Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships: Eligibility and Benefits

The Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships offer funding to meritorious postdoctoral applicants in Canada as well as abroad. The vision of the program is to attract and retain the best talent while helping aspirants become futuristic research leaders. As many as 70 fellowships are awarded annually, distributed among the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. 

Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships: Eligibility Criteria

The Banting scholarship eligibility criteria include the following: 

• Canadian citizens, permanent residents of Canada, and foreign citizens are all eligible to apply for the Banting fellowship. 
• Areas of research should include health, social sciences/humanities, or natural sciences and/or engineering. 
• Applicants should not have any tenured/tenure-track position as faculty or be on leave from any such position. 
• Should not hold any other award from the same agencies. 
• Applicants should have completed degree requirements for their PhD, professional, or equivalent degrees. 

Application Process: How to Apply

Applying for a Banting fellowship involves the following steps: 

• You have to first confirm your eligibility for the scholarship and then contact your preferred supervisor or the host institution. 
• The next step is to register for the Canadian Common CV or CCV account along with your ResearchNet account. You have to then complete the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Self-Identification questionnaire. You should also have your CIHR PIN at this stage. 
• You will then create your Vanier-Banting academic CCV on the portal and link it to your ResearchNet application. 
• This application has to be started after you login to the menu and you have to identify your area of research thereafter. 
• Identify your participants as the next step. You have to provide your personal and institution details along with the confirmation number of the CV created earlier and the CIHR PIN. 
• The documents that you have to provide include the significance of research contributions, leadership contributions, fulfillment of degree requirements form, and special circumstances. 
• The next step is identifying three referees and collecting their information. Their assessments will be a part of your application. One of them has to be an arm’s length referee as per the guidelines, i.e. an expert in the field who is not connected to you in any personal or professional capacity. 
• You then have to enter your degree information followed by the proposal details and other necessary documents like the research proposal, bibliography, institutional letter of endorsement, and supervisor’s statement. 

Benefits of Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships

The value of the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships is $70,000 annually (taxable) and the duration (non-renewable) is two years. 

The Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships are excellent options for researchers looking to build global careers in the fields of health, engineering, natural sciences, or social sciences or humanities. However, going through the application process carefully and readying all documents is imperative to ensure that you do not miss out on anything while applying.