The Office of Postdoctoral Affairs has collated a list of internal and external funding opportunities as well as funds to support postdoc travel to conferences, and seed funding mechanisms across the university designed to fund early-stage research.
Below is specific information about funding information, requirements, eligibility, and application deadlines.
OPA-managed Fellowship Opportunities
Ohio State President’s Postdoctoral Scholars Program (PPSP)
About the Program
The President’s Postdoctoral Scholars Program (PPSP), supported by the Office of the President, was launched in January 2018 to recognize highly qualified postdoctoral trainees who will become leaders in their fields. The program supports the scholarly efforts and training of terminal degree holders (PhD and others), who wish to pursue research and creative inquiry careers in academia, as well as providing professional development and networking opportunities.
Benefits include salary support and full benefits (health insurance, tuition assistance, and paid leave among others) provided by the Office of the President and the scholar’s faculty mentor/sponsor college. PPSP scholars also receive supplementary funds to support research, creative expression, and professional development-related expenses.
Read more about the program, including details about how to apply, eligibility criteria, and required application materials on the PPSP page.
Other Internal Postdoc Fellowship Opportunities at Ohio State
Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center Postdoctoral Fellowship Program
Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center Postdoctoral Fellowship Program
Discipline - STEM, Climate Science, Glaciology
Citizenship Requirement - None
Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics Postdoctoral Fellowship
Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics Postdoctoral Fellowship
Discipline - Cosmology, Astroparticle Physics, and Astrophysics
Citizenship Requirement - None
The STEAM Factory’s Interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Research Program
Engineering LEGACY Postdoc Scholars Program
Mershon Center for International Security Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship Program
Mershon Center for International Security Studies Postdoctoral Fellows
Discipline - International Security
Citizenship Requirement - None
Pelotonia Postdoctoral Fellowship Program
Postdoctoral Candidate Pelotonia Fellowship Program
Discipline - any field related to cancer research
Citizenship Requirement - None
Training Grants-related Opportunities
Ohio State hosts a range of training grant opportunities for undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral trainees in a diverse array of disciplines funded by both federal and non-federal sources. For more information about Ohio State training grants and the trainees they serve visit the Graduate School's Training Grant Program.
Discipline - All
Citizenship Requirements - Varies, but federal opportunities generally require U.S. citizenship or permanent resident status.
External Postdoc Fellowship and Grant Funding Opportunities
Duke University Extramural Research Funding Database
Duke has an excellent extramural research portal that searches across all federal agencies, a majority of private foundation funders, as well as international funding entities.
Grants.gov
A centralized portal that aggregates all federal agency opportunities in one place. Keyword searches can be saved for easy reference and sent to you via email to keep up to date on the most current funding in your field of study.
Johns Hopkins National Fellowships and Funding List
JHU maintains a curated guide for available postdoctoral fellowships and other types of grant funding across all research disciplines.
National Postdoc Association
NPA has an online searchable database of opportunities available to postdocs hosted through Johns Hopkins University.
The NPA also offers a new IMPACT Fellowship Program for postdocs.
Ohio State’s Office of Foundation Relations (OFR)
Office of Foundation Relations (OFR)
The Ohio State University’s Office of Foundation Relations curates a list of private foundations who provide fellowship and other funding opportunities across all scientific disciplines for which postdoctoral scholars and graduate students are eligible.
SPIN
Ohio State has an institutional license to SPIN, a large grant search engine.
The Office of the Vice President for Research provides a campus-wide subscription to SPIN which aggregates over 40,000 funding opportunities from more than 10,000 global sponsors. SPIN provides intuitive and easy access to funding opportunities geared towards both individual and administrative users.
Learn how to use the SPIN funding opportunities database to create personalized email funding alerts by following these instructions.
Step 1: Create your SPIN profile while on campus (OSU Wireless or campus network), step-by-step instructions are available.
Step 2: Watch for an email with login instructions from spinsupport@infoedglobal.com. (Access may take up to one business day; the user-validation process requires an overnight administrative process.)
Step 3: Login to SPIN and create and save searches that generate customized funding alerts.
More information about research funding and support resources can be found on the Office of Research website.
Some simple search suggestions when using SPIN:
- Place quotation marks around a key phrases within your research topic/discipline, e.g., “breast cancer”
- Use “AND” to search for multiple words, e.g., psychology and adolescent will return results with both terms in the record
- Use “NOT” to exclude terms, e.g., STEM not “stem cell*” will return results with only STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)
- Use ~ before any word to search throughout a funding opportunity record, e.g., ~cancer – will search all sections of the funding record not just the abstract
Travel Awards
Conference and Travel Funding
Do you plan on attending a conference or training workshop? Do you need external funding to help cover travel costs? Are you an international scholar? Consider the following:
Consider the following:
- Does the conference or training you plan to attend offer travel awards?
- Does your college have staff professional development awards?
- College of Arts and Sciences
- College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences
- The University has Staff Career Development Grants. Applications are accepted twice a year, in January and July.
- The Women’s Place has Staff Career Development Grants as well as Staff Manager Development Grants.
3. The Postdoctoral Association (PDA)’s Travel Awards runs a travel award competition for university postdocs each semester. The PDA confers up to 4 of these awards each semester to postdocs who are traveling to scientific conferences, professional development workshops, or other types of career development events. For the timeline and how to apply, please visit their site.
4. Travel information for International Scholars
- International scholars have additional processes to consider when traveling to conferences and events. The Office of International Affairs has developed a helpful step-by-step guide that can be found on their website. Additionally, international postdocs can sign up for a 1:1 consultation with an OIA staff member to discuss university-related travel. Sign up for an appointment.
Internal University Funding for Research and Creative Inquiry
Ohio State has many institutes and centers that provide seed funding mechanisms to support early-stage research. Please pay careful attention to the eligibility requirements in the links below as some institutes might restrict postdocs to apply to only a sub-set of the seed funding mechanisms that they offer.
Interdisciplinary centers that offer pilot and seed funds at Ohio State
Below find a list of centers along with the scholarly fields covered by their opportunities.
Traumatic Brain Injury technology, research, and therapeutics
CCC - Comprehensive Cancer Center
Cancer research
CCTS – Center for Clinical and Translational Science
Biomedical, clinical, and translational research
ERIK - Enterprise for Research, Innovation, and Knowledge President’s Research Excellence Program
High risk, high reward, novel and/or strategic interdisciplinary research
Food and agricultural science and technology, food-host interactions, nutrition, disease, and analytics, data science, and omics-focused research.
GAH - Global Arts and Humanities
Arts and humanities focused scholarship
IDI - Infectious Diseases Institute
Interdisciplinary, biological, biomedical, clinical, community, population, and translational infectious diseases research
IMR - Institute for Materials Research - OSU Materials Research Seed Grant Program
Population and social science research
Mershon Center for International Security Studies
International security research
Neuroscience Research Institute
Biomedical, Clinical, and Translational Neuroscience and Neurological Disease focused research
Pelotonia Foundation Idea Grants
Cancer research
Sustainability, climate change and resilience, circular economy, and smart and resilient community research
TDAI - Translational Data Analytics Institute
Interdisciplinary, translational data science and data analytics research
Colleges that provide seed and pilot funding to affiliates
College of Arts and Sciences, Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences
Social and behavioral science focused research
Clinical, biomedical, translational, and surgical dental research
College of Education and Human Ecology
Education, Teaching and Learning, K-12, and Human Sciences focused research
College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences
Food Sci and Technology, Agricultural Sci, Technology and Outreach, and Environmental Sci research
Still Have Questions?
Office of Postdoctoral Affairs
214D University Hall 230 North Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210
osupostdocs@osu.edu