The Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland, has announced a fellowship program designed to increase diversity in the field of life sciences.

The Hanna H. Gray Fellows program will recruit early-career scientists from gender, racial/ethnic, socioeconomic, and other groups underrepresented in the field and provide them with funding and mentoring for up to eight years. Fellows in the program, which has two phases — between two and four years of support for early postdoctoral training and up to four years of support for fellows in a tenure-track faculty position — will receive a starting salary of $60,000 and an additional $20,000 in flexible funds during the postdoctoral phase and $250,000 a year in research support and $20,000 in flexible funds during the independent faculty phase. HHMI plans to invest a maximum of $25 million in up to fifteen fellows through the program's first funding cycle.

Named for Hannah H. Gray, HHMI's former board chair and a former president of the University of Chicago, the fellowship is open to applicants of any citizenship or nationality who have been accepted as a postdoctoral researcher at a U.S.-based  institution and who have no more than twelve months of postdoctoral research experience.

"If we are successful, this program will catalyze change by supporting a diverse cadre of promising scientists," said David Clapham, HHMI's vice president and chief scientific officer. "These individuals will direct independent research programs at academic institutions, where they can inspire the next generation of students from America's diverse talent pool to become scientific explorers."