We fund activities that help to promote collaboration and to leverage EMBL and Stanford’s complementary strengths in research, teaching and infrastructure.

We want to encourage future generations of researchers to think globally, enable the exchange of people and knowledge, and provide opportunities for the scientific community to come together to discuss the current challenges and opportunities in the life sciences.

Our activities are centered on three main components:

Training

The highlight of the program is our Bridging Excellence Fellowships. We seek to develop the next generation of global researchers with postdoctoral fellowships for ambitious young researchers to immerse themselves in joint projects between EMBL and Stanford.

Ambitious, early stage researchers are encouraged to submit a proposal for a 3-year joint research project between EMBL and Stanford.  Hosted at EMBL, these postdoctoral fellows immerse themselves in a highly collaborative environment and spend up to one year as a visiting researcher at Stanford.  Our postdoctoral fellowships cover the full 3 year stipend at EMBL, lab consumables, a supplement for the visit to Stanford and attendance at one international conference. Bridging Excellence Fellows are the driving force behind interdisciplinary, inter-institutional collaborations. As the facilitors for the transfer of knowledge and expertise, fellows experience two unique research cultures and are mentored by experts from both institutions.

Exchange

Sometimes collaborations just need a little more face-to-face interaction to be successful. We facilitate the exchange of ideas and knowledge by funding the exchange of researchers. Our sabbatical grants, help our researchers make the best of their inter-institutional partnerships.

We offers sabbatical grants to researchers within the Alliance. This is not limited to our members, but also to technicians, postdoctoral fellows and other staff from the participating labs. Sabbatical grants are there to help researchers start up a new collaboration, learn a new technique at the partner institution, or for periods of intense collaboration on joint-projects. These grants cover the travel and accomodation costs for a three month research visit. 

Members should contact us for more information.

Participation

Great things happen when top researchers come together in the same place. By funding joint events, we want to catalyse the exchange of new ideas in the wider scientific community. We fund two programmes to bring the scientific community together.

Bridging Excellence Seminars: world-renowned scientists from EMBL or Stanford are invited to visit the partner institution and present their ground-breaking research. These public lectures provide the opportunity for local scientific communities to meet international experts, share their thoughts and expand their networks.

Joint Workshops and Conferences: we sponsor events organized by EMBL and Stanford members in a chosen field of life sciences. These events bring scientists together to present current research, discuss opportunities and challenges in the field, and applications for new technology. Participation is global and the attendance by industry experts, clinicians or other disciplines brings additional perspectives from outside of academia.

Members should contact us for more information.