Greetings,

We are excited to share this early-career funding opportunity from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund (BWF). The Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease (PATH) program provides opportunities for assistant professors to bring multidisciplinary approaches to studying human infectious diseases. More information about the award can be found in the synopsis and links below. For a full list of currently open opportunities that have been announced through our office, please visit our new Current Opportunities web page. As a reminder, our Research Development team is available to provide proposal development support to FAS ladder faculty.

Burroughs Wellcome Fund (BWF) Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease (PATH) Grants

• OSP Deadline: July 13, 2026 at 9:00 AM ET
  Departments or areas may require additional time for proposal review and submission. Please discuss a timeline with your departmental or FORA grants administrator.
• Sponsor Deadline for Letters of Intent (LOIs): July 16, 2026 at 3:00 PM ET
• Award Amount: $505,000 over five years 
  BWF does not provide indirect costs. While this falls short of the 15% overhead required by FAS/SEAS policy, these are early career awards so FAS/SEAS recognizes this indirect cost limit and does not require further action, such as a waiver or direct charge of other costs. 

Program Overview

The Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease (PATH) program aims to provide accomplished investigators at the assistant professor level with opportunities to study what happens at the points where the systems of humans and potentially infectious agents connect. The program supports research that sheds light on the fundamentals that affect the outcomes of these encounters: how colonization, infection, commensalism, and other relationships play out at levels ranging from molecular interactions to systemic ones. The program intends to give recipients the freedom and flexibility to pursue new avenues of inquiry, stimulating higher-risk research projects that hold potential for significantly advancing our understanding of how infectious diseases work and how health is maintained. 

 

Funding may be used flexibly for items such as equipment, consumable supplies, travel to scientific meetings, and salaries for laboratory personnel working with the awardee. The PATH award may not be used to pay student tuition. 

Priority Areas

• Researchers who start from the human host are appropriate applicants, as are those who start from the microbe or virus.
• Research on under-studied infectious diseases, including emerging diseases as well as well-established ones. Work related to malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS is appropriate for this program. 
• Work on fungal, protozoan, and metazoan diseases and emerging infections is especially of interest.
• Work done in excellent animal models of human disease, including in veterinary research settings.
• Microbiome work that is focused on understanding the pathogenesis of infectious disease.
• Interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged.
• Work connecting pathogenesis itself to climate change.
• Work that involves more elements in studies of pathogenesis, for example, vector biology in the context of human and pathogen biology, is very welcome. 

Eligibility Criteria

• Applicants must be 36 months or more from their start date as assistant professors.
• These mid-to-late stage assistant professors should have an established record of independent research in a tenure-track position or its well-supported equivalent in non-tenure offering departments. 
• Associate professors, with or without tenure, are ineligible. Candidates who will be promoted to Associate Professor by November 12, 2026 are not eligible to apply.
• Citizens and non-citizen permanent and temporary residents of the U.S. and Canada who are legally qualified to work in the U.S. or Canada are eligible. Candidates who are temporary U.S. residents must hold a valid U.S. visa (J-1, H1B, F-1 or O-1 visas). Temporary Canadian residents must hold a valid Canadian visa (Study Permit, C-43, C44, C-10, or C-20 work permits/visas).
• Candidates who have completed a Burroughs Wellcome Fund career development award (CAMS or CASI) are encouraged to apply but must contact BWF before writing the LOI. Having had BWF travel, career guidance for trainees, preterm birth, regulatory science, or Postdoctoral Enrichment Program (PDEP) grants does not impact PATH support.
• This is a career development award for individual investigators and does not support collaborative teams. 
• Award recipients are required to devote at least 75 percent of their overall time to research-related activities. There is no explicit minimum percent effort that must be dedicated to the PATH award. Interested applicants should discuss this effort requirement with one of the following contacts before preparing an application:
  • Laura Wipf for FAS Science faculty members
  • Diane Schneeberger for SEAS faculty members

LOI Materials

• Online LOI fields:
  • Proposal Information
  • Applicant Information
  • Applicant Demographics
  • Institution Information
  • Five Critical Questions:
    • 1. What is your proposed research question? (350 characters, including spaces)
    • 2. Why is the work you propose interesting and important? How will it change our understanding of how disease unfolds? (1,400 characters, including spaces)
    • 3. How will you do it? What is your approach? (1,400 characters, including spaces)
    • 4. What about your outlook / background / training gives you great insight into this problem? (700 characters, including spaces)
    • 5. How is the work you propose here different and higher risk than the mainline work you seek to fund through other grant programs? (700 characters, including spaces)
  • Signature of Institution’s Signing Official. The signatory official will receive an email once their contact information is added to the proposal.
• PDF Attachments:
  • Candidate’s CV (5-page limit), see page 7 of the full RFP for formatting instructions
  • US IRS Letter of Determination

Additional Information and Resources

 

 

 

 

 

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