McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience: Scholar Awards Grant

The McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience offers Scholar Awards to early-career neuroscientists focusing on learning and memory disorders. The awards provide up to $225,000 over three years, emphasizing research that could lead to significant clinical advancements. Eligible candidates must work as independent investigators at U.S. non-profit institutions, hold an Assistant Professor position for less than four years, and demonstrate their research program's potential. The program aims to foster innovative solutions in neuroscience.

The McKnight Scholar Awards encourage neuroscientists in the early stages of their careers to focus on disorders of learning and memory.
The Endowment Fund especially seeks applicants working on problems that, if solved at the basic level, would have immediate and significant impact on clinically relevant issues.
McKnight Scholars have generated some key findings about neuroscience, including:

• The discovery of receptors that encode the senses of smell, taste, and thermal pain.
• The first crystal structure of one of the ion channels that control the excitability of neurons.
• The discovery of neurotrophic factors that promote neuronal survival.
• The identification of molecules that promote axon growth and regeneration in the nervous system.
• The discovery of proteins in the nerve terminal that mediate the release of neurotransmitters.
• The identification of genes that control short- and long-term memory.
• Benefits

The total award is $225,000 paid in equal installments of $75,000 in 2026, 2027, and 2028.
Please see FAQs for additional guidelines.

Eligibility

A candidate for a McKnight Scholar Award must:work as an independent investigator at a not-for-profit research institution in the United States, and must hold a faculty position at the rank of Assistant Professor, and must have served at that rank for less than four years at the application deadline (exceptions may be made for parental leave).  If the host institution does not use professorial titles, a letter from a senior institutional official (e.g., Dean or Director of Research) must confirm that the applicant has his/her own dedicated institutional resources, laboratory space, and/or facilities.Funds may be used in any way that will facilitate development of the Scholar’s research program, but not for indirect costs.Allowable budget items include salaries and fringe benefits, equipment, supplies, animal costs, tuition, costs for technical services, etc. The application should include itemized budgets for each year, in a tabulated column/dollar amount format; narrative budgets are not acceptable.

Ineligibility

Applicants may not:
Be intramural employees such as those at the Allen Institute, National Institutes of Health, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and similar institutionsApply in more than two rounds of competition
Have already been awarded tenure
Hold another award from the McKnight Endowment FundThose holding other titles such as Research Assistant Professor, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Professor Research Track, Visiting Professor or Instructor are not eligible, and time spent in service in those ranks does not count against the four years of service for determining eligibility.Funds cannot be used for overhead or indirect costs.