Hubble Fellowships

Overview

The Hubble Fellowship Program provides an opportunity for highly qualified recent postdoctoral scientists to conduct independent research that is broadly related to the NASA Cosmic Origins scientific goals as addressed by any of the missions in that program: the Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope, Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), the Herschel Space Observatory, and the James Webb Space Telescope. 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 $67,500 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, up to 17 new Hubble Fellowships will be awarded for 2016.

The Hubble Fellowship Program is administered for NASA by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., working 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 on or after January 1, 2013. The deadline for receipt of applications isThursday, November 5, 2015 and for reference letters is Thursday, November 12, 2015. Award offers will be made by early February 2016.

Eligibility

Applicants must have received a Ph.D. or equivalent doctoral-level research degree in astronomy, physics, or a related discipline. The date of the Ph.D award should be on or after January 1, 2013. 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.

Host Institution

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. Two new Fellows may be approved at a given institution if that institution agrees to be ineligible for a new (or transferring) Fellow in the following year. Under highly exceptional circumstances, the institution’s year of ineligibility may be deferred by one year. For this reason, the following institutions are not eligible to accept a Hubble Fellow in 2016:

• Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
• University of California, Berkeley

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 no longer required. However, as part of the acceptance procedure, an endorsement letter from the Host Institution is required for accepted Hubble Fellows.

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 Institutions. 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.

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.

Materials Submitted Directly by the Applicant

Applicants must submit their materials via the web Application Form. These materials must include:

• A completed Hubble Fellowship Application form;
• A curriculum vitae
• A list of publications
• A summary of previous and current research (limited to three pages total, including references)
• A copy of the research proposal, described below (limited to 3 pages text plus 2 pages references/figures)

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). Please keep each file to less than 2 MB.

Research Proposal

Each applicant must formulate a specific research program that is related to or motivated by Cosmic Origins related science and is compatible with the research activities of the Host Institution. The proposed research need not be based directly on mission data from the Cosmic Origins program (HST, Spitzer, SOFIA, Herschel, or JWST), but its relevance to their 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 no more than three pages of text in length, with up to two additional pages 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).

Application Checklist

• You should have received (or expect to receive) your Ph.D. on or after January 1, 2013.
• Upload the following materials as PDF files to the Hubble Fellowship Application form, by Thursday, November 5, 2015:
  • Completed Application Form
  • Curriculum vitae
  • List of publications
  • Summary of previous and current research (limited to 3 pages total, including references)
  • Research proposal (limited to 3 pages text plus up to 2 optional pages of references/figures). Include relevance to Cosmic Origins science.
  • Do not attach anything else (reprints, preprints, cover letter, cover sheets, etc.)
  • Email addresses of three referees
• Deadline for receipt of reference letters is Thursday, November 12, 2015.
• We recommend that you remind your referees to send their letters by the November 12 deadline.
• Please use the email address below for all correspondence.
• Receipt of applications will be acknowledged by e-mail shortly after the online submission.

Applications for the Hubble Fellowship at STScI must be made using the Hubble Fellowship Application form. You may, depending on your browser, receive a security certificate warning, please click "Accept" to continue to the Application Form.

For technical issues with the Application Process, please contact SlideRoom @ https://support.slideroom.com.

For questions about policies and procedures regarding the Hubble Fellowship Program, please contact the Hubble Fellowship Program coordinator @ hfinquiry@stsci.edu or at 410-338-2474.

This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:

http://www.stsci.edu/institute/smo/fellowships/hubble/announcement-of-opportunity