A 12-week, paid summer Fellowship where exceptional innovator-entrepreneurs help create disruptive startups in human health, sustainability, AI, and beyond.
Since 2009, the Flagship Pioneering Fellowship has offered outstanding scientists, engineers, inventors, data scientists, and budding entrepreneurs 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, sustainability, AI, and beyond.
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 to build breakthrough companies that change the world.
"At Flagship, we see AI as an accelerant to the scientific method itself."
— Noubar Afeyan, Founder & CEO
We welcome Fellows of all levels of AI/ML experience who are eager to learn, collaborate, and apply these tools to build transformative ventures.
Artificial intelligence is core to how Flagship conceives and builds companies. We call this approach polyintelligence: human creativity and nature’s intelligence integrating and coexisting with machine intelligence. This model runs across our ecosystem, where teams pair AI with foundational science to move from idea to concept faster and pursue ideas that were previously out of reach.
With AI so deeply integrated into everything we do at Flagship, there is no longer a distinct AI/ML Fellowship track. Bold, entrepreneurial basic scientists, data scientists and candidates with applied AI/ML expertise all fit the Flagship Fellow profile.
Immersed in our unique company creation process, Fellows start by asking "What if" or "If Only." Working in teams, they combine their scientific instincts, unconstrained creativity, and the latest AI tools to generate novel scientific and technological concepts that push beyond existing scholarship and challenge dogma. Fellows then learn to iterate, challenge, and shape these ideas into unreasonable, compelling hypotheses with the potential to produce pioneering new ventures. What matters is curiosity, creativity, and the drive to turn bold ideas into reality. Fellows are driven by excitement not just to make scientific discoveries or invent products, but to help create entirely new companies from the ground up.
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 and implement Flagship Pioneering’s unique process of generating and refining venture hypotheses
- Exhibit and develop your creativity, adaptability, and ability to innovate in a fast-paced and dynamic environment
- Explore ideas & innovations with the potential to become breakthrough companies
- Work at the frontier of polyintelligence, integrating AI with your own scientific instincts; with training and support to use the newest tools effectively
- Meet, network with, and learn from experienced members of the Flagship team and across our Ecosystem – Associates, Partners, Business Unit and functional leaders, CEOs and more
- Explore full-time opportunities at Flagship Pioneering and our Ecosystem of companies
The Flagship Pioneering Fellowship serves as an important pipeline in recruiting for foundational roles at Flagship Pioneering, including:
- Associate positions in Flagship Labs origination teams and roles in Pioneering Intelligence, our dedicated AI initiative
- Foundational, ground-level leadership positions at Flagship-founded companies in human health, sustainability, technology, AI, and beyond
Graduates of the Fellowship have also gone on to exciting careers in biotech and life science, including:
- A variety of scientific and strategy roles in independent companies and startups
- Scientists and leaders in global biotech and pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca, Alnylam, and Biogen
- 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
Click here to apply to the 2027 Flagship Pioneering Fellowship.
Information Sessions about the 2027 Fellowship were offered on the following dates and times:
- October 15, 2026, 10-11 AM EDT
- November 10, 2026, 1-2 PM EDT
- December 7, 2026, 11 AM-12 PM EDT
Register to attend an Information Session here.
Qualifications
- Deep expertise in any scientific or technical field: biology, chemistry, agriculture, engineering, materials science, etc. — or research or industry expertise applying AI/ML to any of these fields.
- Broad scientific interests; ability to quickly ask provocative questions in any scientific or technical domain.
- Completed or within the final year of a professional scientific degree (PhD, MD, or international equivalent).
- Comfort with scientific uncertainty and ambiguity of outcomes; self-starter mentality; demonstrated leader, communicator, and strong team player
Former Fellows sat down with us to reflect on grappling with being pushed outside their comfort zones, the advantages of meaningful collaboration and teamwork, and what it means to take bold scientific leaps at Flagship Pioneering. Watch the full series of videos.
