UW–Madison postdocs are encouraged to look for and apply for fellowships and research awards to support their salary/stipends, research, and travel expenses. When identifying appropriate funding opportunities, postdocs must consider who will serve as the Principal Investigator (PI), or the researcher with primary responsibility for a research project, on the application.
Postdoc Fellowship Grants
Some extramural grant opportunities indicate that the PI of the grant must be a postdoc (e.g. postdoc fellowship grants). For these applications, the postdoc’s mentor of record serves as the PI within the internal application system (the Research Administration Management Portal or RAMP) and the postdoc is listed as the PI on the external application.
Other Grants
Most extramural grant opportunities are not contingent upon the PI being a postdoc. Typically, an appropriate faculty member should serve as the PI on the application. A postdoc may be included as a co-investigator or key personnel.
If a postdoc would like to serve as the sole PI of one of these grants, then the postdoc must get prior approval from their department and Dean to be transferred to an academic staff position with limited PI status if the grant is awarded, as noted in the Principle Investigator (PI) Status policy, which states:
“Undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, visiting professors, visiting academic staff and those with adjunct or zero-dollar appointments are not eligible to apply for limited PI status. For these individuals, it is suggested that an appropriate faculty member serve as PI, and the student, postdoctoral or visiting scholar or adjunct be listed as Co-Investigator. Exceptions will be granted when the visiting title is temporary pending resolution of a visa issue. In addition, postdoctoral scholars may be listed as PI when it is expected that, should the grant be awarded, they would move from the employee-in-training category into an appropriate research academic staff or faculty position. Such proposed change in status requires their department’s approval and their Dean’s or designee’s approval prior to the submission of a limited PI status request, and should be documented in a brief memo uploaded as an attachment to the RAMP record.”