Faculty Starter Grant in Translational Medicine

About this program

The PhRMA Foundation offers a one-year, $100,000 Faculty Starter Grant to support early-career faculty conducting hypothesis-driven translational medicine research addressing unmet clinical needs through diagnostic, therapeutic, computational, or precision-medicine approaches. Projects must include human or human-relevant components, clinical collaboration, and a feasible plan for translational validation; animal-only or purely descriptive studies are not eligible. Applicants must be full-time, promotion-eligible, research-intensive faculty at an accredited, PhD-granting U.S. university whose faculty appointment began on or after January 1, 2025, and whose terminal degree was awarded on or after January 1, 2017. Applicants must also have at least three first-author publications, be eligible for independent external funding, and lack substantial existing research support; letters of intent are due May 27, 2026, with full applications by invitation due November 18, 2026.