Academia Sinica Scholar Award (ASSA)

Academia Sinica Scholar Award (ASSA)

Supports Taiwan researchers with structured pathways in early-career academic excellence awards, from planning to deployment.

⚠ This may reflect a past cycle — verify the current call on the funder's site.

The Academia Sinica Scholar Award (ASSA) is an annual recognition prize administered by Academia Sinica, Taiwan's highest academic research institution, for early-career researchers employed at Taiwanese universities and research organisations. The award honours exceptional research achievement across three disciplinary categories — Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Life Sciences, and Humanities and Social Sciences — with up to three awardees selected per category each cycle, plus one additional slot for interdisciplinary work. Established to recognise and retain research talent in Taiwan, the award carries a cash prize of NT$300,000, a research grant, and a commemorative medal per recipient.

To be eligible for the 2026 cycle, candidates must hold a PhD from an accredited domestic or foreign university and must be serving as a full-time research fellow or assistant professor (or equivalent post) whose first appointment date falls on or after 1 August 2017 — meaning the appointment was made within eight years of the cycle year. Researchers affiliated with Academia Sinica itself may also be nominated. The programme is open to scientists and scholars across all fields represented by the three award categories, with no sector or discipline restriction within those domains.

Candidates cannot apply directly. Nominations must be submitted by the applicant's home Taiwanese university or research institution; individual researchers without an institutional nominator are ineligible. Once nominated, files are evaluated by Academia Sinica's review panels for each category. Nomination correspondence is handled through assa@gate.sinica.edu.tw. Organisations seeking to build a competitive nomination should document the nominee's research output, citation impact, and institutional contribution clearly, as panels assess scientific originality and the quality of the research record during the first eight years of the academic career.