Diversifying postdoctoral funding
Updated: Sep 16
By Isabelle Spada, Administrative Coordinator
Did you know that you can boost your chances of securing postdoctoral funding by exploring opportunities beyond MSCA grants?
The following fellowships, offered by organizations based in Europe, Switzerland and the U.S., aim to promote scientific excellence among promising postdoctoral researchers. Winning one of these highly competitive awards brings major prestige and significantly boosts a researcher's career.
Since early 2026, Institut Pasteur researchers have secured six outstanding fellowships, totaling €1.5 million, which demonstrates Pasteur's growing success in this alternative funding landscape.
EMBO Postdoctoral Fellowship
Beyond full two-year funding of approximately 150,000€, the EMBO fellowship offers exclusive access to leadership training and a global network of internationally mobile young scientists with demonstrated excellence in their fields. International mobility, research novelty, and biological significance are essential criteria.
This year, Madeline Edwards and Mariana Pereira Da Costa, both from Yasmine Belkaid's Meta-organism Unit and Maya Ezzo from Sandrine Etienne-Maneville’s Cell Polarity, Migration And Cancer Unit, were each awarded for this highly competitive fellowship, which has an average acceptance rate of 10.5% (source: EMBO Annual Report 2025).
HFSP Long-Term Fellowships (LTF)
This elite program, with an acceptance rate ranging from 7 to 11 %, provides three years of funding (approximately 200,000€) for ambitious, interdisciplinary, potentially transformative research in the life sciences. The program promotes international exchange, encouraging early career scientists to expand their research skills by moving into new areas of study while working in a new country.
In 2026, 746 applications were submitted for the Long-Term and Cross-Disciplinary postdoctoral fellowships. Philip Bender, from Jérémie Barral’s Neural Coding in the Auditory System group, is one of the 51 LTF recipients.
Branco Weiss Fellowship – Society in Science
This prestigious fellowship funds exceptional, high-impact projects across all disciplines for ‘courageous postdocs aiming to go further’. Its selection is very competitive, with only 1–3% of applications funded. With a duration of five years and a budget exceeding €630,000, this grant is more substantial than traditional fellowships and allows laureates to cover research expenses beyond salary costs. The fellowship is structured in two phases: a pioneer phase followed by an exploitation phase, with an evaluation and site visit at mid-term to assess the project's progress and originality.
For the 2026 cycle, Valentina Venzin, from the Meta-organism Unit, is one of the 8 researchers selected from 609 applicants, and the first ever to receive the fellowship while affiliated with a French institution. (See the BIP of September 4, 2026, for more information.)
Cancer Research Institute (CRI) – Irvington Postdoctoral Fellowship
This fellowship provides three years of funding for researchers pushing the boundaries of immunology and transforming the landscape of cancer research. It combines financial support (over 200,000€) with professional development, bridging the gap between doctoral training and independent research.
Recently, Mariana Pereira Da Costa successfully passed the program's extremely rigorous selection process: in 2026, only two of the 19 fellows were based outside the United States (see CRI website for more information about Mariana’s work).
We are proud to congratulate these exceptional awardees.
If you would like to boost your chances of joining a community of excellence, contact the Grants Office's International Division (gointernational@pasteur.fr) for more information. We offer dedicated support, including eligibility checks, scientific review of your application, administrative and financial set-up of your grant, and liaison with the funder, HR and your lab.
All open calls are available in the Grant Finder tool.
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