EMBO Young Investigator Programme 2024 – Apply Online
Young Investigator Programme
Supporting young group leaders in Europe and beyond
Benefits
EMBO Young Investigators receive a financial award of 15,000 euros in their second year. They can also apply for additional small grants of up to 10,000 euros per year.
Networking is a key aspect of the programme, and Young Investigators benefit from extensive practical support, including:
Networking:
- The annual EMBO Young Investigator meeting
- Special interest groups organizing sectoral meetings on selected topics
- Joint group meetings with other programme members’ labs
- Visits to discuss potential collaborations with other programme members
- Seminars by Young Investigators at another programme member’s institute
- Research visits of lab members to other programme members’ laboratories to exchange expertise.
Support for Young Investigators:
- Mentorship by an EMBO Member
- Training in research leadership and management skills through EMBO Lab Leadership Courses
- An online training course on responsible conduct of research co-developed by EMBO Policy
- Posting of vacancies in programme members’ laboratories
- Grants for organizing conferences.
Support for Young Investigator laboratories:
- Access to EMBL Core Facilities
- Annual course for PhD students from programme members’ laboratories
- Travel grants for meeting attendance for Young Investigators and their group members.
Detailed information about the benefits can be found in the Programme Guide for Young Investigators and Installation Grantees (pdf
).Eligibility
- Applicants must have been an independent group leader for at least one year and for less than four years at the pre-application deadline (i.e having started no earlier than 1 April 2020 and no later than 1 April 2023), for the application round 2024.
- They must have an excellent track record.
- They must carry out research in the life sciences in an EMBC Member State, an EMBC Associate Member State (currently India and Singapore) or in countries or territories covered by a co-operation agreement (currently Taiwan and Chile).
- They must have sufficient funding to run their laboratory.
- They must have published at least one senior author research paper* in an international peer-reviewed journal from independent work carried out in their own laboratory.
- For female candidates with children, the limit of four years since independence is automatically extended by one year per child of any age.
- For male applicants with children, the limit can be extended by the actual time taken off as paternity leave or – if their partner is working at least 80% FTE (full-time equivalent) – three months per child, whichever is longer.
- Illness and other care responsibilities are considered as exceptional circumstances on a case-by-case basis. Special provisions may also be made for clinical scientists. If you feel your circumstances warrant an extension of the eligibility period, please contact the EMBO Young Investigator Programme Office ([email protected]) for advice before applying.
- Applicants must be able to attend an online interview, in November 2024 (date TBC).
* – EMBO will consider papers published on preprint servers (arXiv, bioRxiv, PeerJ, etc), but a senior author publication in an international peer-reviewed journal is still a requirement. Your senior author paper should have “accepted” status by the time of the interview.
Application
Applications to the EMBO Young Investigator Programme are accepted annually in a two-stage process and must be submitted through an online system.
Application process:
- The call for 2024 is now open.
- The deadline for pre-applications is 01 April 2024, 12:00 CEST.
- Please download updated Application Guidelines (February 2024) from the Downloads side bar on the left.
- For re-applicants: only two total applications to the Programme are possible (one re-application).
- The Young Investigator Committee invites selected candidates to submit a full application and attend an interview.
- The deadline for full applications is 17. July 2024.
- All invited candidates will be virtually interviewed by the Young Investigator Committee in either on 12 or 13 of November 2024.
- The final selection will be made at the Young Investigator Committee meeting.
- All applicants will be informed of the outcome of their application by email.
The complete application for the Young Investigator Programme consists of:
- CV
- Synopsis of past work
- Outline of the planned research project
- Short summary of research
- Publication list and list of three best papers
- Three letters of reference
- List of grants and pending grant applications
- ORCID number
Applicants must not indicate the journal impact factor or any other metrics such as H-index, number of citations etc, in their application. EMBO is a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment ( DORA ), which recommends “not to use journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact Factors, as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess an individual scientist’s contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions”.
Selection
Selection criteria
The primary selection criterion is scientific excellence. Additional aspects considered by the EMBO Young Investigator Committee are:
- Track record
- Proposed research
- Group and research environment
- Financial and intellectual independence
Selection process
The selection process involves the following steps:
- The pre-application stage: applicants whose initial applications were considered competitive for an award by the selection committee are invited to submit a full application and attend an interview.
- Full application review: The invited full applications are sent to an EMBO Member with expertise in the applicant’s research area for a confidential review.
- Interview: Candidates attend a panel interview with a subset of the Young Investigator Committee, where they deliver a presentation summarizing their current results, projects and future directions, followed by discussion.
- Final decision: Following the interviews, the committee makes a final decision, and all candidates are informed by email of the outcome of their application.
No feedback will be given following the pre-selection stage due to the high number of applications each committee member has to review. However, the committee will provide feedback following an unsuccessful interview and the EMBO Office will forward the comments to the candidates.
Please do not contact the committee members directly. Personally contacting YIP committee members for application advice/feedback can be interpreted as attempting to influence selection results and will disqualify your application.
Research integrity
EMBO expects responsible conduct of research from its awardees. All the research activities carried out shall be in compliance with fundamental ethical and research integrity principles. In line with our commitment with these initiatives, we require all EMBO Young Investigators to complete an online course on research integrity.
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