Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship

Information for Independent Peer Reviewers

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation sponsors exceptionally qualified scientists and scholars both individually and ad personam. The Humboldt Foundation's focus on this kind of individualised sponsorship plays an especially important role during the selection process. Identifying extremely promising and outstanding talent is thus even more important than assessing the academic quality of a research proposal.

Granting a research fellowship means securing long-term support for collaboration with partners in Germany through the Humboldt Foundation's Alumni sponsorship. As such, it is very important to target the academic elites of tomorrow when selecting the research fellows of today and enlist them as partners for Germany.

If the Humboldt Foundation Selection Committee needs an independent, external expert's opinion on an application you will be requested to act as a independent peer reviewer. Your review will, of course, be treated confidentially, just as we assume that you will maintain confidentiality with respect to all those involved. We ask you to base your review on the form for independent peer reviewers. Please answer all the questions so that we can do full justice to the applicant in the evaluation process.

When assessing an applicant's academic performance to date, appropriate consideration should be given to the conditions under which the academic results have been achieved, as evidenced by the curriculum vitae. When making a final recommendation please bear in mind that, due to the numerous applications from all over the world, we can currently only approve about one third of all the applications. Thus, only exceptionally highly-qualified researchers can be considered for sponsorship by the Humboldt Foundation.

Information on the sponsorship criteria relating to Feodor Lynen Research Fellowships can be found in the relevant Programme Information for Feodor Lynen Research Fellowships for postdoctoral researchers and for Feodor Lynen Research Fellowships for experienced researchers.

Should you not feel appropriately qualified to provide an expert opinion, or be biased or unable to submit your statement in the time foreseen, we should be very grateful if you would provide us with the name and address of a competent colleague and return the application documents to us immediately. We apologise that in the interests of an efficient selection process, we have to request you to complete your independent review promptly (usually in two to three weeks).