Endowed Support

Professorship | $6 million

Endowed professorships are the highest academic honor Stanford can bestow, recognizing our most distinguished faculty and their enduring contributions to science and medicine. Professorships provide salary and research support and give the holder the security to invest in the most promising work, paths that might not otherwise be pursued. This sustained source of funding allows leaders to plan ahead and build their teams—to recruit new talent to Stanford Medicine and to retain the existing physician-scientists who are making transformational discoveries that improve human health.

Directorship | $5 million or more

Successful, thriving programs require strong, steady, visionary leadership. Endowed directorships are held by leaders of critical programs who are driving innovations in important and promising areas. A named directorship provides the stability and resources many programs need to advance their vision and explore deeper collaborations across disciplines, departments, and schools.

Faculty Scholar | $4 million
Faculty Fellow | $3 million

Endowed faculty awards for early career investigators  are an investment in rising faculty talent—assistant or associate professors—who hold great promise in their fields of endeavor and as future leaders. These awards help propel the programs and careers of highly innovative and creative physicians and scientists who may not yet have the track record to compete for government grants. Faculty Scholar awards provide the flexibility to support associate and assistant professor faculty. Faculty Fellow awards are for assistant professors.

Postdoctoral Fellowship | $2 million

Our postdoctoral fellows have chosen Stanford as the best place for advanced training in their field. During this critical period, these scientists are beginning to set their own research direction under the guidance of a faculty mentor. An endowed postdoctoral fellowship adds resources and prestige to their position, enhancing Stanford’s ability to nurture and recruit outstanding investigators. Sustained funding gives them the freedom to concentrate on their research, rather than on seeking additional financial support.

Graduate Fellowship | $2 million

Graduate students perform and drive much of the scientific research conducted at Stanford. They represent the future of scientific discovery and innovative treatments. These endowed funds help attract top biosciences scholars from around the world by fully covering their early years of training. At most institutions, PhD students must rely on their faculty advisors’ grants for financial support. But at Stanford, philanthropic-driven funds allow these brilliant young minds to follow their passions and develop the ideas that will fuel their discoveries for years to come. Stanford University is currently offering to match gifts of $1.5 million, providing $500,000 in matching funds to enable donors to fully endow and name a graduate fellowship.

MD Scholarship | $300K minimum

As a world leader in medical education, Stanford strives to ensure that the most capable students have the resources they need to pursue a rigorous medical education in the field of their choice. Our goal is simple: to eliminate medical school debt and give students the freedom to pursue their passions in medicine, regardless of their financial circumstances. Endowed medical scholarships make medical school affordable by providing sustained funding.

Clinical Fellowship | Gift amounts vary depending on program

Clinical fellowships provide the opportunity for physicians in a variety of primary specialties to obtain sub-specialty training. These fellowships prepare physicians to become skilled clinicians and academic leaders by providing hands-on clinical instruction, teaching experience, and guidance in research methodology.

The IMA creates an unprecedented translational ecosystem by marshalling existing Stanford resources, augmenting them with new talent and expertise, and infusing funds into the most promising projects. Leveraging our outstanding cadre of physician-scientists and our premier hospitals and clinic system, as well as interdisciplinary institutes like ChEM-H and Bio-X, our unsurpassed basic research enterprise, and our deep industry relationships the IMA provides a clearer, faster, and easier path for researchers as they work to translate their discoveries into new medicines. And as an academic initiative fueled by philanthropy, the IMA can make riskier early investments in new medicines because we learn from every failure.

The impacts of the IMA will be profound:

• More first-in-class medicines to address overlooked diseases
• More attention to prophylaxis and cure vs. long-term maintenance therapy
• More talented scientists trained in translational medicine
• More knowledge about how our bodies work and what goes wrong when they don’t

To realize them will require investing $383 million into the most promising translational projects, platforms, and talent over the next five years:

Translational Project & Platform Awards – Spread across both experimental human biology and prototyping, these awards are allocated through a streamlined yet highly competitive process to identify projects with the greatest potential for deep insight and impact, as well as the platforms and technologies needed to make these exciting emerging therapeutic approaches possible.

Faculty and Staff Recruitment – In addition to recruiting and retaining top-tier translational faculty leaders, the IMA is hiring top-tier staff leaders to partner with them, allowing faculty to focus on selecting the best ideas and their staff counterparts to focus on advancing projects in a resource-efficient manner while prioritizing impact that is most valued by future industry partners.