the previous work of the applicants are unlikely to receive funding.

3. APPLYING RESEARCH TEAM – ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA

3.1. Team structure for HFSP Research Grants 2027

Scientists applying for an HFSP research grant must be organized as an international research team (with emphasis on intercontinental collaborations). Applications from individual researchers are not eligible. The HFSP research team may include 2 to 4 members (in specific cases 5 – see Section 3.3 below for more information); one member of the team is designated as the Principal Applicant and the others as CoApplicants.

All team members must hold a research doctoral degree (PhD or equivalent) and lead a research group (of any size). Post-doctoral fellows are not eligible. All team members must be able to independently determine the course of the HFSP-funded project and have freedom to administer the awarded grant.

HFSPO promotes new interdisciplinary collaborations across the world. Therefore, all team members are expected to work in different disciplines and have their labs in different countries; for the rules on the country of affiliation of team members, please see 3.3. Internationality and institutional affiliations.

HFSPO promotes new research collaborations. Therefore, the team members should not have collaborated before, they will normally not have published together and must propose a project significantly different from their ongoing research. Applicants are advised to alert their institutions on the planned international collaboration.

Co-authorship in scientific publications is generally considered the result of a past or present collaboration, which is contrary to the spirit of the Program. However, some joint publications may be considered acceptable, for instance a multi-author review summarizing the field or a joint publication in a different field resulting from a much earlier collaboration. Applicants will need to enter the number, author list and titles of co-publications between team members in the application form to guide the review committee in their assessment. More than three co-publications are very likely seen as proof for an ongoing collaboration and strongly reduce the chance of funding.

HFSP encourages inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility (for more information, see our shared values), and welcomes applicants of any gender, origin, cultural background, and age.

3.2. Principal Applicant

The team must designate one of its members as the Principal Applicant. The Principal Applicant must be working at a non-for-profit academic institution (meaning an institution that can train undergraduate and/or PhD students and postdocs – even if it cannot issue degrees) in an HFSPO member. As the only exception, former Career Development Awardees can act as Principal Applicants in an HFSP Research Grant irrespective of the location of their laboratories, as long as the team includes at least one Co-Applicant from an HFSP member country.

The HFSPO member countries are:

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus (EU part), the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, the Republic of Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.

The Principal Applicant will be responsible, on behalf of the team, for planning and coordinating the research. They will also act as the liaison with HFSPO and be required to submit annual distribution of funds as well as progress reports. If, on the basis of those progress reports, the Principal Applicant considers that a team member is not contributing to the project as planned, then they may propose a reduction in that member’s budget to HFSPO, or, exceptionally, ask them to leave the project. If a team member changes institution, HFSPO will require the Principal Applicant to confirm that this move will not be deleterious to the project.

3.3. Internationality and institutional affiliations

A team should consist of 2-4 members, unless a fifth member is essential for the interdisciplinary nature of the project. A team should ideally include only one member per country. Priority will be given to intercontinental collaborations. While the Principal Applicant must be based in an HFSP member country, co-applicants can be based in any country (including non-HFSP member countries). The inclusion of team members from less represented countries is strongly encouraged, in particular if there are plans to collect data in these countries.

Teams with all members in one country and teams with more than one member affiliated to the same institution are not eligible (even if a member moves after the LOI submission). Different branches or campuses of the same university (e.g. NYU in New York and Shanghai) or organization (e.g. EMBL, Pasteur or MPI) are counted as the same affiliation.

A team with three or four members, of which two have their laboratories in the same country (but different institutions) may be eligible in rare cases, in which a ‘national’ collaboration is essential for the frontier and interdisciplinary character of the proposed research. In such rare cases, the two scientists in the same country will be considered as 1.5 team members, for calculating the award sum, see also the FAQ.

Applicants must declare all research-related affiliations in the application form, in particular secondary affiliations in different countries. Two-member teams are not eligible if one of them has a secondary affiliation in the country where the other member works. As a rule, all affiliations listed on recent publications are considered to be research related. Exceptions may be made (on a case-by-case basis) for secondary affiliations related to field work or equipment use. Team members may mention use of institutional research facilities (e.g. imaging, sequencing, MicroCT) but such service providers cannot be listed as additional team members.

The team may include members from for-profit organizations if their expertise is necessary for the project. However, such team members may not receive any funds and will not be considered in calculating the amount of award (please see 4.2. Tenure and amount of grant).

3.4. Specific eligibility requirements for HFSP Research Grants 2027

In addition to the above general requirements for all Research Grants, the following conditions apply specifically to each of the two schemes:

3.4.1. Research Grants – Program (RG-Program)

Research Grants – Program are designed to allow teams of independent researchers at any career stage to develop new lines of research through new collaborations. Priority will be given to novel research projects with the potential to extend the present frontier of the life sciences and to teams including members from outside the life sciences. Applicants for RG-Program are encouraged to include independent investigators early in their careers as team members and ensure a high level of diversity of backgrounds (gender, origin, and others) and approaches, as this often adds to the quality of the work.

3.4.2. Research Grants – Early Career (RG-Early Career)

These awards are designed to encourage outstanding scientists in the initial period of their independent careers, to formulate novel and promising research projects.

Recognising the challenge of establishing an independent research group at an early career stage, special consideration will be given to the overall level of interdisciplinarity in RG-Early Career applications. Early career investigators will be expected to propose projects with team members having distinct expertise and coming from different disciplines of the life sciences, if not from outside the life sciences.

“Early Career” team members will have completed one or two periods of postdoctoral training and recently been appointed to independent staff positions that allow them to initiate and direct their own independent lines of research.

Formal eligibility requirements for RG – Early Career (in addition to those valid for all RG)

• Early Career applicants must be project leaders directing a research group. They must have full responsibility for the day to day running of their laboratories, and full control of the HFSP funds. In cases where the position of the applicant is unclear, written confirmation may be requested from the Head of Department (or equivalent) that the applicant is in the position to carry out the research independently.

• Postdoctoral researchers are not eligible to apply.

• All members of an RG-Early Career team must be within 5 years of obtaining an independent position and must have obtained their first doctoral degree (PhD, MD or equivalent) no longer than 10 years prior to the deadline for submission of the Letter of Intent.

Exceptions may be made for periods of parental leave, compulsory military service or absence for medical conditions, but not for periods of unemployment. In cases where a team member has had a longer period of purely clinical service, applicants should contact the HFSP grant office ([email protected]). Applicants should clearly list periods of parental leave (or similar) in their CV ensuring to provide both start and end date(s) as well as the number of months, which will be evaluated to determine any extension of the eligibility criteria.

3.5. Concurrent applications

a. No individual may be an applicant on more than one Letter of Intent in the same review cycle. This rule applies to all applicant roles (as Principal Applicant or Co-Applicant) for both RG-Early Career and RGProgram. If a team member appears as applicant on two or more Letters of Intent, these will all be removed from the competition.

b. Scientists cannot hold or apply for more than one HFSP award (Research Grant, Accelerator Grant or Fellowship) at the same time.

3.6. New applications from previous or present awardees

a. Scientists cannot hold more than one HFSP award at any one time (as Principal Applicants or CoApplicants, even during a no-cost extension). Awardees from 2021 and 2022 may apply for a new grant if it starts after closure of the current award (meaning after approval of all final reports), and if the project and team members are different from the current grant. Awardees from 2023 and 2024 are not eligible to apply as Principal Applicant or Co-Applicant, this also includes Accelerator Grants awarded in 2024 and
2025.

b. Any team member who has been awarded an HFSP Research Grant (as Principal Applicant or Co-Applicant) in 2021 or 2022, must provide information about the title, the grant reference and the team composition. Applications bearing a strong similarity to previous awards, either in team composition or topic of research, will not be considered eligible.

11. HOW TO APPLY AND TIMELINE

ProposalCentral Application guide: ProposalCentral guide (will be updated before the opening of the site).

Deadlines:

I. Compulsory initiation of a letter of Intent (by obtaining a 7-digit LOI ID): 17 March 2026
II. Submission of Letters of Intent: 26 March 2026

Please read the guidelines and the document ‘Writing a letter of intent’ carefully to establish whether your project is clearly in tune with the aims and requirements of the HFSP Research Grant program.

The main steps in applying are as follows:

1. The research team must designate one member as Principal Applicant, who will be responsible for final submission of the letter of intent. Note the requirement that the Principal Applicant must have their primary laboratory in an HFSPO member country. See Item 3.2. Principal Applicant for more detail.

2. In setting up the team, the Principal Applicant must ensure that no team member is a Principal Applicant or Co-Applicant on another proposal (see Item 3.5. Concurrent applications). Failure to ensure this will result in all those applications being withdrawn from the competition.

3. The Principal Applicant will first have to (i) create a personal account in the application site ProposalCentral (PC), if not already in the HFSP database, this will give access to the online application form and further instructions concerning the online submission (including the addition of the other team members) and (ii) initiate a Letter of Intent. To validate this first step, the PI just needs to save the “title page”, first page of the online application form. A seven-digit identifier will appear below the left-hand menu, the proposal identifier (LOI ID, see ProposalCentral Guide). It is essential to initiate the Letter of Intent as soon as the team has seriously decided to submit a letter of intent, but by 17 March 2026 the latest. Please note that this deadline is not mentioned on the application site.

4. The composition of the team can be modified up to the final submission deadline. All team members must be designated as co-applicants on the online form, and each team member has to enter their own CV information and publications before the submission deadline. Each team member should also provide information on their contribution to the project in one of the fields assigned for sub-projects.

5. The Letter of Intent must be submitted by 26 March 2026.

6. The Principal Applicant will be notified in mid-July on the outcome of the Letter of Intent. The deadline for submission of invited Full Proposals will be mid-September 2026.

7. Awards are announced late March 2027. Awarded teams can start in May 2027 the earliest, and December
   2027, the latest.

8. Awarded teams will be eligible to apply for an Accelerator Grant in autumn 2027.

12. TECHNICAL TIPS

Detailed, step-by-step instructions are available on the Letter of Intent application portal (ProposalCentral), and the user guide for the system will be updated before the site opens.

A detailed set of frequently asked questions can be found on the HFSP website.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS