The MolSSI Fellowship Program

The MolSSI continues to fund prestigious software fellowships that 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. MolSSI Software Fellows receive specialized training in state-of-the-art software design principles and tools, and they engage in outreach and educational efforts organized by the MolSSI.  Each Fellow is assigned a mentor among the Institute’s Software Scientists, who oversee their software development efforts and training.  In addition, In addition, the fellows will spend a week at MolSSI HQ at Virginia Tech (typically in mid-July) to interact with the Software Scientists and other MolSSI staff and visitors during the “Software Best Practices Boot Camp”.

These 12-month Fellowships, which are open to both graduate students and postdocs, will give recipients the opportunity to work with scientists at the MolSSI in order to implement recommended best practices, putting the Fellow’s project on a firm foundation, as well as conduct a targeted research project under the guidance of one or more of MolSSI’s Software Scientists.

The MolSSI Software Fellowship competition will be held annually, with the application window open from February 15 to April 1.

NOTE:  The next fellowship competition will open on 15 February 2025 for year-long fellowships beginning 1 July 2025; we will be announcing the next Fellowship competition via email and X early next year.

The MolSSI Software Fellowships will include a number of benefits:

Graduate Student Fellowships:

  • A generous stipend of $40k total for the 12-month Fellowships, 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.

Postdoctoral Fellowships:

  • A generous stipend of $60k total for the 12-month Fellowship;
  • Travel allowances sufficient to fully cover visits to the MolSSI headquarters, as well as participation in MolSSI workshops or summer schools.

Note that MolSSI Fellowships are paid from NSF Participant Support funds. The only allowable expense categories are stipend, tuition and fees; F&A (indirect costs) and health insurance costs are not allowed.

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;
  4. external references.

Application Requirements:

A complete MolSSI Software Fellowship Application must include:

  • Project description (maximum of two pages, not including references);
  • Current curriculum vitae;
  • Undergraduate transcripts (graduate applicants only); graduate transcripts (all applicants);
  • Examples of previous software development products (e.g. links to source-code repositories or other code samples);
  • Two letters of support, one of which must come from the applicant’s current research adviser;

To receive full consideration for a Software Fellowship, all application materials (including letters of recommendation) must be submitted by April 1, 2025. 

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.

Links will be provided for uploading all documentation on February 15th of 2025. 

Clink on the link to find the current software fellows and software fellows alumni information.

Inquiries to: fellowships@molssi.org