Support for Early Career Faculty

Pursuing early career funding comes with both exciting opportunities and unique challenges. To support you in building a strong foundation, RDO has curated and created resources to help early career faculty identify, select, and strategically apply for early career funding opportunities. We encourage you to explore the resources and tools below and invite you to schedule a consultation with our research development team to discuss your goals and next steps.

One-on-one Consultations

RDO offers consultations and proposal support for early career faculty across disciplines. If you'd like to discuss funding strategy, a specific opportunity, or a proposal you’re working on, please reach out.

(If applicable, PIs in the School of Medicine will be referred to research development services from the School of Medicine Proposal Development Office or their local RD support. See FAQs for more details.)

Early Career Proposal Development Programming

RDO Fellowships Writing Group - Cohort-based writing group with 4-5 biweekly meetings to support Stanford Arts and Humanities faculty of all career levels who plan to submit a fellowship proposal within the next year. Early career faculty are encouraged to participate. Contact Madison Priest for more information.
K Award bootcamp for faculty - A semi-annual program offered by the Stanford Grant Writing Academy, open to all faculty (CE, UML, UTL, NTRL) writing NIH K proposals.
Step Ahead for NSF CAREER Proposers - Launching soon! Step Ahead for NSF CAREER is an opt-in email service with practical suggestions to support advance proposal development activities for prospective applicants. This program aims to help shorten the learning curve and reduce the planning burden associated with NSF CAREER proposals. Email reminders will be sent beginning in January of 2026. Fill out interest form to pre-register.

Interested in working with RDO to offer early career programming for your school, department, or institute? Contact us.

Funding Opportunity Lists and Search Tools

Major STEM* Early Career Funding Opportunities - Curated list of key multi-year federal and foundation opportunities that support a variety of STEM fields (including, as specified, quantitative social sciences and biomedical sciences).
Consolidated Cross-disciplinary Early Career Opportunities List - Regularly updated list of early career opportunities funding work in a wide variety of disciplinary areas, including the physical sciences, engineering, social sciences, humanities, arts, and biomedical fields. Must be logged into GrantForward with SUNet credentials to view.
A major opportunity list for scholars in the Humanities, Arts, and Interpretive Social Sciences (HAISS) is forthcoming. In the meantime, subscribe to the HAISS newsletter to learn of timely and strategic funding opportunities.

Support for Contacting Program Officers

For most federal and many foundation early career opportunities, outreach and conversation with program officers plays an important role in a successful application. This is especially true for opportunities with agencies under the U.S. Department of Defense, and is also strongly encouraged for DOE and NSF early career programs.

To help make it easy to identify the appropriate contact and reach out effectively, RDO offers support for contacting program officers.

Navigating the Stanford Proposal Submission Process

When planning your early career funding strategy and proposal submission timelines, be sure to factor the Stanford OSR 5-day deadline policy into your timeline(s).

RDO's Primer on Pursuing Extramural Funding gives a more detailed overview of the process and is written with newer to grant-seeking or new-to-Stanford PIs in mind.

Informational Webinars

To better understand how to approach key early career opportunities from the sponsor's point of view, we recommend the videos linked below:

Department of Energy Early Career Research Program Informational Webinar
Department of Defense early career funding opportunity overview (via Wise Investigator): Includes ARO, ONR, AFOSR, and DARPA
National Science Foundation CAREER program webinar slides and recording: Scroll to bottom.

Resources to Help Strengthen Your Proposals

Ten simple rules for writing a career development award proposal from PLoS Computational Biology
The BES Early Career Network plans webinars, hold representative discussions, hosts virtual and in-person meet-ups, and organizes early career events at biennial Principal Investigators Meetings. They also maintain a LinkedIn group.
Stanford RDO Guides:

Testimonials

[My RD support person's] guidance helped me craft a sharp, confident narrative, while her meticulous line edits ensured that every element of the proposal was polished. As an early-career scholar balancing the demands of tenure and the pursuit of external funding, her expertise has been invaluable.

Ayana Flewellen, Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Writing my first NSF proposal was quite daunting, especially since there is a lot of "know how" that's impossible to gain just by simply reading official guidelines. [My RD support person] supported us through the entire process, helping draft the outline, providing feedback on drafts and assisting writing -- without her help, I am not sure how we could have done it. She also made sure she understood the research as much as possible, and channel reviewers' potential questions and criticisms, which was extremely helpful. I highly recommend the RDO's services!

Dora Demzsky, Assistant Professor of Education and, by courtesy, of Computer Science

Oh my goodness. [My RD support person] was amazing. I felt that I could trust all of the advice she gave me, and trust that if she was not sure about something, she would seek out the information and share with me later. Her guidance has been invaluable at every step, she was extremely organized and helped me be organized, and made the whole process of putting together my first grant much less daunting.

Laura Gwilliams, Assistant Professor of Psychology and, by courtesy, of Linguistics