New Call for Minerva Fellowships

Application is now open to German and Israeli doctoral and post-doctoral researchers from all fields of research

Deadline: 15 June 2021

Application procedure and documents

The following documents are required for application:

• CV including publications

• Certificates:
  You can submit your university certificates in English or German (B.A./B.Sc., M.A./M.Sc., and Ph.D.). We would need your Transcripts of records and the degrees with its final grades.

• Research proposal including short summary and abstract of the research project:
  Your Research Proposal should not exceed five pages. (References are not included in these five pages.) The Abstract of the proposal should include 5-10 keywords, the Summary (up to 200 words) should by all means be written in laymen's terms (for committee members who are not familiar with your field of research), and should contain a generally comprehensive description of the project, also indicating its scientific aims.
  

• External letters:
  In order to complete your application, we would also need external letters. While filling out the application form we shall ask you for the email addresses of the respective authors. They will be automatically invited to provide their letters by our application platform. Please note that the referees will have no access to your application documents via our database. Please inform the authors of your external letters about your application and forward to them the respective documents (your research proposal, your CV etc.). As soon as the letters are submitted, you and the respective author will receive a confirmation of the filing. Letters directly sent to Minerva (via email) cannot be accepted. The deadline for delivery of external letters is around 10 days after the application deadline.
  • Letter of Invitation from your host (institution):
    The letter from your host should contain a statement indicating the feasibility of your research at his/her institute, your integration into the host group and comments on your project. Additionally, we require an overview of the activities of the host institute/chair/group including its ten best research publications of the past five years. This information should be no longer than a page.
  • Two letters of recommendation:
    The letters must be provided by scientists who know you personally. A letter from the PhD-supervisor is for doctoral students compulsory, for post-docs desirable. Your future host can also write such a letter provided he or she knows you personally.

If not stated otherwise, we would need all documents in English and as one single PDF-document!

In case of submission of incorrect documents, we are not able to accept your application.

Selection procedure

The evaluation process of the Minerva Fellowship Programme is conducted by the Minerva Stiftung. Applications will be evaluated and reviewed by the members of the Minerva Fellowship Committee and in single cases additionally by external reviewers inside and outside the European Union.

An additional major part of the evaluation process is an interview (personal, via skype or phone) with one of our Minerva Fellowship Committee Members or Minerva reviewers. Applicants will be informed via e-mail by the Minerva team around 4 weeks after the application deadline to arrange an appointment with one of our interviewers.

The decisions on the proposals for Minerva Fellowships are taken by the Minerva Fellowship Committee, consisting of researchers from Israel and Germany of all research fields.

The results are communicated in April/May (regarding the January deadline) resp. in October/November (regarding the June deadline).

Reapplication

Reapplication is possible and requires that

• the candidate has not received notification that such a reapplication is not permissible;
• minimum 12 months lie between the first and second application;
• scientific progress and achievements during this interval are duly reflected in the reapplication.

Should you have any queries, please contact:

Minerva Stiftung
Gesellschaft für die Forschung mbH
Hofgartenstraße 8
80539 Munich
Germany

+49 0 89-2108-1242
minerva-team@gv.mpg.de