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HUBBLE FELLOWSHIPSANNOUNCEMENT OF OPPORTUNITYFOR THE YEAR 2008 PROGRAMApplication Deadline: November 8, 2007Table of Contents
OVERVIEWThe Hubble Fellowship Program provides an opportunity for highly qualified recent postdoctoral scientists to conduct independent research that is broadly related to the mission of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The research will be carried out at United States Host Institutions chosen by each Fellow. The Fellowship provides support for up to three years at an annual stipend of approximately $57,500 plus benefits, and an additional allowance of $16,000 per year for travel and other research costs. Contingent upon National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) funding, about ten new Hubble Fellowships will be awarded in 2008. The Hubble Fellowship Program is administered by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, in cooperation with astronomical institutions throughout the United States. Awards will be made to support each Hubble Fellow through a designated Host Institution. An application for the Fellowship consists of a research proposal and supporting documentation, as described below. Applicants must have received their Ph.D. or equivalent degree in 2005 or later. The deadline for receipt of applications and reference letters is Thursday, November 8, 2007. Award offers will be made by February 1, 2008. FELLOWSHIP POLICIES
Applicants must have received a Ph.D. or equivalent doctoral-level research degree in astronomy, physics, or a related discipline on or after January 1, 2005. Graduate-student awardees who have not yet received their doctoral degree at the time of application must present evidence of having completed all requirements for the degree before commencing their Fellowships. Hubble Fellowships are open to citizens of the United States and to English-speaking citizens of other countries. Qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, creed, color, age, gender, or national origin. Women and members of minority groups are strongly encouraged to apply.
Contingent upon availability of funding from NASA, Hubble Fellowships are awarded through grants to Host Institutions. Applicants may select any eligible United States institution for carrying out their research as long as the choice is suitably justified in their proposals. For the present purposes, "institution" means a separate administrative entity which offers its scientific staff a career advancement process that can lead to long-term/permanent contracts or to tenure. Justification is particularly important in cases where the selected institution is the same one where the applicant earned his/her degree, or is the current home institution of the applicant. A faculty member or other eligible member of the scientific staff of the Host Institution will serve as the Faculty Contact for scientific purposes and will be the Principal Investigator of the Fellow's grant for administrative purposes. In order to avoid an excessive concentration of Fellows at any one institution, only one new Fellow per year will generally be approved for any single institution. Under exceptional circumstances, the STScI Director may approve two new Fellows at a given institution if that institution agrees to be ineligible for a new (or transferring) Fellow in the following year. Applicants are asked to propose three prospective Host Institutions, in order of preference. As part of the application procedure (described in detail below), an endorsement letter from the first-choice Host Institution is required. No prior endorsement from the two alternative institutions is required. The purpose of designating second- and third-choice institutions in the application is to provide the program with flexibility should there be an oversubscription of awardees at any single institution. Barring this circumstance, it is expected that awardees will utilize their Fellowships at their first-choice institutions. It is essential that candidates for Hubble Fellowships give serious consideration to their designations of first-, second-, and third-choice Host Institutions before their applications are submitted. These initial designations play an important role in how Hubble Fellows are matched with Host Instititions. In some cases, it may be possible for a person awarded a Hubble Fellowship to change his or her choice of Host Institution at the time of recruitment. This possibility depends, however, on unpredictable factors, especially the choices of Host Institutions of other Fellowship awardees. Thus, candidates cannot expect to have the option of changing their preferences for Host Institutions after they submit their applications. The following institutions are ineligible for 2008 Fellows:
In general, Fellows will work full-time on the research programs proposed in their applications and will be in residence at the proposed Host Institution during the entire period of the Fellowship. However, should a Fellow have a compelling need to transfer to an institution other than the original Host Institution, and can present suitable justification, the STScI Director may approve the request to transfer the Fellowship. Transfers are subject to the policies limiting the number of new Fellows per institution as outlined above.
The initial annual stipend for a Hubble Fellow will be approximately $57,500, subject to annual review and adjustment. In addition, the Hubble Fellow can receive health insurance, relocation costs, and support for travel, computing services, publications, and other direct research costs. No additional stipend, salary, or other remuneration may be accepted from any other appointment (such as teaching), fellowship, or similar grant during the period of the Fellowship.
Contingent upon the availability of funding from NASA, Hubble Fellowships are awarded through grants to Host Institutions for up to a three-year period. Funding will be provided initially for the first year of the Fellowship. Renewals for the second and third years will depend on annual performance reviews.
These Fellowships are analogous to prize fellowships or similar temporary programs at the postdoctoral level at universities. They are not intended to be, nor to compete with, permanent professional career positions. It should also be understood that a Hubble Fellowship carries with it no guarantee of HST observing time and implies no change in the way HST observing time is awarded. It is not required that Fellows or their Faculty Contacts have access to proprietary HST data. APPLICATION PROCEDURE
Awards are made on the basis of a review of the applicant's research proposal as well as the curriculum vitae, list of publications, summary of previous and current research, and three letters of reference. The details of the application are described fully below.
The deadline for application is THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2007. Application materials must be received at STScI by this date. All application materials must be sent to STScI as electronic PDF files. Incomplete applications and/or applications received after November 8, 2007, will not be considered.
The applicant should submit an electronic PDF file of the following materials directly to the Hubble Fellowship Program Office via the email address hfsubmission@stsci.edu:
All materials submitted must be in at least 12-point fonts, single spaced, and all pages should be numbered. Non-U.S. applicants should make sure that their applications will copy successfully onto 8.5x11 inch (21.6x28 cm) paper without loss (i.e., with 1-inch margins on all sides). All application materials must be sent to the email address given above in the form of a single pdf file designated by the last name of the applicant (such as jones.pdf). Please combine the files into a single PDF attachment.
Each applicant must formulate a specific research program that is related to or motivated by HST science and is compatible with the research activities of the Host Institution. The proposed research need not be based directly on HST data, but its relevance to HST science must be stated clearly and unambiguously. Relevance to the HST mission will be interpreted broadly, and encompasses theoretical, observational, and instrumental research. The research proposal text should be AT MOST THREE PAGES in length, with up to two additional pages allowable for references and/or figures. Reviewers will be instructed to ignore any pages in excess of the stated limits. The submitted material must be of a quality that will permit photocopying for the reviewers. Any color illustrations may appear black and white in the reviewers' copies.
Applicants must arrange for their research proposals to be read and approved by a faculty member of the first-choice Host Institution (the Faculty Contact), and endorsed by an official of the first-choice Host Institution. The endorsement should be sent electronically, directly to STScI by the first-choice Host Institution BY THE DEADLINE (November 8). The institutional endorsement is necessary to indicate that adequate facilities will be provided for the Hubble Fellow, but does not ensure selection by the Hubble Fellowship Review Panel. The endorsement consists of an acceptance letter signed by an authorizing official (typically the department chairperson) of the first-choice Host Institution. A possible acceptance letter is as follows: Hubble Fellowship Program I am writing in regard to [applicant's name]'s application for a Hubble Fellowship. We have reviewed his/her research proposal entitled "[program title]" and are pleased to endorse it and to inform you that we will welcome him/her here and offer him/her support and facilities should a Fellowship be offered. Dr. [Faculty Contact's name] has agreed to serve as his/her Faculty Contact. Dr. [Faculty Contact's name] is authorized to act as Principal Investigator for external funding at our institution. We acknowledge that our institutional Indirect Costs will be waived on the Fellowship stipend and fringe benefits, in case a Fellowship grant is offered. Sincerely yours, The authorizing official should e-mail the letter directly to hfsubmission@stsci.edu.
Applicants should arrange for letters of reference to be submitted by the three individuals familiar with their scientific abilities who were listed on the standard Application Form. THESE LETTERS MUST BE RECEIVED BY THE APPLICATION DEADLINE. They should be sent as PDF files directly to hfsubmission@stsci.edu by the referees themselves, not the applicants. However, APPLICANTS MUST EMPHASIZE TO THEIR REFEREES THAT THE LETTERS MUST BE RECEIVED AT STScI BY November 8, 2007, in order for the review panelists to be able to see the letters. There is no assurance that late letters can be sent to the reviewers in time to be considered during the selection process. Only three letters should be requested. If more than three are received, only the three corresponding to the referee names listed on the Application Form will be forwarded to the reviewers. Any additional letters may be made available to the reviewers at their meeting, but will be considered only at their discretion; in practice, such consideration is unlikely to occur.
Prospective applicants may wish to consult the website How to Win a Hubble Fellowship for some helpful suggestions. Requests for additional information on application procedures and supporting documents may be requested by e-mail to hfinquiry@stsci.edu. SELECTION AND AWARD OF FELLOWSHIPS
The Hubble Fellowship Program Office at STScI will receive all application materials and supporting documents. These will be reviewed by the Hubble Fellowship Review Panel in January 2008. The evaluation and recommendation by this external review panel forms the basis on which the Director of STScI grants the Hubble Fellowship awards. The Review Panel normally makes recommendations to the STScI Director, in the form of a ranked list of candidates. Whenever possible, successful candidates are offered their first choice of host institution. It often happens, however, that several successful candidates have requested the same host institution. In these cases, priority is usually given to the higher-ranked candidate. The general approach taken is to place as many new Hubble Fellows as possible in the host institutions of their choice, subject to the one-new-Fellow-per-host-institution rule, the prioritized list of host institutions provided by the candidates, and the ranked list of candidates provided by the Review Panel. This process can become complicated, with the decisions of one candidate affecting those of several other candidates, sometimes leading to decision grid-lock. Thus, with the goal of filling all the Hubble Fellowships in an orderly manner and avoiding last-minute decision cascades, all successful candidates are requested (and in rare cases, may be required) to make their decisions as expeditiously as possible. Fellowship offers for 2008 will be made before February 1, 2008, and acceptance or refusal must be made before February 15, 2008. After this date additional offers may be made if any of the initial awards are not accepted.
The Hubble Fellowship should generally begin on September 1, 2008, but other starting dates may, in individual cases, be jointly negotiated with the Fellow, the Host Institution, and the STScI Hubble Fellowship Program Office. All Fellowships must in any case commence by the end of 2008.
Non-U.S. nationals who are offered awards must have valid Visas, either Exchange Visitor or Immigrant Visas, for the duration of the Hubble Fellowship appointment. If an awardee applies for an Exchange Visitor Visa, the sponsorship will be under the Host Institution. If he/she chooses to apply for an Immigrant Visa, STScI cannot be a participant in the Visa request.
After the selection process, Fellows and Host Institutions will be notified of the intent to award a Fellowship grant to the Host Institution. The Host Institution should then submit a formal budget, signed by an authorizing official, to the Grants Administration Office of STScI. Allowable budget expenses include the stipend, health insurance, relocation expenses (first year only), and direct support costs, such as expenses for the Fellow's professional travel during the appointment, computing services, publication costs, and direct research costs. In preparing the budget, an institution's indirect cost rate may not be applied against either the Fellowship stipend or the health insurance. Note: A budget should not be submitted with the Fellowship application. Detailed budget instructions will be provided to successful applicants and their Host Institutions. Each Hubble Fellowship is awarded as a grant to a Host Institution with the Hubble Fellow's Faculty Contact acting as Principal Investigator of the grant. A Hubble Fellow may also apply for other grants during his or her Fellowship, (e.g. HST General Observer grants), although such grants must not include salary support for the Hubble Fellow. In these cases, a Hubble Fellow may act as the Principal Investigator of the grant, if this is allowed by the normal rules of the Host Institution for scientists at the postdoctoral level. APPLICATION CHECKLIST
Hubble Fellowship Program Contacts Last updated September 25, 2007 by B. Blacker. |
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