Job Description

The Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds (BIF) awards PhD fellowships of 2 to 3.5 years to outstanding junior scientists worldwide who wish to pursue an ambitious PhD project in basic biomedical research in an internationally leading laboratory.

The peer-review selection process evaluates the applicant’s achievements, as well as the scientific quality of the project and host laboratory. The process is highly competitive, with less than 10 % of applicants receiving a fellowship.

On top of the monthly stipend, we offer our fellows seminars, travel allowances, individual and personal support, and a worldwide network of fellows and alumni.

Certificate of excellence

BIF‘s fellowships have the reputation of being a certificate of excellence due to the stringent selection process and the success of the fellows and their projects.

More than a monthly stipend

From its start in 1983, the BIF has fostered a network of curious, ambitious, and open-minded people. The BIF community has developed through many face-to-face meetings during BIF seminars and conferences as well as other occasions. It is built on helpfulness and trust and about 90 % of our fellows stay in touch with us. Therefore, if fellows have questions, very likely, someone within the network can answer. After all, our more than 1,800 fellows and alumni pursue diverse career paths, e. g. in industry, biotech, patent law, consulting, as entrepreneurs, or, of course, in academia. Among the latter, we count about 385 professors or principal investigators.

Who can apply for a PhD fellowship

The Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds (BIF) awards PhD fellowships to European citizens working in Europe or overseas and to non-European citizens pursuing their PhD projects in Europe *.

The PhD projects must be experimental, in the field of basic biomedical research, and aimed at elucidating basic biological phenomena of human life and acquiring new scientific knowledge.

For further requirements, see below as well as FAQs.

Deadlines: February 1, June 1, and October 1 of each year

• What we offer
• How to apply
• How we decide
• FAQs
• Conditions & extensions

At the deadline

• Your first university entrance qualification (secondary or high school leaving certificate, A-levels, or entrance/access test for first university studies after finishing school) must not have been completed more than 8 years, i.e. 96 months ago.
• Natural scientists should have been awarded their last university degree before embarking on their PhD (BSc, diploma, MSc, or equivalent). If you have not yet finished your MSc studies and/or have not received your MSc degree certificate by the deadline, you can submit it up to four months after the deadline.
• Physicians, veterinary surgeons, and pharmacists should have passed their state examinations.

Candidates from the same laboratory

If two candidates from the same laboratory apply for a PhD fellowship at the same time, only one of them may receive a fellowship. We, therefore, recommend that they apply at different deadlines.

Timing of application

You should apply when you are about to start, or have just started, your PhD project, no preliminary results are expected. If you have begun your project more than six months prior to the deadline, you are no longer eligible to apply.

Definition of the start of a PhD project

• If you continue to work in your MSc/BSc thesis research group: the date at which you obtained your highest degree (e.g. BSc, MSc, diploma, DEA, licenciatura, laurea) before embarking on your PhD.
• If you change the research group: the month of arrival at the laboratory in which you pursue your PhD project, irrespective of the project you started to work on.
• If your PhD programme requires initial lab rotations and your last lab rotation is in your PhD lab: the end of your lab rotation period.

In other cases, e.g. when participating in MSc/PhD programmes or graduate schools without an official final examination prior to the PhD project, please contact us.

What we do and do not fund

We do not fund

• Applied research, such as biotechnological and pharmaceutical development (e.g. development of assays for diagnostic purposes or drug screening, optimization or screening of substances for therapeutic use, development of drug delivery systems or vaccines)
• Studies on the course of diseases or the treatment of symptoms or clinical studies
• Botanical and prokaryotic investigations, unless they are of general biological importance
• Education. As we can only support research, fellowships may not be used during the course and rotation phase of PhD programmes, but only for the duration of the PhD project.

For further examples, please see What we fund and do not fund.

We fund

We support only experimental projects in basic biomedical research, including in silico projects.

For example:

• Analysis of RNA polymerase I structure and transcription regulation
• The role of spontaneous activity in the development of neural circuits
• Intestinal symbionts induce distinct populations of regulatory T cells
• Heterochromatin protein 1 secures survival and transmission of malaria parasites
• Epigenetic reprogramming in the maternal germ line.

For further examples, please see What we fund and do not fund or browse the summaries of completed PhD projects in Futura, the BIF’s international journal.

Funding from others

The Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds must be notified if an application is submitted to any other research-sponsoring institution. Should an applicant take up an award from another institution prior to the decision of the BIF, the application to the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds is considered withdrawn and the BIF must be notified immediately.

Exceptions are made for fellowships exclusively covering tuition fees. 

Please refer to our PhD fellowship conditions.

Working contracts

The PhD fellowship is intended to cover your living expenses, so that you can fully concentrate on your PhD. Therefore, you may not receive a regular personal income from an employer while being funded by a BIF fellowship. However, one working contract of up to five hours a week yielding a marginal income may be acceptable.

Applicants wishing to work in countries where stipends underlie strict legal or tax regulations, such as Austria, Denmark, Norway, or Switzerland, please refer to our PhD fellowship conditions.

How to apply for a PhD fellowship

The application for a PhD fellowship of the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds (BIF) consists of

• An application form on our online portal (link below) including a PDF copy containing documents 1–7
• Letter(s) of recommendation.

The application must be written in English by the applicants themselves. There are three deadlines each year:

1 February, 1 June, 1 October.

• What we offer
• Who can apply
• How we decide
• FAQs
• Conditions & extensions

Project proposal

The project proposal consists of documents 1–3 and must be written by the applicants themselves. However, we strongly recommend that applicants discuss their draft proposal with their scientific supervisors and read our guide on how to write a research proposal.

How to write a research proposal

• DownloadTips on how to write a research proposal for a BIF PhD fellowship by Prof. Dr U. Benjamin Kaupp, former member of BIF’s Board of Trustees

Documents for application

Please order documents 1–7 for the PDF as follows

1. Title and summary of PhD project (max. 1,400 characters including spaces).
2. Project proposal: detailed presentation of PhD project containing the formulation of the problem, current status of research, applicant’s own groundwork, objectives, experimental strategy including methods of investigation (at least 4–5 pages for strategy and methods), references (including all authors and full titles of cited papers), work schedule indicating anticipated duration of entire project, and individual steps.
3. Reasons for wishing to work with the proposed group.
4. Summary of final experimental thesis (e.g. bachelor, diploma, master thesis) preceding the PhD project; if none was performed, please provide the reason(s) in the field “Additional information” in the online application and provide a summary of your most important laboratory internship.
5. List of applicant’s publications (if applicable).
6. Scans of certificates of all academic qualifications (including grades) and certificates of professional education prior to university (if applicable); in chronological order, newest on top. If the language of certificates is other than English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, or Turkish, please provide a translation.
7. Scans of high school diploma/secondary school leaving certificate including grades (e.g. Abitur, Baccalaureate, A-Levels) and, additionally, where applicable, university entrance test (e.g. SAT/ACT, PAU, YGS/LYS, Joint Entrance Examination, etc.). If the language of certificates is other than English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, or Turkish, please provide a translation.
8. Two Letters of recommendation emailed to us directly from the supervisors.

Letters of recommendation

Two letters of recommendation are required:

• One from the supervisor of the PhD thesis
• One from the supervisor of the MSc or equivalent thesis (e.g. BSc, diploma)

If the same person supervised both theses, or if no final experimental thesis was performed one letter must be provided by the supervisor of the most relevant laboratory internship.

Letters of recommendation must be in English, on official letterhead, and signed. They must be sent separately by the supervisors themselves via email as a PDF attachment named as follows: applicant’s last name_applicant’s first name_MSc/PhD/other (depending on who has written the letter of recommendation) to: PhD-recommendation(at)bifonds.de. (Example: smith_john_MSc.pdf)

PhD online application

Please click here to start your PhD online application.

After registration, you can also login to the portal via the link at the top right hand corner of this website or in the menu if you are using a mobile device.

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