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What if there were an apprenticeship for scientific imagination?

Since 2009, the Flagship Pioneering Fellowship has offered an unparalleled opportunity to apply scientific expertise, entrepreneurial talent, and a self-starter mentality toward creating the next world-changing startups and ventures in human health and sustainability.

We are seeking outstanding scientists, engineers, inventors and budding entrepreneurs who are eager to create first-in-category biotech companies from scratch. A summer as a Flagship Pioneering Fellow is an intense and exciting opportunity to work hand-in-hand with Flagship’s seasoned professionals through our uniquely entrepreneurial scientific exploration process and build breakthrough bioplatform companies that change the world.

If you’re considering an alternative path from academia that allows you to remain engaged in creative science, Flagship’s Fellowship offers a balance of freedom of thought, imagination, science rooted in reality, and rigorous business practice. Watch past Fellows describe the Flagship Fellowship in their own words.

Immersed in our unique company creation process, Fellows start by asking “What if” or “If only.” Working in teams, they use their scientific instincts and creativity to generate novel scientific concepts that go beyond existing scholarship and challenge dogma. Fellows then learn to iterate, challenge, and shape these ideas into unreasonable yet compelling hypotheses with the potential to produce pioneering new ventures.

A summer as a Flagship Pioneering Fellow is an intense, exciting, unrivaled opportunity to learn our pioneering approach to building breakthrough companies that change the world.

As a Flagship Pioneering Fellow you will:

• Learn Flagship Pioneering’s unique process of generating and refining actionable, pioneering hypotheses
• Exhibit and develop your creativity, adaptability, and ability to innovate in a fast-paced and dynamic environment
• Contribute to the exploration of ideas & innovations with the potential to become breakthrough companies
• Work directly with the highly experienced Flagship Pioneering team—a group of innovative and experienced scientists, entrepreneurs, and executives
• Build relationships and expand your network with a diverse and successful cohort of peers and alumni
• Explore full-time opportunities at Flagship Pioneering and our Ecosystem of companies

• Meeting with CEOs from Flagship’s portfolio companies, such as Moderna, Indigo Agriculture, Syros Pharmaceuticals and others
• Meeting with former fellows who have “graduated” to new careers in developing fields
• Talks from and discussion with experts in functional life science areas such as clinical trials, drug development, and other subjects
• Engagement with dozens of leading scientists and subject matter experts around the world through the Exploration process
• Offsite visits to Flagship Pioneering portfolio companies
  
• Social events with summer cohort and Flagship team at large

The Flagship Pioneering Fellowship serves as an important pipeline in recruiting for foundational roles at Flagship Pioneering, including:

• Associate positions within the Flagship Labs origination and innovation group
• Foundational, ground-level leadership positions at cutting-edge Flagship-founded companies

Graduates of the Fellowship have also gone onto exciting careers in life science, including:

• Science-centric roles at leading academic and research institutions, such as Stanford, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the Broad Institute, Whitehead Institute, MIT, Koch Institute and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub
• CEOs/founders of their own companies and startups
• Scientists and leaders in global biotech and pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca, Alnylam and Biogen

The application for the 2025 Fellowship is available here.

• The Flagship Pioneering Fellowship requires a full-time, in person commitment for 12 weeks during the summer from June 2, 2025-August 22, 2025
• Application Deadline for 2025 Fellowship: Applications close January 20, 2025. We encourage applicants to apply as early as possible.
• Flagship Pioneering Fellows receive a stipend and work at the Flagship Pioneering offices in Kendall Square (55 Cambridge Parkway, Cambridge, MA)

Qualifications

• Deep scientific background in biology, chemistry, agriculture, engineering, AI/ML, computer science, materials science, or related scientific fields
• Completed or within the final year of a professional scientific degree (PhD, MD, or international equivalent)
• Demonstrated leader, effective communicator, and strong team player
• Record of scientific and academic excellence
• Desire to challenge dogma and take creative leaps into the scientific unknown
• Self-starter mentality
• Available for full time employment in Boston/Cambridge no later than May 2026

Flagship Pioneering’s unique approach to creating first-in-category bioplatform companies is founded on the notion that there is great value in unconventional and unexpected ideas. We also believe that Pioneering is best done in teams, and that teams who welcome and champion the perspectives of talented professionals with diverse personal and professional experiences lead to the biggest leaps and scientific breakthroughs. As a result, we actively seek Fellows that represent diverse racial, cultural, educational, socioeconomic, and lived experiences and pledge to support them as individuals and members of the Flagship community.

If you have questions about the Fellowship please contact Fellowship Director Bradley Coleman.

What if you could hack an unsolved problem with an innovative AI solution that had real-world value? At Flagship Pioneering, creativity defines what we do: we are a scientists, innovators, and entrepreneurs dedicated to conceiving and building life-changing companies. We harness science and entrepreneurialism to envision alternative futures, beginning with seemingly unreasonable propositions and navigating to transformational outcomes through an iterative, evolutionary methodology. Flagship has created over 100 scientific ventures (including the now familiar drug and vaccine innovator, Moderna Therapeutics), many with a strong focus on leveraging advances in computing, big data, and AI. In recent years, this trend has accelerated with first-in-category life science companies such as Generate Biomedicines, Cellarity, Valo, Apriori, and many others creating breakthrough innovations using AI advances.

The AI Fellowship Track at Flagship Pioneering provides an unrivaled opportunity for individuals to creatively harness computational thinking toward cross-disciplinary innovation as part of our venture creation process. We are looking for extraordinary computational scientists and entrepreneurs to learn our unique company creation process and work alongside entrepreneurs and scientists within the Flagship Ecosystem focused on solving the most impactful challenges in AI and the life sciences.

During the summer, AI Fellows will work in teams to generate novel scientific concepts that challenge dogma by leveraging their scientific instincts and creativity. As part of this process, AI Fellows will learn to iterate and shape these ideas into “seemingly unreasonable” yet compelling venture hypotheses as well as advance these ideas through a hands-on implementation project.

As a Flagship Pioneering AI Fellow you will:

• Learn Flagship Pioneering’s system of generating and refining actionable pioneering hypotheses
• Utilize and develop your creativity, adaptability, and ability to innovate
• Contribute to the creation of game-changing ideas & innovations based on computational approaches that can be developed into the next breakthrough companies
• Develop and code computational tools and methods that accelerate cross-disciplinary breakthrough innovations.
• Work directly with highly experienced Flagship Pioneering team members—a group of innovative and experienced scientists, entrepreneurs, and executives
• Build relationships and expand your network with a diverse and highly successful group of peers
• Explore full-time opportunities at Flagship Pioneering and our AI/ML-focused companies

Application Deadline for 2025 AI Fellowship Track

• The application to the 2025 AI Fellowship Track is available here. Applications close January 20, 2025. We encourage applicants to apply as early as possible.

Qualifications

• PhD or Master’s or currently enrolled in a graduate program in computer science, statistics, applied mathematics, physics, biology, neuroscience, chemistry, or another discipline with a strong quantitative focus
• Deep research and/or industry experience in at least one of the following fields: machine learning, modeling and simulation, computational biology, computational neuroscience, computational chemistry
• Strong programming background (high proficiency in Python, R, or similar required)
• Demonstrated leader, effective communicator, and strong team player
• Record of scientific and academic excellence and creativity in the ability to solve complex scientific problems
• Willingness to challenge dogma
• Self-starter mentality
• Available for full-time employment in Boston/Cambridge no later than May 2026

Information Sessions about the 2025 Fellowship are offered on the following dates & times:

• November 14, 2024, 11am-noon E.T.
• December 11, 2024, 9-10am E.T.
• January 9, 2025, 2:30-3:30pm E.T.

Sign up here to select your preferred date and time.

Former Fellows sat down with us to reflect on grappling with being pushed outside their comfort zones, the advantages of meaningful collaboration & teamwork and what it means to take bold scientific leaps at Flagship Pioneering. Watch the full series of videos featuring past Fellows describing the Flagship Fellowship in their own words.