Heising-Simons Astronova Fellowship 2027: A Four-Year Postdoc Award Paying $88,527 a Year Plus $70,000 in Discretionary Funds to Build Astronomical Instruments, Closing 2 October 2026

Heising-Simons Astronova Fellowship 2027: A Four-Year Postdoc Award Paying $88,527 a Year Plus $70,000 in Discretionary Funds to Build Astronomical Instruments, Closing 2 October 2026

Most astronomy postdoc fellowships are written for people who analyse data. The Astronova Fellowship is written for the people who build the machines that produce it. The Heising-Simons Foundation launched the programme in January 2026, named its first two fellows in June 2026, and opened the second cycle on 14 July 2026. Applications close on 2 October 2026 at 2pm Pacific Time, and the fellows selected in this round will begin work in 2027.

The award is unusually long and unusually specific. Instead of the standard three-year postdoc term, Astronova runs for four years with an option to apply for a fifth, on the explicit reasoning that hardware takes longer than analysis. Instead of leaving equipment and travel to a departmental slush fund, it attaches a named discretionary budget to each fellow. And instead of asking fellows to fit an existing group’s plan, it expects them to arrive with a coherent instrumentation research programme of their own at a host institution they have already talked to.

Key Details

What the Fellowship Actually Pays

The grant is made to the host institution on the fellow’s behalf and covers four components: salary, benefits, discretionary spending, and indirect costs.

Salary starts at $88,527 and rises 4% a year. Compounded across the four-year term that comes to roughly $376,000 in salary alone — the Foundation publishes the starting figure and the escalator rather than a headline total, so treat the four-year sum as arithmetic rather than as a quoted number. Benefits are layered on top and vary by host institution, which is one concrete reason to ask each prospective host what its postdoc benefits package includes before you rank your choices.

The discretionary budget is $25,000 in year one and $15,000 in each of years two through four, for a total of $70,000. The Foundation lists travel, relocation, dependent care, computers, and equipment as allowable uses. The front-loading is deliberate: year one is when you move, when you set up, and when you buy the parts that let you start doing something rather than waiting on someone else’s schedule. Dependent care being named explicitly is worth noticing, because it is often the cost that quietly decides whether a postdoc can take a job across the country.

Indirect costs to the host institution are capped at 15% of direct costs. That is a low overhead rate by US research standards, and it matters to your host conversation — the institution is absorbing a real cost to take you, which is part of why they screen applicants before the Foundation’s panel ever sees them.

Two further pots sit behind the base award. From the start of year two, fellows may apply for an Innovation Fund grant of up to $150,000 for an early-stage, novel, or otherwise hard-to-fund instrumentation concept of their own design; the window stays open until three years after the fellowship ends. And a fellow who lands a faculty or permanent research staff position in the US or Canada during the term can apply for a separate grant to augment their startup package at the new institution. The design intent is transparent: the fellowship is meant to end in a faculty job, and the Foundation is willing to pay to smooth the transition.

Who This Is For

This is a fellowship for hardware people. The eligibility rules are broad on discipline and narrow on activity.

You can hold a doctorate in astronomy, physics, earth and planetary sciences, chemistry, engineering, or a related discipline. The degree must be conferred after 1 January 2022 and before 31 December 2027, which means current PhD candidates can apply as long as they will graduate inside the window. Extensions of up to a year may be granted case by case for extenuating circumstances such as family or medical leave — if that applies to you, raise it in your application rather than assuming you are ineligible.

You can apply from any academic institution or research lab anywhere in the world. US citizenship is not required. Visa and work permit paperwork, however, is left to the fellow and the host institution, so international applicants should treat immigration timing as a live risk to manage with their host contact early, particularly given a start window that can begin as soon as 1 July 2027.

What is tightly defined is the project. Eligible instruments must direct, collect, detect, or characterise photons from astrophysical sources anywhere from radio waves to gamma rays. Optics, detectors, imagers, spectrometers, astrophotonics, polarimeters, coronagraphs, and data acquisition and control systems are all named as examples. Ground-based, airborne, and space-based instruments all qualify, including suborbital missions. Instruments may be at any stage — design, development, fabrication, calibration, testing, or commissioning — except fully complete and operational for external users.

Four categories are explicitly out of scope: instruments most relevant to heliophysics; instruments for detecting non-electromagnetic signals such as gravitational waves, neutrinos, or cosmic rays; laboratory searches for dark matter candidate particles; and observations made with an instrument that is already fully operational for external users. If your project is instrument-adjacent — readout software, a data reduction pipeline — you must establish a clear link to a specific astronomical instrument. The inaugural class shows how that reads in practice: Christina Vides is building data-reduction pipelines that turn raw observations from Keck’s new SCALES instrument into reliable science data, and Aafaque Khan is advancing Skipper CCD detector technology while producing Aspera’s first ultraviolet maps of the circumgalactic medium.

The Six Host Institutions

For this cycle, research must be pursued at one of six hosts:

• Carnegie Science — Earth and Planets Laboratory (Washington, DC) and/or Carnegie Observatories (Pasadena, California). Contact: Anat Shahar.
• W. M. Keck Observatory (Hawai’i). Contacts: Antonin Bouchez and Marc Kassis — email both.
• University of Arizona. Contacts: Buell Jannuzi and Kelly Merrill — email both.
• University of California, Berkeley. Contacts: Jessica Lu and Aaron Parsons — email both.
• University of California, San Diego. Contacts: Shelley Wright and Kelli O’Merry — email both.
• University of California, Santa Cruz. Contact: Steph Sallum.

The Foundation opened a call in April 2026 for additional institutions to be considered as hosts in future cycles, so this list may change after 2027. For the current round, treat it as fixed.

You may name up to two host institutions. You are strongly encouraged to contact the representative at each desired host before submitting, and the guidelines note that institutions with two listed contacts should both be emailed to ensure a timely response. This is not a courtesy step. Suitability of the host institution is one of the seven scoring criteria, applications pass an initial institutional review cycle before the expert panel sees them, and each host publishes institution-specific Astronova opportunities that shape what a credible proposal there looks like.

What You Have to Submit

Applications are made through an online form, and each host institution requires a separate PDF packet. If you name two hosts, you prepare two packets. Each packet must contain the following components, in this order:

1. Cover Sheet — not a cover letter; follow the instructions on the application form.
2. Proposed Host Institution Rationale — maximum 1 page.
3. Science Research Proposal describing the work you want to do as a fellow — maximum 5 pages including references and figures.
4. Curriculum Vitae — maximum 2 pages.
5. Summary of Previous and Current Research, including PhD work — maximum 1 page.
6. Contributions Towards Building a Stronger Field — maximum 2 pages.
7. Career Goals — maximum 250 words.

Separately, you must arrange two letters of recommendation from a PhD or postdoc advisor, a senior collaborator, or a scientific mentor. Letter writers upload directly to the Foundation through their own submission form, so send them the link and the deadline early. Detailed prompts for each component appear on the application form itself, and the Foundation publishes a preview of that form so you can read the prompts before you start writing.

Note how tight the page limits are. Five pages including figures and references is not much room to describe an instrument, its science case, its risks, and its schedule. A two-page CV forces real editing for anyone with a hardware track record. Plan the packet as a whole rather than writing each piece independently.

How Applications Are Judged

Applications that clear the initial institutional review are assessed by a panel of experts working in astronomical instrumentation, against seven criteria that the Foundation states are equally weighted:

Research significance to the field. Does the instrument development address an important problem or a critical barrier in astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, or planetary science, and will meeting the objectives have broad, long-lasting, cross-cutting, or catalytic impact?

Research and technical innovation. Is the work original? Does it challenge existing approaches? Does it develop or employ novel concepts, tools, or technologies?

Research approach. Is the strategy well-reasoned and appropriate to the goals? Are resource requirements and timelines reasonable? Are project risks recognised and addressed?

Applicant qualification. Do you have the education, training, and research experience to do this — and have you demonstrated the ability to initiate, lead, and complete projects?

Suitability of host institution. Does the proposed host have the resources, facilities, and faculty to support you scientifically and professionally?

Building a diverse and inclusive field. Have you demonstrated personal experience, professional skill, and commitment to initiatives that promote inclusivity and support historically underrepresented groups in the field, with thoughtful, specific, and actionable ideas — both through your own work and by empowering others?

Mentorship and teaching. Do you have demonstrated interest in, experience with, and plans for formal or informal mentorship and teaching?

Equal weighting has a practical consequence: two of the seven criteria are about people rather than photons. The “Contributions Towards Building a Stronger Field” document carries as much weight as the technical innovation of your instrument. Applicants who treat it as an afterthought are throwing away roughly a seventh of their score.

Preparation Strategy

Start with the host conversation, not the proposal. You have until 2 October 2026, and the single highest-leverage thing you can do is email your target host contacts now. Ask what instrumentation projects are active, what lab and workshop access a fellow would get, what the benefits package looks like, and whether anyone else is proposing similar work. Their answers should change what you propose, not just decorate it.

Write two genuinely different host rationales. If you name two institutions, the one-page rationale is where the panel sees whether you understand the difference between them. A rationale that would read identically with the institution name swapped signals that you picked hosts from a list rather than from a plan.

Make the risk section real. “Are project risks recognised and addressed?” is a scored question. Hardware proposals that read as though nothing can go wrong read as though the author has not built much. Name the components with long lead times, the fabrication steps most likely to fail, and what you would do instead.

Show completion, not just competence. The applicant criterion asks specifically whether you have initiated, led, and finished projects. Instrument work is full of contributions that are real but hard to attribute. Be concrete about what you personally designed, built, aligned, characterised, or commissioned, and what state the instrument reached.

Use the four-year term in your timeline. The Foundation extended the term precisely because instrumentation takes longer. A proposal scoped as though it were a three-year observational postdoc wastes the advantage the fellowship is offering. Show what year four makes possible that year three would not.

Plan for the Innovation Fund without depending on it. Your baseline project should be fully fundable from the base award. A hint of where a $150,000 Innovation Fund grant might take the work in year two shows ambition; a proposal that only works if you win that grant later shows a gap.

Common Mistakes

• Proposing an out-of-scope project. Gravitational-wave, neutrino, cosmic-ray, heliophysics, and dark-matter-particle-search instruments are ruled out in writing, however good the science. So is straightforward observing with an instrument already fully operational for external users.
• Submitting an instrument-adjacent project without an instrument. Pipeline and readout software work is eligible, but only with a clear link to a specific astronomical instrument. Name the instrument.
• Skipping the host contact. Applications pass institutional review before panel review, and host suitability is scored. Arriving unannounced is a self-inflicted wound.
• Recycling one packet for two hosts. Separate PDF packets are required for a reason, and the rationale page is host-specific by definition.
• Leaving letters to the last week. Writers upload directly to the Foundation through their own form. Two letters, an October deadline, and a 2pm Pacific cutoff make late requests genuinely risky.
• Misreading the PhD window. The degree must be conferred after 1 January 2022 and before 31 December 2027. Applicants sometimes assume a fellowship for 2027 requires a completed doctorate today; it does not.
• Treating the inclusion and mentorship components as boilerplate. Both are scored equally with the technical criteria, and the guidelines ask for specific, actionable ideas rather than statements of belief.
• Ignoring the start window. Fellowships must begin between 1 July and 31 December 2027. If a visa, a thesis defence, or an existing contract makes that impossible, resolve it before you apply.

Timeline

• 14 July 2026 — Application cycle opens.
• 2 October 2026, 2pm Pacific Time — Application cycle closes. This is a hard cutoff, and it falls in the early afternoon Pacific, meaning late evening in Europe and overnight in Asia.
• October 2026 to January 2027 — Institutional review and expert panel review.
• January 2027 — Astronova fellows selected.
• March 2027 — Applicants notified of selection status.
• 1 July 2027 to 31 December 2027 — Window in which fellowships may begin, pending grant processing.

The Foundation’s published timeline lists fellows as chosen in January 2027 with applicants notified in March 2027, so expect roughly five months between submission and an answer. Plan your other postdoc applications on the assumption that you will not know the Astronova outcome until spring 2027.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I apply while still finishing my PhD? Yes. Current PhD candidates are eligible provided the degree will be conferred after 1 January 2022 and before 31 December 2027.

Do I need to be in the United States, or a US citizen? No on both counts for applying. Applicants may come from any institution or lab worldwide and US citizenship is not required. The research itself must be carried out at one of the six US host institutions, and visa and work permit paperwork falls to you and your host.

How many fellowships will be awarded? The Foundation anticipates awarding up to two Astronova Fellowships in 2027. The programme was announced as funding up to two scientists per year for four years, and the inaugural 2026 class consisted of two fellows.

Can I apply to more than one host institution? Yes, up to two — but you must prepare and submit a separate complete PDF packet for each.

Is the fifth year guaranteed? No. All fellows have the opportunity to apply for a fifth-year extension, assuming satisfactory progress. It is an application, not an automatic renewal.

What happens if I get a faculty job partway through? That is the intended outcome. A fellow who accepts a faculty or permanent research staff position in the US or Canada during the term is eligible to apply for a new grant to augment their startup package at the new institution.

Is there any teaching requirement? The guidelines do not impose one. Mentorship and teaching are a scored criterion — the panel looks for demonstrated interest, experience, and plans — but the fellowship is not described as carrying a teaching load.

Does this overlap with the 51 Pegasi b Fellowship? They are companion programmes from the same Science programme. 51 Pegasi b supports theoretical, observational, and experimental research in planetary astronomy, with up to $492,000 over three years and its own 1 October 2026 deadline. Astronova is specifically for instrumentation development across astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, and planetary science. If your work is instrument building, Astronova is the better fit; if it is planetary science research more broadly, look at 51 Pegasi b.

Official Links and Contacts

• Programme page: https://www.hsfoundation.org/programs/science/astronomical-innovation-astronova-fellowship/
• Guidelines document (PDF, includes project criteria, applicant criteria, review criteria, and host contacts): linked as “guidelines” from the programme page
• Application form: https://hsfoundation.tfaforms.net/f/AstronovaApplication
• Application form preview: linked from the programme page
• Questions: [email protected]
• Companion programme: https://www.hsfoundation.org/programs/science/51-pegasi-b-fellowship/

Next Steps

If you build instruments and your doctorate falls inside the January 2022 to December 2027 window, this is one of the few fellowships in astronomy designed around your actual work rather than tolerating it. Two awards is a narrow gate, but the applicant pool is narrow too — it is limited to instrumentalists willing to commit to one of six specific institutions.

The sequence that gives you the best shot: email your host contacts this month, let their answers shape the science proposal, draft the five-page proposal and the two-page contributions document in parallel rather than leaving the latter until the end, brief your two letter writers with the deadline and the direct upload link by early September, and build in a week of slack before the 2pm Pacific cutoff on 2 October 2026. If you miss this cycle, the programme is funded to run annual cycles through the four years from Fall 2026, and the host institution list is being expanded for future rounds — so a near miss this year is worth revisiting.