The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation has issued a request for applications for its Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellowship in Chemical Sciences or Chemical Instrumentation Award Program. This program supports advanced research by postdoctoral scholars within the core areas of fundamental chemistry or the development and build of chemical instrumentation. Research must be innovative in method, speed or process, or represent new instrument technology. This fellowship will be a catalyst from "mentored yet independent" postdocs to outstanding, independent researchers in academic or industry/governmental labs.
Applicants will choose one of the following award tracks:
- Postdoctoral Fellowship in Chemical Sciences allows chemists to pursue advanced research within fundamental chemistry, such as chemical physics, chemical engineering, or the chemistry of materials. The underlying proposed research and innovation must be chemistry-focused, although the project can have applications in other fields such as biology or physics.
- Postdoctoral Fellowship in Chemical Instrumentation will allow researchers in chemistry to conceptualize, develop, and build instrumentation suitable to advanced research in chemistry, chemical physics, chemical engineering, and the chemistry of materials science. Instrumentation projects must be suitable to the two-year fellowship timeframe, be driven by a need in the listed chemical sciences, be innovative in method, speed or process, or represent a wholly new instrument for technological advancement in chemistry. Future potential use to the broader scientific community is a benefit.
The Fellowship award provides $224,000 over 2 years for salary, fringe benefits, and research expenditures; instrumentation fellowships receive an additional one-time payment of up to $200,000 for material/development costs. The Fellowship may be extended for an optional third year, with $118,000 in funding for salary, fringe and research expenditures, dependent upon review of research progress and a renewal application, which is submitted during the second year of the Fellowship.
Eligibility criteria include:
- At the time of application, applicant must:
- Be a US citizen, permanent resident, or DACA recipient.
- Be either a graduate student anticipated to complete a PhD in the chemical sciences by May 1, 2027, or a postdoctoral researcher with a PhD in the chemical sciences with no more than 18 months of cumulative postdoctoral research experience.
- Applicant must have a sponsoring mentor who:
- Holds a PhD or MD/PhD and a full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty appointment with at least a 25% appointment in a department affiliated with chemistry, chemical physics, chemical engineering, or the chemistry of materials science. (The 25% requirement may be met by a co-mentor instead of the primary mentor.)
- Is not sponsoring any other applicant for this opportunity in this program year.
Please see RFP for full criteria, including extensions for qualifying life events.
To Apply:
- This is an open RFP (UCSF may submit an unlimited number of applications).
- Follow application instructions in RFP, conferring with your Grants Officer as needed. Please notify your Grants Officer as soon as possible of your intention to apply to ensure that they will have enough time to support your application.
- LOI deadline is Friday, September 4, 2026. If you are invited to submit a full application, the deadline will be December 11, 2026.
For more information and to review complete application instructions and eligibility requirements, please visit https://www.beckman-foundation.org/programs/beckman-postdoctoral-fellows/.