The Burroughs Wellcome Fund (BWF) is an independent private foundation based in Durham, North Carolina, that funds biomedical research primarily through career awards — grants tied to a researcher’s career stage rather than to a specific project. For a research administrator, BWF sits in the same functional category as NIH’s K-series career development awards or the Wellcome Trust’s Career Development Award, but with its own eligibility rules, funding amounts, and application mechanics that don’t map cleanly onto the federal or UK equivalents. This guide walks through BWF’s current program roster — Career Awards at the Scientific Interface (CASI), Career Awards for Medical Scientists (CAMS), Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease (PATH), the diversity-focused PDEP and GDEP programs, and BWF’s smaller regulatory-science and reproductive-health initiatives — and how they fit into a broader research funding portfolio.
What is the Burroughs Wellcome Fund?
BWF was established in 1955 as the corporate philanthropic foundation of the pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome & Co. In 1993, a $400 million gift from the UK’s Wellcome Trust allowed BWF to become a fully independent private foundation, severing its financial dependence on the company; Burroughs Wellcome & Co. itself was subsequently acquired by Glaxo in 1995 to form Glaxo Wellcome. BWF has no ongoing affiliation with what is now GlaxoSmithKline and, despite the shared name and history, is a legally and operationally distinct organization from the UK’s Wellcome Trust — see the clarification section below before assuming the two funders’ programs are interchangeable.
BWF describes its mission as advancing the medical sciences by supporting researchers early in their careers and by funding areas of science it judges to be “poised for significant advancement but currently undervalued and underfunded.” In practice this means BWF spends less on large, discipline-wide research-project grants (the NIH R01 model) and more on named, career-stage-specific awards aimed at a researcher’s transition points — postdoc to faculty, physical scientist to biologist, trainee to independent investigator.
BWF’s current grant programs at a glance
BWF’s program roster changes from year to year as individual competitions open, close, or sunset. The table below reflects the programs BWF listed as its active or recently active grant lines as of mid-2026; always confirm current status, deadlines, and terms directly against bwfund.org/grants before advising an applicant, since award amounts and eligibility details are revised between cycles.
| Program | Category | Who it’s for | Typical award |
|---|---|---|---|
| Career Awards at the Scientific Interface (CASI) | Interfaces in Science | Postdocs moving from physical, mathematical, computational sciences or engineering into biology | Up to $560,000 over 5 years |
| Career Awards for Medical Scientists (CAMS) | Biomedical Sciences | Physician-scientists (clinical degree holders) bridging postdoctoral training and early faculty service | $700,000 over 5 years |
| Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease (PATH) | Infectious Diseases | Assistant professors studying infectious disease pathogenesis with multidisciplinary approaches | Multi-year faculty award (amount set per RFP cycle) |
| Postdoctoral Diversity Enrichment Program (PDEP) | Diversity in Science | Postdoctoral researchers from backgrounds historically underrepresented in biomedical science, US/Canada | Up to $60,000 over 3 years |
| Graduate Diversity Enrichment Program (GDEP) | Diversity in Science | PhD students at North Carolina institutions | $5,000 over 2 years |
| Innovation in Regulatory Science Award (IRSA) | Regulatory Science | Faculty developing FDA-relevant regulatory science methodologies | Up to $500,000 over 5 years |
| Next Gen Pregnancy Initiative (NGPI) | Reproductive Sciences | Faculty researchers in pregnancy-related science | Set per RFP cycle |
| Climate Change and Human Health Seed Grants (CCHH) | Climate Change & Human Health | Faculty, institutions, postdocs, and K-12 educators | Seed-grant scale, set per RFP cycle |
BWF also funds several North Carolina-specific K-12 science-education programs (Career Awards for STEM Teachers, Student STEM Enrichment Program) that fall outside the scope of a research-administration reference and aren’t covered in depth here.
Career Awards at the Scientific Interface (CASI)
CASI, launched in 1999, is BWF’s mechanism for researchers crossing disciplinary lines: postdoctoral fellows trained in the physical, mathematical, computational sciences, or engineering who are moving into biological research and committing to an academic research career. The award provides up to $560,000 over five years, structured to bridge advanced postdoctoral training and the first three years of a faculty appointment. Eligible applicants include U.S. and Canadian citizens, and permanent and temporary residents. Applications proceed through an initial letter-of-intent stage before a full application is invited — treat the LOI deadline, not the full-application deadline, as the operative one when advising an early-career researcher.
Career Awards for Medical Scientists (CAMS)
CAMS is BWF’s flagship award for physician-scientists — applicants must hold a clinical degree (MD, DO, DDS, DMD, DVM, or equivalent); PhD-only or PharmD-only applicants are not eligible. The award provides $700,000 over five years, split between an optional postdoctoral/fellowship phase (up to two years) and a faculty phase, each with its own salary cap. Applicants must be able to demonstrate or negotiate at least 75 percent protected research time, and must not yet hold a tenure-track assistant professor appointment (non-tenure-track junior faculty titles may still be eligible, subject to a pre-application eligibility check). At least one first-author publication (accepted, in press, published, or a bioRxiv preprint) is required. Applicant institutions must be U.S. or Canadian public or private non-profit organizations. Unlike CASI, CAMS has no letter-of-intent stage — applications go directly to a full submission via ProposalCentral. BWF has reported roughly a 12 percent award rate for CAMS based on historical cycles, making it a highly competitive mechanism comparable in selectivity to NIH’s K08/K23 awards, though the applicant pools and review criteria are not directly equivalent.
Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease (PATH)
PATH funds assistant professors bringing multidisciplinary approaches — spanning basic, translational, and sometimes computational methods — to the study of how infectious agents cause human disease. It sits alongside CAMS and CASI as a faculty-stage rather than postdoctoral-stage award, and like CASI it opens with a letter-of-intent stage. Because PATH’s funding amount and exact eligibility criteria are set anew in each RFP cycle, confirm the current terms directly from BWF before advising an applicant rather than relying on a prior cycle’s figures.
Diversity-focused programs: PDEP and GDEP
BWF runs two programs specifically aimed at improving representation in biomedical research career pipelines:
- Postdoctoral Diversity Enrichment Program (PDEP), co-funded with the Charles H. Revson Foundation, provides up to $60,000 over three years to postdoctoral researchers from backgrounds historically underrepresented in the biomedical sciences at U.S. and Canadian institutions. BWF’s 2026 PDEP cycle announced 31 awarded grants.
- Graduate Diversity Enrichment Program (GDEP) is narrower in scope: it funds PhD students specifically at North Carolina institutions, at $5,000 over two years — a much smaller, regionally targeted award compared to PDEP’s national eligibility.
Regulatory science, reproductive health, and climate programs
Three smaller program lines round out BWF’s current portfolio. The Innovation in Regulatory Science Award (IRSA) funds faculty developing new methodologies with direct relevance to FDA regulatory decision-making, at up to $500,000 over five years — a niche mechanism with few direct equivalents among federal funders. The Next Gen Pregnancy Initiative (NGPI) funds faculty research in pregnancy-related science. The Climate Change and Human Health Seed Grants (CCHH) program, part of a broader BWF climate-and-health initiative, funds smaller seed-scale projects and is open to a wider range of applicant types, including K-12 educators, reflecting BWF’s occasional science-education mandate outside its core career-award programs. All three cycle between open and closed status year to year; check bwfund.org for current availability before treating any of them as a standing, always-open competition.
How BWF compares to federal career development mechanisms
Research administrators advising a trainee often need to weigh a BWF award against the NIH K-series (see CASRAI’s guide to NIH Career Development (K) Awards). The core differences that matter for advising:
- Funder type. BWF is a private foundation making discretionary awards from its own endowment; NIH K awards are federal grants governed by the Uniform Guidance (2 CFR Part 200) and NIH-specific policy. Reporting, allowable-cost rules, and audit exposure differ accordingly.
- Eligibility gate. NIH K awards are organized by mechanism (K08 for physician-scientists, K99/R00 for the postdoc-to-independence transition, etc.); BWF’s equivalent gate is program-specific — CAMS for clinical-degree holders, CASI for physical/computational scientists moving into biology, PATH for infectious-disease faculty.
- Portability and stacking. Because BWF awards come from a private endowment rather than federal appropriations, institutions should check their own policy — and BWF’s own award terms — on whether a BWF career award can run concurrently with, or must be coordinated against, a federal K award covering the same effort.
- Citizenship scope. BWF’s major career awards (CASI, CAMS) extend eligibility to U.S. and Canadian applicants and institutions; NIH K awards generally require the applicant to hold or be eligible for an NIH-recognized institutional affiliation and, for most mechanisms, U.S. citizenship or permanent residency.
Both funder types weight the training environment and mentorship plan alongside the science in review — this is a structural feature of career-stage awards generally, not something unique to either funder.
Is the Burroughs Wellcome Fund the same as the Wellcome Trust?
No. Despite sharing “Wellcome” in the name and a common 19th-century origin (both trace back to the pharmaceutical firm Burroughs Wellcome & Co., founded by Silas Burroughs and Henry Wellcome), the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and the Wellcome Trust have been operationally and financially independent of one another since BWF’s 1993 endowment gift made it a fully independent U.S. foundation. The Wellcome Trust is a much larger UK-based charitable foundation with its own distinct grant portfolio — see CASRAI’s guides to the Wellcome Career Development Award, the Wellcome Early-Career Award, and Wellcome Trust Discovery Award for that organization’s separate programs. An applicant or administrator should never assume BWF and Wellcome Trust eligibility rules, deadlines, or award terms are interchangeable — confirm which organization a given opportunity actually belongs to before advising on either.
Applying to BWF programs: general process notes
BWF administers its award competitions through ProposalCentral rather than Grants.gov or a proprietary portal. Programs vary in whether they require a preliminary letter of intent (CASI and PATH do; CAMS does not) — for LOI-gated programs, the LOI deadline is the effective planning deadline for an applicant, since a late or rejected LOI forecloses the full application regardless of the later deadline. Most BWF career awards target a single annual cycle rather than the rolling or multiple-cycle-per-year pattern common to some federal mechanisms, so an institution’s principal investigator or eligible trainee should plan around a roughly twelve-month lead time from RFP release to award start. Because deadlines, eligibility thresholds, and award amounts are set independently for each RFP and have changed between recent cycles, treat any specific date or dollar figure in secondary sources — including this guide — as a planning reference to verify against BWF’s own current RFP before an applicant commits time to a submission.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Burroughs Wellcome Fund?
An independent private foundation, based in Durham, North Carolina, that funds biomedical researchers primarily through career-stage-specific awards rather than broad, discipline-wide research-project grants. It has been fully independent of its founding pharmaceutical company since 1993 and has no current affiliation with GlaxoSmithKline.
What is the difference between CASI and CAMS?
CASI (Career Awards at the Scientific Interface) funds postdocs moving from physical, mathematical, computational sciences, or engineering into biological research; CAMS (Career Awards for Medical Scientists) funds physician-scientists holding a clinical degree (MD, DO, DDS, DMD, or DVM). CASI tops out at $560,000 over five years; CAMS provides $700,000 over five years and, unlike CASI, has no letter-of-intent stage.
Can international researchers apply to Burroughs Wellcome Fund awards?
BWF’s major career awards are generally restricted to applicants at U.S. and Canadian institutions (CASI additionally accepts permanent and temporary residents alongside citizens); they are not open to institutions outside North America. Program-specific eligibility should always be checked against the current RFP, since terms can vary by cycle.
How competitive are BWF career awards?
BWF has reported roughly a 12 percent award rate historically for CAMS; exact rates vary by program and year and are not all publicly disclosed. These are generally regarded as highly competitive, career-defining awards rather than routine funding lines.
Is the Burroughs Wellcome Fund part of the Wellcome Trust?
No — see the dedicated section above. They share a historical origin but have been separate, independently governed organizations since 1993, and their grant programs, eligibility rules, and deadlines are entirely distinct.
