Institut Courtois Postdoctoral Fellowship 2026: Three Years at Université de Montréal Paying CAD $63,819 a Year Plus up to CAD $30,000 Annually in Research Funds, Closing 28 September 2026

Institut Courtois Postdoctoral Fellowship 2026: Three Years at Université de Montréal Paying CAD $63,819 a Year Plus up to CAD $30,000 Annually in Research Funds, Closing 28 September 2026

Most postdoctoral positions in materials science are advertised by a single principal investigator with a single project already scoped out. The Institut Courtois Postdoctoral Fellowship works the other way around. You bring the research program. You choose which member of the Institute you want to work with. And you are being funded, explicitly, to attempt something exploratory — the kind of open question that a conventional grant-funded project would treat as too speculative to attach to a deliverable.

The offer is three years of funding: a salary of CAD $63,819 per year, worth roughly CAD $76,000 once benefits are counted, plus up to CAD $30,000 per year in research funding where the budget justifies it. The competition launched on 4 May 2026. A notice of intent is due on 10 September 2026 at 11:59 p.m. (EST), and the full application file is due on Monday, 28 September 2026 at 11:59 p.m. (ET). Results are announced in January 2027, and funding starts between March and September 2027.

That two-stage structure matters more than it might appear. The notice of intent is not optional paperwork you can file at the last minute — it names your referees and your mentor, and it is due more than two weeks before the application itself. If you are reading this in early August 2026, the practical deadline you are working toward is 10 September, not 28 September.

Key Details at a Glance

What the Institut Courtois Actually Does

The Institute sits within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the Université de Montréal, and its stated mission is to create a space for discovery and exchange between theoretical and experimental approaches to the properties of matter. In practice, it is an attempt to put chemists, physicists, computer scientists, and mathematicians in the same building and use recent advances in artificial intelligence to speed up how new materials get discovered, developed, and characterised.

The scientific programming is organised around four thrusts where new materials play a transformative role:

• Materials for the Quantum Revolution — quantum materials and systems needed for quantum technologies to become viable.
• Materials for the energy transition — energy production, storage, and conversion.
• Materials for a sustainable environment — material solutions supporting sustainability and environmental resilience.
• Materials for a Smart Society — materials underpinning advanced information technologies and intelligent systems.

Two cross-cutting axes run through all four. The first is modelling, theory, materials simulation, and artificial intelligence, with an explicit emphasis on bidirectional interaction between AI specialists and materials specialists — meaning the Institute is not just looking for people who apply machine learning to materials data, but also people whose materials problems push AI methods forward. The second is automation, robotisation, and AI applied to experimental data, covering high-throughput experimentation, autonomous discovery, and advanced data analysis.

If your work sits cleanly inside one discipline and touches none of these axes, this is probably not your competition. If your work has been awkward to place because it straddles two of them, that awkwardness is the point of the program.

Who Should Apply

The eligibility conditions are specific and worth reading against your own situation before you invest weeks in an application.

You must be enrolled, or plan to enrol, in a postdoctoral program at the Université de Montréal. This is a fellowship tied to a host institution, not a portable award you can take elsewhere.

You must have obtained your doctoral degree within the three years before funding starts — the Institute states this as a PhD obtained between March 2025 and the postdoctoral start date — or plan to obtain it before funding begins. Candidates who can justify career breaks or special circumstances such as parental leave or illness may have completed their doctorate up to four years before the start of the fellowship.

You must propose an original research program aligned with the expertise of Institut Courtois members. This is not a formality. Section 8 of the call requires your research project to include an explicit justification for your choice of mentor and an explicit justification for how the project fits the Institute’s research axes.

You must be legally entitled to work in Canada for the period in question — Canadian citizenship or permanent residence — or commit to taking the steps needed to obtain a work permit. The Institute says it will support selected candidates through the visa process, but the final allocation of the fellowship is conditional on the permit being granted. International applicants should treat that as a real dependency and start understanding the timeline early, since funding can begin as soon as March 2027.

The Institute also states that it is committed to maximising the diversity of talent and strongly encourages applications from traditionally underrepresented groups, regardless of ethnic origin, nationality, sexual orientation, or social status.

The Application Process, Step by Step

There are three separate submission channels, and they are not interchangeable.

Step one: the notice of intent, due 10 September 2026. This is completed through an online form hosted on Microsoft Forms and linked from the official call page. It asks for the candidate’s name, the project title, ten keywords, the institution and year of PhD completion, the names of the three referees who will provide letters, and the names and email addresses of your mentor and any co-mentors. Short as it is, filing it requires that you have already secured a mentor and already asked three referees — so the real work starts well before September.

Step two: letters of recommendation. Three letters must be sent directly by the referees to [email protected]. The Institute specifies the format precisely: the email subject line must read ICPDF2026 – letter for LAST NAME First name, and the file must be named Rec-letter NAME of XXX.pdf. Referees send these themselves; you do not collect and forward them.

Step three: the application file. This is emailed to the same address as a single PDF, with the subject line ICPDF2026 – LAST NAME First name and the file named NOM_Prénom_FellowpostdocIC2026. Formatting is prescribed: single line spacing, Times New Roman 12 point, and one-inch (2.54 cm) margins. You may write in French or English.

What Goes Into the Application File

The core of the file is a research project of no more than six pages covering the problem, the objectives, a literature review, the methodology, a justification for your choice of Institut Courtois mentor, and a justification for how the project integrates into the Institute’s research axes.

Alongside it you must submit:

• A budget using the Excel template provided by the Institute, plus a budget justification of no more than one page.
• Bibliographical references, maximum one page.
• Official doctoral transcripts, including the grading scale if your degree is from a non-Canadian university.
• A curriculum vitae including a list of publications.
• A letter of support from your Institut Courtois mentor, co-signed if there is a co-mentor.

The mentor’s letter carries two specific obligations that applicants often overlook. It must propose three suggestions for evaluators, and it must clearly describe the innovation and added value of your project relative to the host group’s existing activities — particularly in relation to exploratory projects the Institute has already funded. That second requirement is a quiet instruction to both of you: find out what the Institute has already funded, and be able to say what your project does that those projects do not.

Notably, the call recommends structuring your research project using the Heilmeier Catechism, the set of questions DARPA uses to interrogate proposed research programs — what are you trying to do, how is it done today, what is new in your approach, who cares, what are the risks, how long will it take, and what are the mid-term and final exams for success. Taking that recommendation seriously is one of the cheapest ways to improve a draft.

How Applications Are Evaluated

The call lists evaluation criteria in three groups.

Excellence of the file covers academic excellence, scientific publications and presentations, and scientific leadership. This is the conventional track-record assessment, and for a candidate one to three years past the PhD, “scientific leadership” is usually demonstrated through things like leading a sub-project, supervising students, organising a workshop, or driving a collaboration — not through seniority you have not had time to accumulate.

Project excellence covers originality and innovative character, feasibility, and added value to the mentor’s scientific programming. Note the tension built into that list: the program is designed for exploratory work, but feasibility is scored explicitly. A proposal that is bold but has no credible first experiment will lose to one that is bold and shows exactly how the first twelve months de-risk the idea.

Integration at the Institut Courtois covers alignment with the research axes, collaboration with members of the Institute, and use of the Institute’s infrastructure and resources. This criterion rewards applicants who have actually talked to more than one person at the Institute. A project that names a second member as a collaborator, and that identifies specific equipment or computational resources it will use, reads very differently from one that treats the Institute as a generic address.

One structural detail deserves emphasis: the evaluation committee is multidisciplinary, composed of members with expertise across computer science, chemistry, physics, and mathematics. The call states plainly that applications must therefore be written to be accessible to a multidisciplinary scientific audience. A proposal loaded with subfield jargon will be read by people who cannot parse it, and they are scoring you.

Preparing a Competitive Application

Given where the calendar stands, the sequencing matters more than any single piece of writing.

Secure the mentor first. Everything else depends on it — the notice of intent names them, the research project must justify choosing them, and their letter of support is a required document with its own content requirements. Identify Institut Courtois members whose work genuinely connects to yours, read their recent papers, and approach them with a specific idea rather than a request to be hosted.

Write for two readers at once. Your mentor and the subfield specialists on the committee will judge technical depth. The other committee members will judge whether the problem is worth solving and whether you have explained it clearly. Open with the scientific question in plain terms, then go deep.

Make the interdisciplinarity real. The program’s stated objective is to promote interdisciplinary projects across chemistry, physics, and computer science. A proposal that stays entirely inside one of those is answering a question the program did not ask.

Budget with intent. Up to CAD $30,000 a year is available if justified. An unjustified request for the maximum is worse than a smaller, well-argued one. Tie each line to a specific experiment, computation, or dissemination activity.

Give referees real lead time. Three letters must arrive from three separate people, each following a prescribed subject line and filename. Asking in late August for letters that support a September competition is cutting it fine; asking now is not.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Missing the notice of intent. It is due 10 September, eighteen days before the application. Skipping it is the simplest way to be disqualified.
• Ignoring the formatting rules. Times New Roman 12 point, single spacing, one-inch margins, six-page project maximum, one-page budget justification, one-page bibliography. These are stated in the call, so reviewers can reasonably treat non-compliance as carelessness.
• Getting the email conventions wrong. The subject lines and filenames are specified exactly. They exist so a small team can route dozens of documents; garbled ones create risk that a letter is not matched to your file.
• Treating the mentor letter as a formality. It must name three suggested evaluators and articulate what your project adds beyond the Institute’s existing exploratory projects. Give your mentor the information they need to write that.
• Assuming the work permit sorts itself out. The award is conditional on obtaining the required permit. The Institute helps, but the dependency is yours.
• Proposing a safe project. The word “exploratory” appears in the program’s objectives. Incremental extensions of your PhD work are not what this competition is funding.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I apply if I have not yet defended my PhD? Yes. The eligibility rules allow candidates who plan to obtain the doctorate before funding begins. Since funding starts between March and September 2027, there is meaningful room for a late-2026 or early-2027 defence.

Can I write the application in French? Yes. The call states that writing is possible in French or English.

Is the fellowship portable to another university? No. You must be enrolled, or plan to enrol, in a postdoctoral program at the Université de Montréal.

How long is my PhD eligible for? Three years before the start of funding, stated as a PhD obtained between March 2025 and the postdoctoral start date. Documented career interruptions such as parental leave or illness can extend that to four years.

Do I need a mentor lined up before applying? Yes, in practice. The notice of intent asks for mentor and co-mentor names and emails, and a letter of support from an Institut Courtois mentor is a required part of the file.

When will I know the outcome? Results are announced in January 2027, roughly four months after the submission deadline.

Is the CAD $30,000 research funding automatic? No. The call says up to CAD $30,000 per year “if justified,” and requires a budget on the Institute’s Excel template plus a written justification.

Timeline to Work Backward From

Official Links and Contact

The authoritative source for this competition is the Institut Courtois page for the Postdoctoral Fellowship 2026: https://institut-courtois.umontreal.ca/en/postdoctoral-fellowship-2026/. It hosts the notice-of-intent form link, the budget template, and the full call text in both English and French.

All application materials and recommendation letters go to [email protected], using the subject-line conventions described above. The Institute’s general site at https://institut-courtois.umontreal.ca/en/ lists its members and research axes, which is where you should start when identifying a mentor and any collaborators you plan to name.

The recommended structuring tool for the research project, DARPA’s Heilmeier Catechism, is published at https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/heilmeier-catechism.

Is This the Right Fellowship for You?

Say yes if you finished, or will soon finish, a doctorate in chemistry, physics, computer science, or mathematics; if you have a materials-related question that is bigger than what a standard project grant would let you attempt; and if you can name a specific Institut Courtois researcher whose expertise your project genuinely needs. Three years of stable salary plus a real annual research budget is a strong foundation for building an independent line of work, and the multidisciplinary environment is an unusual asset for anyone whose research sits between AI and experimental materials science.

Say no — or at least wait for a future cycle — if your PhD is more than three years behind you without a documented interruption, if you cannot relocate to Montréal, or if you have not yet made contact with anyone at the Institute. The mentor relationship is load-bearing here, and it cannot be assembled in a fortnight.

If you are in, the immediate task is not writing. It is emailing a prospective mentor this week, so the 10 September notice of intent has real names in it.