Distinguishing Features of the HFSP Research Grant Program
• Novelty: The Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) supports projects that challenge existing paradigms by using novel approaches and techniques. To stimulate daring ideas and innovative approaches 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: Projects should be potentially transformative in addressing important fundamental problems at the frontiers of the life sciences, or 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, computer science, engineering, mathematics, nanoscience or physics is highly encouraged.
• Early career scientists: The 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.
• Two kinds of research grants are available, the Research Grants - Early Career (previously called Young Investigator Grants) and Research Grants - Program. The following text applies to both unless stated otherwise.
• Award sum: Detailed budgets are not required. Depending on team size, a fixed sum is awarded, to each team over three years, depending on the team size, (a 4-member teams, for instance, receives 465 000 USD per year).
