Previous winners

2026:

Rafael Blanco (Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine, Portugal)

Alberto Hernandez Barranco (University of Lausanne, Switzerland)

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2025: 

Julie Mazet (University of Lausanne, Switzerland)

Christina Metoikidou (NKI, Netherlands)

Martha Zarou (Francis Crick Institute, UK)

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Eligibility

Applications are accepted from researchers who meet the following criteria:

• Applicants must be an EACR member with a fully completed PhD and with no more than 5 years of postdoctoral experience (excluding career breaks such as parental leave or long-term illness) at the outline proposal submission deadline. The years of experience are counted from the PhD graduation date.
• Applicants must work actively and currently in cancer research.
• Applicants must have had at least one first (or joint first) author primary research paper published in an international peer reviewed journal at the time of application. Papers must be published in English. Abstracts of presentations at conferences and review articles should not be listed as publications. Publication updates once the selection process has started are not allowed.
• Fellows must be based at a European non-profit research institution for the duration of the Fellowship. This means that applicants must have the agreement of the host institution to employ them according to the terms of the Fellowship, if they are not already employed at that institution.
• The proposed host research group must not have any active fellows funded under any EACR postdoctoral fellowship programme at the proposed start date of the fellowship. Applications proposing to join a laboratory that already hosts an active fellow funded by this programme will not be eligible, unless the proposed fellowship start date is after the end date of the current fellow’s award, and there is no overlap between the funding periods of the two fellowships.
• Proposed research projects must have the potential to advance our understanding or address challenges in the prevention, diagnosis, or treatment of cancer. 
• Projects for this award must be centred on evidence-based laboratory data, and/or medical science. Projects investigating psychosocial aspects of cancer cannot be considered. 
• Fellowships are not transferrable between individuals. Transfers between institutions may be considered on an individual basis, such as in cases where a fellow’s advisor moves to a different European academic institution during the Fellowship period.
• Applicants can only submit one application to each call, but can submit applications to more than one call.

Industrial research laboratories and applied projects:

• Applications to work in an industrial or for-profit research laboratory will not be considered.
• Projects with an aim to develop an application, commercial product or process, or a device may be considered if there is a fundamental biology question behind the project to be answered. For instance, development of technologies that enable biological discovery and/or include biomarkers may be eligible for funding.

Please disclose the use of AI in the preparation of your application.

Any use of AI in the preparation of your application should be disclosed, except where it was used solely for simple language translation or grammar checks. You should list the name of each AI tool used, the exact prompts, whether AI influenced key arguments or conclusions, and how you reviewed and verified any AI-generated content. This disclosure is for transparency and monitoring purposes only and will not affect the assessment. 

By submitting your application, you confirm that you are complying with the EACR policy on AI use.