CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTIAL POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS are high-profile postdoctoral research positions with significant independence and resources to attract some of the world’s best young scholars to interact deeply with faculty and students on Cornell’s campuses. Candidates from all areas of research and inquiry, who will be no more than two years past the award date of their doctoral degree by the application deadline, are eligible for this program. Successful candidates will have access to the full range of talent and considerable resources available at Cornell, and will be encouraged to interact broadly with the Cornell intellectual community, in addition to their postdoctoral research with a tenured or tenure-track faculty member (sponsor) and their research group. Cornell Presidential Postdoctoral Fellows will also receive lifetime membership in the Society of Cornell Fellows along with the participants in other named prestigious and competitively awarded Cornell postdoctoral fellowships. Approximately six to ten Presidential Fellowships are awarded each year, with the inaugural cohort of ten fellows chosen in the academic 2017-2018 year, and nine selected in 2018-2019. For the 2019-2020 selection cycle, as part of the Provost’s Radical Collaborations initiative, some of the postdoctoral positions each year will be reserved for applications focusing on one thematic area of Radical Collaboration outlined by the Provost’s office. This year, the chosen topic will be “Advancing Genome Biology”, in line with the Provost’s task force on Genome Biology which can be found here:http://provost.cornell.edu/academic-initiatives/radical-collaboration/genome-biology/. Applicants whose research is not covered by this theme are still encouraged to apply.
Appointments are for up to three years, dependent on positive annual evaluations, and may include a teaching component where appropriate of no more than 25% averaged over the length of the appointment. The stipend for appointments in the 2019-2020 academic year will be $68,000 plus full Cornell University endowed employee fringe benefits. Each Fellow also will be provided $5,000 annually for discretionary research expenses including travel. Interested individuals can contact any tenure-track or tenured Cornell faculty member(s), i.e. assistant, associate or full professor, who, if agreeable to serve as the lead sponsor(s), will endorse the candidate’s application. We recommend contacting prospective faculty sponsors as early as possible. A tenure track assistant professor may serve as a primary sponsor only if a tenured professor serves as secondary sponsor. All Cornell faculty may only sponsor a total of one postdoctoral candidate application (either as primary or secondary sponsor), however if an Assistant Professor is the primary sponsor, tenured faculty may additionally sponsor one as a secondary.
Applications will be judged on the qualifications of the candidate, including their ability to be an ambassador for Cornell University, and the quality and originality of the proposed research and its potential impact. Review and ranking of applications will be performed by a representative faculty committee, and decisions are expected between December 2019 and February 2020.
More information can be found on our website here: https://research.cornell.edu/content/presidential-postdoctoral-fellows
