Science Leadership Program

Our Science Leadership Program (SLP) is at the core of the Fellowship experience. It is how our Fellows, who are placed in labs around the world, come together in Fellowship to build the skills, experience, and networks necessary to become the next generation of science leaders.

The SLP is made up of a bespoke professional development curriculum delivered across three week-long residential convenings and a rich set of virtual offerings.

The face-to-face convenings, staged in some of the world’s most vibrant and inspirational centers of science and innovation, enable Fellows to experience a variety of research cultures, gain insight into different ways of organizing and leading institutions, and visit internationally renowned science facilities.

The SLP provides space for Fellows to connect, reflect, think differently, engage with new perspectives, and learn from the brightest and most experienced minds in leadership and science. Through the SLP, our Fellows build a global community of peers, mentors, and supporters of interdisciplinary science to enrich and amplify their work and its impact.

The SLP includes sessions on:

ethical leadership,
building and managing interdisciplinary teams,
science communication,
how to spin out your research into a for-profit company or not-for-profit organization,
how to get an academic job,
structured approaches to problem solving,
how to be ambitious in your science and persevere through failure,
how to get funding and manage budgets,
how to engage in society and tackle global challenges, and much more.

Check out the latest highlights film from our Cambridge, Massachusetts Global Meeting, June 2022.

Read some previous accounts from our Fellows as they reflect on their experiences at Global Meetings in 2018 and 2019.

Since 2018, Schmidt Science Fellows has worked with our hosts and partners on Global Meetings in Oxford, London, and Cambridge UK, Northern California USA, and Cambridge and Boston MA, USA. You can can catch-up on the thoughts and perspectives of some of our Fellows here:

Overview