Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program 2027 in the USA

Last verified: 28 August 2026

The Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program, usually shortened to SIFP, pays researchers to work in residence at the Smithsonian, using its collections, laboratories, archives, observatories and research staff. It runs four separate tracks, one each for graduate students, doctoral candidates, recent PhD holders and established scholars. Stipends run from $10,000 for a ten week graduate placement up to $65,000 a year for senior and postdoctoral work in the earth sciences. Applications for the current cycle close on 15 October 2026 at 11:59 PM Eastern Time, and fellows begin their tenure at some point between 1 June 2027 and 30 May 2028.

The programme is open to applicants from any country. One requirement shapes the whole preparation timeline: your application has to name a member of the Smithsonian research staff who has agreed to act as your advisor. Many funding schemes let you apply into a system and arrange supervision afterwards. This one does not, so serious work on a Smithsonian application starts several weeks before the form does.

Why Access Matters More Here Than the Stipend

The money is competitive for a research fellowship in the United States, and this article goes through it track by track further down. But the reason scholars target this award is access. The Smithsonian holds collections that exist nowhere else, and the fellowship buys you time inside them with a staff scientist or curator as your point of contact. A well matched Smithsonian project can produce work that simply cannot be done from a university library, and reviewers know this. It is why the application asks you to justify why your research needs to happen at the Smithsonian specifically rather than anywhere with a good research library.

The Four Fellowship Tracks and What Each One Pays

There is no single Smithsonian fellowship. There are four tracks, and you apply to the one that matches your academic stage. Choosing the wrong one is a quiet way to lose an application before anyone reads your proposal properly.

Graduate Student Fellowships

You must be formally enrolled in a graduate programme at the time you apply
You must still be enrolled when the appointment begins, and must have completed at least one full semester of study
Tenure is fixed at ten weeks, with no flexibility to extend
Stipend is $10,000 for the ten week period
No separate research allowance is attached to this track

This is the entry point into the Smithsonian system, and ten weeks goes quickly. Applicants who succeed here usually propose something genuinely finishable in that window rather than a slice of a much larger project.

Predoctoral Fellowships

For PhD candidates who have already completed their candidacy requirements
Your university must formally approve you carrying out dissertation research at the Smithsonian
Tenure runs from three to twelve months
Stipend is $45,000 per year
Research allowance of up to $5,000 per year

The university approval requirement is easy to underestimate. Departments move slowly, and this is the kind of paperwork that takes a month if you start it in September and ten minutes if you started it in July.

Postdoctoral Fellowships

Your doctorate must be complete by the time the fellowship begins, not by the time you apply
You must have finished your PhD within the last five years
Tenure runs from three to twelve months, and postdoctoral fellows in the sciences may request up to twenty four months
Stipend is $60,000 per year, rising to $65,000 per year in the earth sciences
Research allowance of up to $5,000 per year

Senior Fellowships

You must have held a PhD or an equivalent qualification for at least five years
Tenure runs from three to twelve months
Stipend is $60,000 per year, rising to $65,000 per year in the earth sciences
Research allowance of up to $5,000 per year

Across every track, stipends are calculated proportionally for tenures shorter than twelve months. A six month postdoctoral fellowship pays roughly half of the annual figure, not the full amount.

Be Honest With Yourself About the Money

The stipend figures look generous, and for a research fellowship in the United States they are competitive. But there are gaps between a stipend and a salary, and they cost real money, so it is better to know them now than in April.

The Smithsonian is explicit that these funds are not salary or compensation, and that all of it, including stipends and research and travel allowances, is subject to tax. Budget for a smaller number than the headline
Support for temporary relocation to the Smithsonian is described as possible rather than guaranteed. Treat it as something to ask your prospective advisor and the Office of Academic Appointments and Internships about directly, not as a line you can count on
The official programme page does not set out a health insurance provision. If you are travelling from outside the United States, ask about this in writing before you accept anything
The research allowance is capped at $5,000 per year and is meant for research related costs, not for topping up your living expenses
Washington and the other Smithsonian locations are expensive places to live. A $45,000 predoctoral stipend covers a modest single person year there and very little more

None of this makes the fellowship a poor deal. It makes it a research grant with a living allowance attached, which is a different thing from a job, and applicants who plan for that version do better than those who assume the American postdoctoral salary model applies.

Also Check: Hoover Fellows Program 2026 to 2027 at Stanford University, USA

Which Research Fields Are Supported

The Smithsonian’s research strengths run wider than most people expect, covering hard science and cultural scholarship in the same institution. The programme names the following areas:

Animal behaviour, ecology and environmental science
Anthropology, including archaeology, cultural anthropology, linguistics and physical anthropology
Astrophysics and astronomy
Earth sciences and paleobiology
Evolutionary and systematic biology
Folklife
History of science and technology
Art history, including American art, contemporary art, African art, Asian art, crafts and decorative arts
Materials research
Molecular biology
Social and cultural history of the United States

If your subject is not on this list, do not force a proposal into the nearest heading. Reviewers are looking for a genuine fit with Smithsonian resources, and a stretched fit reads exactly as what it is.

Find Your Smithsonian Advisor Before You Write Anything

This is the part that separates people who get funded from people who submit on time and hear nothing in March.

Your proposal has to identify a principal advisor from the Smithsonian research staff, and it may also name additional advisors or consultants. Practically, that means the following sequence:

Work out which Smithsonian unit holds the collections, instruments or archives your project depends on. The Smithsonian is a network of museums and research centres, not one building
Read the recent published work of staff researchers in that unit. Find the two or three people whose work genuinely touches yours
Write to them early, well before October, with a short and specific message. Say who you are, what you want to do, why it needs their collection, and how long you would need. Attach nothing heavy
Ask directly whether they would be willing to serve as your Smithsonian advisor for a fellowship application, and whether the project sounds feasible with the resources they actually have
Take their feedback seriously and let it reshape the proposal. A staff researcher telling you that a particular specimen set is on loan, or that a certain archive is closed for digitisation, has just saved your application

If your work requires collections that do not belong to the Smithsonian, or Smithsonian collections you have no affiliation with, you also need to sort out permissions and say so in your proposal.

Give this stage several weeks. Researchers travel, run field seasons and go quiet, and a first email sent in early October rarely produces the working relationship a strong proposal needs.

Also Check: ECTRIMS Postdoctoral Research Fellowship 2027 in Europe

What Goes Into the Application File

Everything is submitted through the Smithsonian Online Academic Appointment System, known as SOLAA, at https://solaa.si.edu, under the Office of Academic Appointments and Internships. Applications come in through that system and nowhere else.

You will need:

An abstract of one page, double spaced
A research proposal of no more than six pages, double spaced, in 11 point font with margins of one inch
A timeline showing the phases of your research
A budget with justification, which graduate student applicants do not have to provide
A bibliography
A CV of no more than four pages
Transcripts, where unofficial copies are accepted, and which senior fellowship applicants do not need to supply
Two letters of reference

Each uploaded file must be 3MB or smaller. Accepted formats are .bmp, .doc, .docx, .gif, .jpeg, .jpg, .pdf, .png, .rtf, .tif, .tiff, .txt, .xls and .xlsx.

Your proposal itself has to do more than describe a study. It needs to explain the research and the methods, argue why the work matters to your discipline and to your own scholarly goals, justify why the Smithsonian is the right place to do it and which of its resources you will use, cover permissions where they apply, and name your advisor.

Six pages is not a lot of room for all of that. Write the justification for the Smithsonian first, because that is the section reviewers cannot get anywhere else, then build the rest around it.

How Applications Are Judged

The Smithsonian assesses four things:

The merit of the proposal itself
Whether you are able to carry out the research and study you have described
Whether the work could realistically be finished in the time you have requested
The extent to which the Smithsonian, through its staff and its resources, could contribute to it

That third criterion quietly rejects a lot of good scholars. Asking for ten weeks to complete something that plainly needs a year signals that you have not thought the project through. Asking for twelve months for work that is obviously a three month task raises a different doubt. Match the request to the plan, then show your reasoning in the timeline.

The fourth criterion is where the advisor conversation pays off. A proposal that names the specific collection, the specific instrument or the specific archive and explains exactly how it will be used is answering the question. A proposal that praises the Smithsonian in general terms is not.

Rules That Quietly Disqualify People

These sit in the fine print and they are absolute.

Former Smithsonian employees must have a full year of separation from the institution before they can apply
Current Smithsonian employees cannot hold a fellowship while they are employed there
Fellows are expected to spend most of their tenure in residence at the Smithsonian, so this is not an award you can hold remotely
In accepting an appointment, you are expected to devote full time effort to the fellowship

One more warning belongs here, and it applies to every scholarship rather than to this one alone. The programme names no application fee, and everything goes through SOLAA directly. Nobody should ever charge you to submit a Smithsonian application. There is no agent, consultant or WhatsApp contact who has an inside route into that system. If someone offers you one, they are selling something that does not exist.

Dates to Put in Your Calendar

Applications close 15 October 2026 at 11:59 PM Eastern Time. Work out what that is in your own time zone and set your personal deadline a full day earlier, because reference letters and file uploads fail at exactly the wrong moment
Decisions are released through SOLAA in mid March
Fellowship tenures begin between 1 June 2027 and 30 May 2028

Reference letters deserve special attention. You are asking two busy academics to write for a mid October deadline, which lands in the middle of a teaching term. Ask by early September, send them your abstract and your timeline, and remind them politely a week out.

Mistakes That Weaken an Otherwise Strong Application

Treating the Smithsonian as a prestigious address rather than a working research resource. The justification section is the heart of the file
Approaching a potential advisor days before the deadline, or approaching six of them with an identical message
Proposing a project that could be done at any large university with a good library
Submitting a timeline that does not survive basic arithmetic against the tenure length you requested
Ignoring the page and formatting limits, which reads as carelessness before anyone judges the science
Applying to the wrong track, most commonly a doctoral candidate applying as a postdoctoral fellow because the stipend is higher
Leaving permissions for outside collections unmentioned and hoping nobody notices

Conclusion:

The Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program is one of the few awards where the institution itself is the reason to apply rather than a detail on your CV. It pays between $10,000 for a ten week graduate placement and $65,000 a year for senior and postdoctoral work in the earth sciences, it welcomes applicants from anywhere in the world, and it asks in return for a proposal that could only be carried out inside the Smithsonian.

Your next step is not the application form. It is a short, specific email to the Smithsonian researcher whose collection your project needs, sent in the next fortnight, asking whether they would advise a fellowship application. Everything else follows from the answer.

Full Programme Details

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I apply again if I was turned down last year, or if I have already held a Smithsonian fellowship?

Past and current fellowship recipients are eligible to apply for another award, so a previous Smithsonian fellowship does not close the door. The programme page does not say anything about reapplying after a rejection, and there is no stated penalty for it. If you do reapply, treat it as a new proposal rather than a resubmission, and use the intervening year to strengthen the part that was weakest, which is usually the case for doing the work at the Smithsonian.

Do I need an IELTS or TOEFL score?

The programme states that applicants whose first language is not English are expected to be able to write and converse fluently in English, but it does not name a required test or a minimum score. Since no threshold is published, do not assume a certificate is needed or that one is unnecessary. Ask the Office of Academic Appointments and Internships before the deadline if your situation is unusual, and in the meantime let your proposal and your reference letters demonstrate the fluency.

What happens if my doctorate is not finished by the start date?

Postdoctoral eligibility depends on the degree being complete when the fellowship begins, not when you apply, so a defence scheduled for the spring is fine in principle and a defence that slips is a real problem. If your timeline is tight, raise it with the programme office as soon as you know, rather than after an offer is made. Candidates in this position sometimes have the option of applying as a predoctoral fellow instead, which carries a lower stipend but a rule you can actually satisfy.

Can my spouse or children come with me?

The Office of Academic Appointments and Internships states plainly that it cannot provide funds for the travel or living expenses of dependents. That is a funding statement rather than a rule about who may accompany you, but it means any family costs come entirely out of your own pocket on top of the stipend. For a fellowship in an expensive American city, this is worth modelling honestly on paper before you accept.

Can I choose when my fellowship starts?

There is flexibility within the tenure window, but appointments begin on either the first or the third Monday of the month. If you have a teaching commitment, a visa appointment or a field season to work around, plan your requested start date against those two options rather than picking an arbitrary date and hoping it can be accommodated.

How competitive is it, and is an average profile worth submitting?

The Smithsonian does not publish success rates for this programme, so anyone quoting you a percentage is guessing. What can be said with confidence is that selection here rewards fit more heavily than prestige. A candidate from a modest university with a project that genuinely needs a particular Smithsonian collection, and a staff advisor who has agreed to work with them, is in a stronger position than a candidate from a famous department whose project could be carried out anywhere. If you cannot yet name the collection your work depends on, spend this cycle finding it rather than submitting a general application.