Last verified: 14 August 2026
The stipend starts at $74,000, rises to $76,000, then $78,000, and runs for three uninterrupted years. Alongside it the host institution receives $5,000 annually, which the sponsor can direct towards research supplies, conference travel, health insurance or childcare.
That is the CRI Irvington Postdoctoral Fellowship, run by the Cancer Research Institute for postdoctoral scientists working in immunology or cancer immunology. There are no citizenship restrictions and the fellowship can be held in the United States or abroad, which makes it one of the more genuinely open postdoctoral awards in the field. The nearest deadline is 1 September 2026.
What you actually have to assemble:
Start here rather than with the eligibility rules, because the package is the part that takes weeks and half of it is not written by you.
Written by the applicant:
- a description of your background and research accomplishments, maximum 500 words
- a statement of the knowledge and skills you aim to gain during the funded period, naming the gaps in your training so far and how this opportunity fills them, maximum 250 words
- a list of every other funding source you have applied to or intend to apply to, with due dates
- a brief summary of your project explaining its relevance to the immune system’s role in cancer or to treating cancer by immunological means, not exceeding 500 words
- a lay abstract in non technical English, limited to 250 words
- your specific aims, not exceeding 500 words
- a concise research proposal covering background, significance, materials and methods, not exceeding four pages including tables and figures, with references excluded from the page count
- your curriculum vitae and bibliography, with an NIH biosketch preferred
Written by other people:
- a letter from your sponsor introducing you and setting out their own qualifications to direct the research, containing an assurance that the project will run under their direct supervision
- your sponsor’s curriculum vitae or biosketch, plus a list of their current research support
- two letters of recommendation
That lay abstract deserves a second look. It goes to the Cancer Research Institute’s lay Board of Trustees and is used for fundraising, so it is the one document read by people who are not immunologists. Most applicants write it last and it shows.
Four rules that end an application before anyone reads the science:
The Cancer Research Institute states these plainly, and they are absolute rather than advisory:
- Applications exceeding the stated page limits are disqualified. Not trimmed, not penalised. Disqualified.
- Your application is not submitted until every signatory has signed through DocuSign. You can complete the entire portal process and still not have applied.
- Incomplete applications are not considered. This is the reason the Institute advises submitting well before the closing time.
- Only PDF documents are accepted, uploaded individually on the attachments page.
Formatting is specified too: single spaced, 12 point font or larger. Letters should be scanned in grayscale at a maximum of 300 dpi, because colour scans inflate file sizes enough to cause upload failures.
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The eligibility checklist:
Work through these before investing in the proposal:
- you must hold a doctoral degree by the date the award activates, not necessarily by the date you apply
- your research must run under a sponsor holding a formal appointment as assistant professor or higher at the host institution
- your work must sit directly in immunology or cancer immunology, and the project must fall within the broad field of immunology with relevance to solving the cancer problem
- you must have fewer than five years of mentored research experience at the time of award activation, calculated from your doctoral degree conferral date
- the fellowship must be held at a non profit institution, in the United States or anywhere else
- there are no citizenship restrictions
The five year ceiling is the rule that quietly excludes the most people. It is measured at activation rather than at application, and since awards activate at least four months after the deadline, a postdoc sitting close to the line should do that arithmetic carefully before starting the paperwork.
The money, in detail:
Three years of support, structured as:
- year one: $74,000 stipend
- year two: $76,000 stipend
- year three: $78,000 stipend
- an annual allowance of $5,000 to the host institution, spent at the sponsor’s discretion on research supplies, conference travel, health insurance or childcare
- dedicated support to attend the CRI Bioinformatics Bootcamp
One clause matters more than it looks: administrative overhead cannot be deducted from either the stipend or the institutional allowance. Plenty of awards lose a slice to institutional overhead before the researcher sees anything. Here the full amount reaches its intended purpose, which is worth knowing when comparing offers on paper.
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Two deadlines a year, and what follows:
Applications are due on 1 March and 1 September annually, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time. If a deadline falls on a weekend or holiday, applications are accepted until the following workday. The two dates currently listed are 1 September 2026 and 1 March 2027.
After that:
- decisions are communicated within roughly 10 to 12 weeks of the deadline
- awards can be activated four months after the deadline, and no later than one year after it
- awards always activate on the first of a month
The twice yearly cycle changes the calculation. If your package will not be strong by 1 September, the March deadline is six months away and a stronger application then beats a rushed one now. Only the five year experience ceiling argues against waiting, so check where that leaves you before deciding.
What the reviewers are weighing:
Applications go through peer review, and the Institute names three things assessed:
- your qualifications, track record and potential for future impact
- the strength of the sponsor and the quality of the training environment
- the significance, innovation and feasibility of the proposed research
Notice that the second one is not about you. This programme funds training through research, so the sponsor and the lab are being assessed alongside the candidate. A brilliant proposal attached to a weak training environment is a weaker application than the science alone suggests.
The Institute also expects the applicant and sponsor together to show three things: how the research advances understanding of the immune system’s role in cancer, how the fellowship gives the fellow new skills, approaches and mentorship, and a clear trajectory towards independence. That third point is the one applicants most often leave implicit. Say it outright. Name what you intend to run your own lab on, and show how these three years get you there.
Practical consequences worth acting on:
- Brief your sponsor properly. Their letter has to state whether you wrote the application yourself and whether any preliminary data came from you or from the lab before you arrived. Vague answers there do not help you.
- Write the research proposal to fit four pages rather than cutting it down to four pages afterwards. Compressed proposals read as compressed.
- Make the training gaps in your 250 word statement specific and slightly uncomfortable. Naming a real weakness and the exact resource that fixes it is the whole point of that document.
- Open the CRI application portal early enough that a portal problem is an inconvenience rather than a catastrophe.
For a postdoc in immunology or cancer immunology within five years of the doctorate, this is among the strongest awards available: three years of funding at a rising stipend, no overhead skimmed off it, a training budget for the lab, and no restriction on your nationality or on where in the world you hold it.
The competition is correspondingly serious, and the application is a genuine project rather than a form. Between the four page proposal, the lay abstract, the sponsor’s letter and two recommendations, the realistic preparation time is measured in weeks.
With 1 September 2026 close, be honest about whether your package can be excellent by then. If it can, begin at the Cancer Research Institute application portal today. If it cannot, aim at 1 March 2027 and use the intervening months on the science, provided the five year ceiling still leaves you eligible.
Frequently asked questions
I have an M.D. Do my residency years count towards the five year limit?
No. M.D. applicants should not include years of residency when calculating mentored research experience. Everyone should count from the date their doctoral degree was conferred. This single exception moves quite a few clinician scientists back inside the window, so it is worth recalculating rather than assuming you have aged out.
My sponsor was also my thesis advisor. Who writes my letters?
Contact the Cancer Research Institute directly for instruction, because the standard arrangement breaks in your case. Normally one of the two required recommendation letters must come from your thesis advisor, the second from someone well acquainted with your work, and your sponsor may not write either of them. When the sponsor and thesis advisor are the same person those rules collide, and the Institute asks to be contacted rather than for applicants to improvise.
I have already been in my sponsor’s lab for three years. Am I ruled out?
Not automatically, but you are close to the edge. Applicants who will have spent three or more years in a sponsor’s laboratory by the fellowship start date are considered only in exceptional circumstances. If that is you, the application needs to make the exceptional circumstance visible rather than hoping the reviewers overlook the timeline.
Can two postdocs from the same lab apply in the same round?
No. Only one fellow per sponsor may apply in any given application round, so that conversation needs to happen inside the lab before either of you starts writing. There is a second limit worth knowing: a faculty sponsor cannot hold more than three CRI supported fellows at any one time, so a lab that already has three is closed to new applications until one finishes.
My application was rejected. Can I try again?
Yes, at a subsequent deadline, but not by resubmitting the same document. Resubmission is permitted provided the new application is improved to reflect genuine progress, and the changes you have made should be addressed within the new application rather than left for reviewers to spot. Treat a rejection as six months of runway to strengthen the science, not as a formality to repeat.
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