About Life Sciences Research Foundation
Supporting exceptional postdoctoral researchers in all areas of basic life sciences discovery by identifying outstanding young scientists and securing multi-year funding for their postdoctoral research.
Focus Areas
BiochemistryCancer BiologyCell BiologyComputational BiologyDevelopmental BiologyImmunologyMicrobiologyMolecular BiologyNeurobiologyOrganismal/Population & Evolutionary BiologyPhysiologyPlant BiologyStructural BiologyVirology
Who They Fund
About Life Sciences Research Foundation
Life Sciences Research Foundation’s recent awards center on three-year postdoctoral fellowships in basic life sciences, with named support routed to individual researchers at nonprofit universities and research institutions. The foundation’s grantmaking is built around research fellowships rather than institutional program support, and the award structure pairs salary or stipend support with a research allowance for mentored work in a host laboratory. Recent grants show repeated support for the same universities across multiple years, including Harvard Medical School and Rockefeller University, suggesting an ongoing fellowship model rather than one-off project grants. The pattern also reaches a wide set of research environments, from private universities to federal or independent research institutions. Awards to Princeton University and Stanford University sit alongside grants to the University of California, Berkeley and the Carnegie Institution for Science, all labeled for research fellowships in biological sciences. Across the grant list, the funding consistently supports postdoctoral researchers working in discovery-driven biology rather than broad operating support. That emphasis aligns with the foundation’s stated mission of identifying outstanding young scientists and securing multi-year funding for postdoctoral research.
What Life Sciences Research Foundation Funds
The foundation supports a broad set of basic life sciences disciplines through named fellowship support. In biological sciences research, it gave $402,000 to Harvard Medical School in 2023 and $366,000 in 2024, both to fund research fellowships in biological sciences. Its support also reaches major research universities and independent labs. It awarded $288,000 to Rockefeller University in 2025 and $247,750 to Princeton University in 2025 for the same purpose. Stanford University received $221,000 in 2025, continuing a multi-year pattern of fellowship support. The topic list spans biochemistry, cancer biology, cell biology, computational biology, developmental biology, immunology, microbiology, molecular biology, neurobiology, organismal and population biology, physiology, plant biology, structural biology, and virology. The recent grants reflect that breadth through a single mechanism: fellowships for postdoctoral researchers in basic life sciences.
How Life Sciences Research Foundation Gives
Financial Snapshot
Annual Giving
$8.5M
Total Assets
$3.5M
Total Revenue
$2.8M
Total Expenses
$2.9M
Typical Grant Size
Most grants fall between $67K and $134K, with a median of $67K.
25th Percentile
$67K
Median
$67K
75th Percentile
$134K
Geographic Reach
National16 states funded
About 0% of grants go to recipients in CA.
Funding intensity
LowHigh
Headquarters
Leadership
SUSAN DAVIDSON
Accepts unsolicited proposals
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