Career Development Program (CDP)

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) offers career development awards to support the salaries of postdoctoral fellows and instructors, as well as early-career independent investigators, who are engaging in basic, clinical, or translational research to help understand and treat hematologic malignancies and relevant premalignant conditions.

New this year:

• We now have a minimum stipend/salary going directly to new Fellow and Special Fellow awardees. New Fellows will receive a minimum stipend/salary of $65,000/year and new Special Fellows will receive a minimum stipend/salary of $70,000/year.
• A childcare stipend of up to $3,600/year for Fellows/Special Fellows with these expenses.

Award Categories

Brief descriptions of each category are provided below. Please refer to the Eligibility Outline in the Guidelines & Instructions for each category to determine which category is most appropriate for your application.

Scholar

Award: $120,000 per year for five years

Eligibility requirements have changed. Starting this cycle, all non-mentored, faculty-level positions are considered independent for eligibility determination. In addition, those with a title of Full Professor (or equivalent) at the award start date (July 1 of the upcoming year) are no longer eligible for this program.

*Please refer to the Guidelines & Instructions for more details regarding changes to the eligibility criteria if applying to this category.

Requirements: The Scholar award supports rising stars in the blood cancer research field. You must be a highly qualified investigator who has shown a capacity for independent, sustained, original investigation in the field of hematologic malignancies and/or relevant pre-malignant conditions. You should hold an independent, tenure-track faculty-level position and must have substantial research support awarded from a national agency.

Note that the application and selection process has recently changed from project-centric to research program-centric. This is a fundamental change in the Scholar award mechanism that is described in the Guidelines & Instructions.

Scholar in Clinical Research

Award: $125,000 per year for five years

Eligibility requirements have changed. Starting this cycle, all non-mentored, faculty-level positions are considered independent for eligibility determination. In addition, those with a title of Full Professor (or equivalent) at the award start date (July 1 of the upcoming year) are no longer eligible for this program.*Please refer to the Guidelines & Instructions for more details regarding changes to the eligibility criteria if applying to this category.

Requirements: You must be a highly qualified investigator who holds an independent faculty-level appointment and is conducting independent clinical research, often involving early-stage clinical trials, that will advance the prevention, diagnosis, or treatment of hematologic malignancies and/or relevant pre-malignant conditions.The research should be related to your clinical activities and must directly involve patients. You are expected to have support for your research from another source.

Investigators who are primarily laboratory-based and/or who are working on primarily blood cancer model systems rather than blood cancer patients are not eligible for the Scholar in Clinical Research Award and should consider applying for the Scholar Award instead.

Special Fellow

Award: $75,000 per year for two or three years; starting this cycle, the minimum stipend/salary going directly to the awardee is $70,000/year.

Requirements: You must be a highly qualified postdoctoral fellow or instructor who has between 3 and 5 years of postdoctoral research training by the award start date. You must be in a mentored research position, continuing a research program of direct relevance to hematologic malignancies and/or relevant pre-malignant conditions. In addition, your Sponsor must have the appropriate experience to mentor you as you engage in blood cancer-relevant research. This award provides you with the opportunity to continue building a research program that will make you competitive for an independent position by the end of the award funding period.

New this year: Recognizing that junior investigators may be excellent mentors, we are relaxing the funding requirement for Sponsors with less than 5 years of experience. This change will increase opportunities for eligible trainees who are under the direct mentorship of high quality, junior investigators. See the Guidelines & Instructions for more details.

For this cycle, we are increasing the number of applications from any one Sponsor in the Fellow and Special Fellow subcategories. Whereas previously there was a limitation of one application for each subcategory during an application cycle, we now allow up to two Fellow and two Special Fellow applications from any one Sponsor during this application cycle. However, there can be no more than 4 total Fellows and Special Fellows in any lab as of July 1 of the upcoming year.

Fellow

Award: $70,000 per year for three years; starting this cycle, the minimum stipend/salary going directly to the awardee is $65,000/year.

Requirements: You must be a promising postdoctoral fellow or instructor with less than 3 years of postdoctoral research training by the award start date. This award encourages you to embark on an academic career involving basic or translational research in hematologic malignancies and/or relevant premalignant conditions under a research sponsor's direction. Your research must be directly relevant to hematologic malignancies and/or relevant pre-malignant conditions. In addition, your Sponsor must have the appropriate experience to mentor you as you engage in research of direct relevance to blood cancer.

New this year: Recognizing that junior investigators may be excellent mentors, we are relaxing the funding requirement for Sponsors with less than 5 years of experience. This change will increase opportunities for eligible trainees who are under the direct mentorship of high quality, junior investigators. See the Guidelines & Instructions for more details.

For this cycle, we are increasing the number of applications from any one Sponsor in the Fellow and Special Fellow subcategories. Whereas previously there was a limitation of one application for each subcategory during an application cycle, we now allow up to two Fellow and two Special Fellow applications from any one Sponsor during this application cycle. However, there can be no more than 4 total Fellows and Special Fellows in any lab as of July 1 of the upcoming year.

2022-2023 Application Timeline

Please note that when an application deadline falls on a weekend or US holiday, the deadline will be enforced at 3:00 PM (ET) on the business day immediately following the listed deadline

How to Apply

The CDP application will be completed in 3 Phases: Eligibility, Abstract, and Full Application. Below are step-by-step instructions for applying:

1. Use the Eligibility Outline chart in the Guidelines & Instructions (linked in each category section above) to determine which award category is right for you.
2. Read through the Guidelines & Instructions for your award category.
3. Log in to the LLS Research Portal (Fluxx) and select Career Development Program. Click "Apply Now" to begin the application process.
   If you have applied to LLS in the past, you do not need to create a new registration and can log in with your username (e-mail address associated with your account) and your password. If you forgot your password, simply click the “reset or create password” link and enter your email address. The system will send your username and a link to update your password.
   If you are a first-time user to the LLS Research Portal, please complete the intake form located at this link: Account Creation Request so an account can be created for you.
4. Follow the instructions on the LLS Research Portal and in the Guidelines & Instructions to complete all phases of the application process. Note: Start this process well ahead of the deadline.
5. You will receive emails from the LLS Research Portal notifying you of submissions and approvals. Please monitor your Spam for these emails.
6. Submit each phase prior to the deadline. We strongly recommend submitting at least 1 week in advance of the deadline, as site traffic on the day of and days leading up to the deadline will be heavy.

Carefully check every page of your application prior to submission. The applicant is ultimately responsible for this submission, even if someone else submits on the applicant's behalf.

At any time during the application process, including after submitting your Full Application, you can check the status of your application by logging in to the LLS Research Portal, selecting your application (under Requests in either “New or Pending” or “Submitted”) and referring to the Status in the yellow box at the top of the page.

If you have any technical difficulties with the LLS Research Portal, please contact researchprograms@lls.org.

Blood Cancer Relevance

Researchers supported through CDP must primarily focus on those questions of direct relevance to blood cancer. Applicants whose primary focus is not on blood cancer will be eliminated without full review.

Download LLS Policies and Procedures here.

Need More Information?

Contact researchprograms@lls.org with any questions not addressed on this page, the program guidelines, or Policies & Procedures.