Resources for Recruitment: Doctoral and Postdoctoral Directories/National Fellowships

There are several UC and national postdoctoral fellowship programs that provide useful resources for a recruitment that is broad and inclusive of individuals from groups historically underrepresented in higher education.

Diversity Focused Fellowships

UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program

The University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program was established in 1984 to encourage outstanding women and minority Ph.D. recipients to pursue academic careers at the University of California. The current program offers postdoctoral research fellowships, professional development and faculty mentoring to outstanding scholars in all fields whose research, teaching, and service will contribute to diversity and equal opportunity at UC.

UC President’s and Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Hiring Incentive

In 2013, University of California President Janet Napolitano committed $5 million to continue the salary hiring incentive and initiate a new start-up hiring incentive for President's and Chancellors' postdoctoral fellows appointed since 1996 who obtain tenure-track faculty appointments at one of the UC general campuses. The salary hiring incentive supports former fellows in all fields and provides 5 years of partial salary support to the campus. For information about campus implementation, please contact your department chair or dean.

UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship for Academic Diversity

The Berkeley Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program offers postdoctoral research fellowships, faculty mentoring, and eligibility for a hiring incentive to outstanding scholars in all fields whose research, teaching, and service will contribute to diversity and equal opportunity at the University of California.

American Association of University Women (AAUW) Directory of Fellowship Recipients

Fellowship and grant recipients perform research in a wide range of disciplines and work to improve their schools and communities. This directory lists fellowship and grant recipients beginning with the 2004‐05 academic year. The listing for each recipient includes name, institution or location, degree, field of study or project name, AAUW sponsoring fund, and a brief project or work description.

American Indian Sciences and Engineering Society (AISES)

AISES has developed a comprehensive database to more effectively provide service support to its constituents. In addition, the database provides our members with a capability to maintain current membership records and maximize their visibility to a wide variety of potential employers and other organizations that provide opportunities to our members.

The Registry: National Registry of Diverse and Strategic Faculty

The National Registry of Diverse & Strategic Faculty is a tool designed to help connect current and prospective faculty members from underrepresented groups with institutions of higher education seeking to hire qualified candidates for open faculty positions. Candidates may enter their name and information into the database and then search for available jobs posted by our member institutions. Likewise, for a $250 annual subscription, member institutions have access to search the database for qualified candidates and post open faculty positions.

Ford Foundation Fellowship Programs

Through its Fellowship Programs, the Ford Foundation seeks to increase the diversity of the nation’s college and university faculties by increasing their ethnic and racial diversity, to maximize the educational benefits of diversity, and to increase the number of professors who can and will use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students. Predoctoral, Dissertation, and Postdoctoral fellowships will be awarded in a national competition administered by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on behalf of the Ford Foundation. 

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship program

The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) helps ensure the vitality of the human resource base of science and engineering in the United States and reinforces its diversity. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees at accredited United States institutions. As the oldest graduate fellowship of its kind, the GRFP has a long history of selecting recipients who achieve high levels of success in their future academic and professional careers. The reputation of the GRFP follows recipients and often helps them become life-long leaders that contribute significantly to both scientific innovation and teaching. Past fellows include numerous Nobel Prize winners, U.S. Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, Google founder, Sergey Brin and Freakonomics co-author, Steven Levitt.

Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans

The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans program honors the contributions of immigrants and children of immigrants to the United States. Each year, we invest in the graduate education of 30 New Americans—immigrants and children of immigrants—who are poised to make significant contributions to US society, culture or their academic field. Each Fellow receives up to $90,000 in financial support over two years, and they join a lifelong community of New American Fellows.

Graduate Fellowships in Science, Math, and Engineering

Graduate Fellowships for STEM Diversity (GFSD), formerly the National Physical Science Consortium (NPSC), was founded in 1989 “To increase the number of American citizens with graduate degrees in STEM fields, emphasizing recruitment of a diverse applicant pool.” Graduate Fellowships for STEM Diversity (GFSD) is a partnership between federal agencies & laboratories, industry, and higher education institutions. 

DARE Program: Diversifying Academia, Recruiting Excellence

The DARE (Diversifying Academia, Recruiting Excellence) Doctoral Fellowship Program awards two-year fellowships to advanced doctoral students who want to investigate and prepare for academic careers and whose presence will help diversify the professoriate.

Graduate Women in Science

The GWIS National Fellowships Program is proud to offer fellowships to help increase knowledge in the natural sciences and to encourage research careers in the sciences by women.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute: Hannah H. Gray Fellows Program

The Hanna H. Gray Fellows Program seeks to increase diversity in the biomedical research community by recruitment and retention of individuals from groups underrepresented in the life sciences. Through their successful careers as academic scientists, Hanna H. Gray Fellows will move science forward and inspire the next generation of scientists from America’s diverse talent pool. 

L’Oreal USA for Women in Science Fellowships

The L’Oréal USA For Women in Science fellowship program awards five women postdoctoral scientists annually with grants of $60,000 each for their contributions in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields and commitment to serving as role models for younger generations. The program is the U.S. component of the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science International Fellowships. 

Schlumberger Foundation Faculty for the Future

The Schlumberger Foundation is an independent nonprofit entity that supports science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. The Faculty for the Future program awards fellowships for advanced research in STEM at leading research institutes abroad. Faculty for the Future Fellows are expected to return to their home countries upon completion of their studies to contribute to the economic, social and technological advancement of their home regions by strengthening the STEM teaching and research faculties of their home institutions as well as through their leadership in science-based entrepreneurship. They are also expected to contribute to the public sector where their newly acquired technical and scientific skills can help provide evidence-based support for STEM policy making, including topics of gender representation.

Funding Opportunities for Women and Minorities – UC Berkeley Sponsored Projects Office

List of fellowship and other funding opportunities.

Other Fellowships

  • Directory of Ford Fellows
    http://nrc58.nas.edu/FordFellowDirect/Main/Main.aspx
    The directory contains information on Ford Foundation Postdoctoral fellowship recipients awarded since 1980 and for Foundation predoctoral and dissertation fellowship recipients awarded since 1986. The database is sorted alphabetically by last name and includes current institution, field of study and year/level of award.

  • American Council of Learned Societies: Advancing the Humanities
    https://www.acls.org/fellows/new/
    Since 1957 more than 12,000 scholars have held ACLS fellowships and grants. ACLS fellowships and grants are awarded to individual scholars for excellence in research in the humanities and related social sciences. The peer-review process used to select ACLS fellows enables distinguished scholars to reach broad consensus on standards of excellence in humanities research.

  • Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar Awards
    http://www.cies.org/program/postdoc
    Postdoctoral awards are available in STEM fields, the arts, humanities and social sciences. These grants present an excellent opportunity for recently minted scholars to deepen their expertise, to acquire new skills, to work with additional resources and to make connections with others in their fields.
    Grantees will be expected to engage with graduate students in the host country and to continue their specialized training in cutting edge research. In addition to their primary research or teaching activities, grantees may be asked to give public talks, mentor students, and otherwise engage with the host country academic community.

  • Luce Scholars Program
    http://www.hluce.org/lsprogram.aspx
    The Luce Scholars Program is a nationally competitive fellowship program. It was launched by the Henry Luce Foundation in 1974 to enhance the understanding of Asia among potential leaders in American society. The program provides stipends, language training, and individualized professional placement in Asia for 15-18 Luce Scholars each year, and welcomes applications from college seniors, graduate students, and young professionals in a variety of fields who have had limited exposure to Asia. 

  • National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship Program
    https://naeducation.org/naedspencer-dissertation-fellowship-program/
    The Dissertation Fellowship Program seeks to encourage a new generation of scholars from a wide range of disciplines and professional fields to undertake research relevant to the improvement of education. These $27,500 fellowships support individuals whose dissertations show potential for bringing fresh and constructive perspectives to the history, theory, analysis, or practice of formal or informal education anywhere in the world.

  • National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship Program 
    https://naeducation.org/naedspencer-postdoctoral-fellowship-program/
    The National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship Program supports up to 30 early career scholars working in critical areas of education research. These $70,000 fellowships support non-residential postdoctoral proposals that make significant scholarly contributions to the field of education. The program also develops the careers of its recipients through professional development activities involving National Academy of Education members.

  • Burroughs Wellcome Fund
    https://www.bwfund.org/grant-programs/interfaces-science/career-awards-scientific-interface
    These grants are intended to foster the early career development of researchers who have transitioned or are transitioning from undergraduate and/or graduate work in the physical/mathematical/computational sciences or engineering into postdoctoral work in the biological sciences, and who are dedicated to pursuing a career in academic research.

  • Beckman Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship Program
    https://beckman.illinois.edu/research/fellows-and-awards/postdoctoral
    Initiated in the fall of 1991 with funding from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, the Beckman Institute Postdoctoral Fellows Program provides an opportunity for young scientists to spend several years doing independent research in the behavioral and biological sciences, chemistry, engineering, or physics before launching formal academic careers. In the fall of 2015, the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation provided an additional endowment in honor of Dr. and Mrs. Arnold Beckman, who founded the Beckman Institute, and Dr. Theodore “Ted” Brown, the founding director of the Beckman Institute, to create the Beckman-Brown Interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Fellowship Program.
    For both programs, Fellows are selected on the basis of their professional promise, capacity for independent work, interdisciplinary interests, and outstanding achievement to date. Preference is given to those applicants whose research interests correspond to one or more of the programs in the Beckman Institute.

  • Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellowship
    http://www.beckman-foundation.org/programs/beckman-postdoctoral-fellows
    The Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellows Award Program supports postdoctoral scholars with the highest potential for success in an independent academic career in chemistry and the life sciences, to assist in their transition from “mentored yet independent” postdoctoral projects to an independent, tenure-track position. These individuals are expected to become the next generation of leaders and innovators in science, engineering, and technology.

  • The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
    http://woodrow.org/
    Through its array of programs, Woodrow Wilson has been privileged to support the development of more than 22,000 leaders—teachers and scholars, leaders and businesspeople, artists and innovators. They include 14 Nobel Laureates, 38 MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellows, 19 Pulitzer Prize winners, 27 recipients of Presidential and national medals, and many others.