2017 MolSSI Software Fellowships

The Molecular Sciences Software Institute (MolSSI) is pleased to announce the inaugural 2017 Software Fellowship competition. These prestigious awards will recognize advanced graduate students and postdocs pursuing the development of software infrastructure, middleware, and frameworks that will benefit the broader field of computational molecular sciences, including biomolecular and macromolecular simulation, quantum chemistry, and materials science. Fellows will receive specialized training in state-of-the-art software design principles and tools, and they will engage in outreach and educational efforts organized by the MolSSI. Each Fellow will be assigned a mentor among the Institute’s Software Scientists, who will oversee their software development efforts and training. In addition, Fellows will spend a minimum of one week each year at the Institute headquarters at Virginia Tech to interact with the Software Scientists, members of the MolSSI Board of Directors, members of the Science and Software Advisory Board, and other visitors.

The MolSSI Software Fellowships will include a number of benefits:

Graduate Student Fellowships:

  • A generous stipend of $40k/year plus tuition and required fees;
  • Travel allowances sufficient to fully cover visits to the MolSSI headquarters, as well as participation in MolSSI workshops or summer schools;
  • Access to MolSSI computational resources, including NSF supercomputers, Virginia Tech Advanced Research Computing facilities, and advanced experimental hardware provided by the Institute’s industrial partners.

Postdoctoral Fellowships:

  • A generous stipend of a minimum of $50k/year plus fringe benefits;
  • Travel allowances sufficient to fully cover visits to the MolSSI headquarters, as well as participation in MolSSI workshops or summer schools;
  • Access to MolSSI computational resources, including NSF supercomputers, Virginia Tech Advanced Research Computing facilities, and advanced experimental hardware provided by the Institute’s industrial partners.

MolSSI Software Fellowships will be awarded in a two-phase structure: Phase-I Fellowships will typically include half a year of support (based on the above benefits), though longer periods may be possible depending on the proposed project and alignment with the academic calendar of the Fellow’s home institution. Phase-II Fellowships will be awarded based on the Fellow’s performance in Phase I and will provide up to a cumulative two years of support.

Eligibility and Selection Criteria: The MolSSI Software Fellowship program is presently limited to graduate students and postdoctoral associates at accredited U.S. academic institutions. Graduate student Fellows are expected to be enrolled full time at their home university, and postdocs must be fully employed or have an offer of full employment prior to acceptance of the award. The MolSSI Software Fellowships are an equal opportunity program open to all qualified persons without regard to race, gender, religion, age, physical disability or national origin. Awardees may accept other concurrent awards that do not require a significant time or service commitment.

MolSSI Software Fellows will be selected by the MolSSI Science and Software Advisory Board based on (1) the quality of the applicant’s software research proposal and its relevance to the Institute’s goals; (2) the applicant’s research productivity, including previous software-development efforts; (3) previous academic performance; and (4) external references.

Application Requirements:

A complete MolSSI Software Fellowship Application must include:

  • Project proposal (maximum of two pages);
  • Current curriculum vitae;
  • Undergraduate transcripts (graduate applicants only); graduate transcripts (all applicants);
  • Examples of previous software development products (e.g. source-code repositories);
  • Two letters of support, one of which must come from the applicant’s current research adviser.

Additional Requirements: All software, documentation, and other resources developed by the Fellow under the auspices and guidance of the MolSSI will be made freely available to the computational molecular sciences community under an open-source license approved by the Institute’s Board of Directors.

To receive full consideration for a Software Fellowship in 2017-2018, please send your proposal to molssi@vt.edu by February 1, 2017.