Notice of limited fellowship award
HOWARD HUGHES MEDICAL INSTITUTE (HHMI)
INTERNATIONAL STUDENT RESEARCH FELLOWSHIPS

2013 HHMI program announcement [ pdf ]

Stanford University has been invited to nominate 10 international doctoral students for HHMI International Student Research Fellowships. HHMI introduced this program two years ago (see Announcement of 2012 Recipients) and they again expect to make a total of approximately 50 awards; each will consist of three-years of stipend support, plus partial tuition support.

ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS

Students who are being nominated for these awards must:

• have demonstrated exceptional talent for research,
• be currently in the second (or third) year of doctoral study, enrolled full-time in a program in the biomedical or related sciences, including physical and mathematical sciences,
• have entered a laboratory in which they will conduct their dissertation research, and
• not be U.S. citizens, noncitizen nationals, or permanent residents of the United States.

Note that no preference will be given to students who are working in an HHMI laboratory or who are under the mentorship of an HHMI investigator or HHMI early career scientist.

AWARD INFORMATION

HHMI will award three-year fellowships. For the 2013-14 year, the HHMI annual stipend will be $30,000, plus an allowance of $3,000 which may be used for insurance and health costs, books, supplies, and related support. HHMI will also provide an annual institutional allowance of $10,000 in partial payment of tuition and fees. Year 2 and 3 support is contingent on appropriate research and academic progress, and will not be provided beyond the fifth year of a student’s doctoral program.

The HHMI stipend is defined as support for 12 months each year, and HHMI requires that their fellows work full-time on research throughout the year. However, HHMI does not require full-time enrollment in summer quarter. HHMI fellows at Stanford must be enrolled for all four quarters while receiving the HHMI fellowship, but, where appropriate, they may reduce their summer quarter units. See further discussion, below, regarding tuition shortfalls and additional financial support.

TUITION SHORTFALL / SUPPLEMENTAL SUPPORT

HHMI will permit host institutions to supplement the Fellow’s stipend. However, fellows are generally not allowed to be employed (HHMI will permit an assistantship of up to 25%, consistent with Stanford's policies regarding supplementing full fellowships). HHMI Fellows may not receive significant funds from any external fellowship, scholarship or similar program. Schools should not therefore nominate individuals who hold continuing Fulbright fellowships or other signifcant external awards.

As with some other national fellowships, this award will not fund the full cost of Stanford tuition. Programs submitting nominations for this award must understand and agree that the fellow will not be charged for the tuition and fees shortfall.

In order to nominate a Stanford student for this fellowship, the student’s faculty advisor must agree to provide funding for the tuition and fees shortfall, and this must be described in the nomination materials being provided to the VPGE office. If the student will be funded on a supplemental assistantship (up to 25% FTE), those funds can only be used to provide salary and a tuition allowance - the student cannot be required to use that money to pay other university fees. If additional support is needed, the faculty member will have to either pay the balance from his or her own unrestricted resources, or to identify those resources from within the department or school. With the exception of the Cardinal Care subsidy and support for SGF Fellows (below), no central university funds will be provided to support HHMI fellows.

The HHMI fellowship may be combined with a Stanford Graduate Fellowship (SGF). The SGF will supplement both stipend and tuition to the level of the SGF or provide full SGF support through Summer Quarter of the fifth year of graduate studies.

INTERNAL SELECTION PROCESS

Nominations are being solicited from the following schools:

• School of Engineering: Contact Denise Drewes, see School of Engineering nomination information
• School of Humanities and Sciences: Contact Beth McKeown
• School of Medicine: Contact Jeanne Heschele, see School of Medicine nomination information.

For the Schools of Engineering and Humanities and Sciences, please use the Nomination Submission link to submit your nominations. The submission instructions vary for each school, please be sure to follow the instructions for the submission school. Instructions can be found via the links above. The School of Medicine submissions should follow the School of Medicine nomination link.

Browser Note for Nomination Submission: Use Firefox or Safari to complete the nomination.

Each of those schools will canvas their graduate programs, and may select a limited number of candidates for consideration for this fellowship. Recognizing the interdisciplinary nature of many of our students' programs, we will use the following nomination groundrules:

1. In cross-school research situations, where the advisor's faculty appointments and/or the student's doctoral program involve more than one school, the advisor may choose which dean's office should review the student's nomination. Each school has distinct deadlines and procedures, and the advisor should follow the procedures for the dean's office to which s/he is submitting the nomination for review. Each student may be nominated to only one School.
2. Bioengineering is considered part of both the Medical School and the School of Engineering. Faculty will have the option of submitting a Bioengineering nomination to either school.

Each school will need to submit the following information in a single pdf file for each of their nominees. The nomination files should be sent to Ann George, anngeo@stanford.edu, by no later than Friday, November 16.

1. a two-page summary of the student’s dissertation research activity, emphasizing “the significance and innovation of the intended research”;
2. a listing of the student's research experiences, including dates, project summary, and the student’s role in the project;
3. the student's CV including educational history, relevant honors, awards, professional activities, publications, presentations, and posters as applicable:
4. a letter of recommendation from the dissertation advisor:
5. identification of two other individuals who would provide an additional letter of reference as part of the HHMI package. (If selected as a Stanford nominee, the application will require the advisor letter and two or three additional letters “from those who can speak best to the applicant’s potential as a researcher.” We will not ask for those letters at this time, but do ask for the names of the individuals who would likely be submitting those letters.);
6. a statement of the student’s current funding, and
7. the commitment to fund the tuition balance, including a general description as to how that commitment will be met.

A faculty review group will identify a final list of 10 nominations to forward to HHMI by November 29. In making the final selection, Stanford will consider the competitiveness of each application, and will follow the HHMI recommendation to submit a diverse set of nominees in terms of gender, country of citizenship, research area, and departmental/program affiliation and that there will be no preference to HHMI laboratories/investigators/early career scientists.

HHMI will then provide the individual applicants with information about completing the online application – including instructions for recommenders to upload their own reference letters into an online system.

Updated: September 21, 2012