What Is a Postdoctoral and Clinical Research Fellow Grant?

Before we get to that, let’s first address the difference between a postdoctoral fellow and a clinical research fellow. It can definitely be confusing.

A postdoctoral fellow, also called a postdoc, is someone who completed a Ph.D. program and is now conducting research under the guidance of a principal investigator (mentor) with the goal of one day having their own lab.

A clinical research fellow is someone who graduated from medical school and completed their residency. The fellowship provides subspecialty training. In Rally Foundation for Childhood Cancer Research’s (Rally) case it would be a subspecialty in pediatric hematology/oncology (hemoc) that includes both clinical and research training. Typically, hemoc fellows spend their first year in the clinic doing patient care, the second year doing research, and the third year doing both.

RESEARCH GRANTS

Rally helps fund the most promising research initiatives through grants including our Postdoctoral and Clinical Research Fellow Grant.

A Rally research grant is a financial award provided to a university, hospital or private research institution to support a specific research project.

Rally grants are awarded based on a competitive dual peer-review process conducted by our Medical Advisory Board, which is made up of leading childhood cancer experts.

The Postdoctoral and Clinical Research Fellow Grant awards up to $50,000 per year for one or two years depending on how the fellow’s grant scored.

Rally funds all levels of research, from science at the bench to translational, and includes fellows, young investigators and independent investigators. It is important to fund fellows because they are the next generation of pediatric cancer researchers.

RALLY RESEARCH FOCUS

Rally research grants must address at least one of the following priority areas:

• Innovative approaches to research that could lead to advanced studies or clinical trials.
• Basic science studies that are likely to lead to a new discovery.
• Under-studied cancer types.
• Quality of life, survivorship and palliative care studies.
• Personalized, targeted, alternative or integrative research proposals.
• Data utilization through data standardization, collection, storage, analysis and sharing.

WHY

Because kids with cancer deserve better.

Some childhood cancer treatments have been the same for more than 40 years. With your support, we are changing that. Rally-funded research has led to new and better treatments, and ultimately cures, with fewer harmful side effects.

Between 2006 and 2024, Rally awarded $35 million in childhood cancer research grants funding 597 projects at institutions around the world.

Rally’s next grants will be announced in early April 2025.