2025 New Cornerstone Investigator Program
2025年度新基石研究员项目
April 15, 2025
The Official Announcement in Chinese and in English.
Sponsor:
New Cornerstone Science Foundation
About:
The New Cornerstone Investigator Program is a nonprofit and non-governmental funding initiative that takes a forward-thinking approach to encouraging basic research spearheaded by leading scientists. Being guided by scientists, The Program pledges to provide a select group of exceptional scientists with stable long-term support for discovery research, with its aim being to support people, not projects. It supports passionate and creative scientists to take on exploratory and high-risk basic research projects. Selected investigators are expected to tackle high-impact research questions, push boundaries, and make scientific breakthroughs, all for the benefit of humankind.
Funding Area:
The Program funds two major research fields, Mathematics & Physical Sciences and Biological & Biomedical Sciences, and encourages interdisciplinary research.
Mathematics & Physical Sciences include Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, and Theoretical Computer Science research without immediate possibility of industrial application.
Biomedical Sciences refer to basic research related to human diseases with the aim of enhancing overall health and improving prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases.
Funding Scale:
- Experimental Research: up to 5 million RMB/year; project period is five years
- Theoretical research: up to 3 million RMB/year; project period is five years
Funding Type:
The Program anticipates supporting 35 awardees in 2025, with 6 specifically allocated to young scientists.
For young scientists program, male applicants should be under the age of 40 (D.O.B. on or after 1/1/1985; female applicants should be under the age of 43 (D.O.B. on or after 1/1/1982).
Eligibility:
- Aged 55 or under in the year of application (born on or after January 1, 1970)
- Qualified as a primary supervisor of doctoral students (or an equivalent role) for at least 5 years
- Working full-time in the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong SAR, or Macau SAR (regardless of nationality)
- Have experience as a principal investigator of basic research projects and currently active in conducting research
- Devoting at least nine months annually to conducting research
- Not holding any administrative leadership position(s) at the university or institutional level
- Not applying for the Xplorer Prize in the same year of application.
More information can be found at the FAQ.
Application:
- Applicants may apply via The Program’s official website, starting from 10:00 am, April 15, 2025 (Beijing Time)
- All applications are due at 12:00 midnight, June 15, 2025 (Beijing Time).
- Application materials include:
- Future research plan;
- Scientific contributions, supporting publications;
- Personal information, education and training, employment history;
- Professional activities, honors and awards;
- Active grants, current research team.
More details can be found on the Program’s website: https://www.newcornerstone.org.cn/#/guideline.
If you are interested to apply, please also notify us as shanghai.researchgrants@nyu.edu.