Portal Grant Program: Calling All PhD Students & Post-Docs


Portal Grant Program: Calling All PhD Students & Post-Docs

What would you do if you could get anything into any cell? What experiments would you run? What questions would you finally be able to answer?


Description:

Based on the results of our first cycle, Portal is launching the second round of its competitive grant program to fund the most exciting application ideas that could be enabled by easy intracellular delivery.

We invite PhD students and post-doctoral researchers to submit a one-page proposal describing the scientific application you would pursue if efficient, scalable intracellular delivery were no longer a constraint, such as:

  • Engineering immune cells for next-generation therapies
  • CRISPR modifications in difficult to work with cell types
  • Building new tools for live-cell assays  and imaging
  • Reprogramming stem cells or primary cells for regenerative medicine
  • Any other application where delivery into cells is the limiting factor

What Portal Makes Possible:

Portal’s mechanical delivery platform removes many of the barriers that hold back ambitious cell biology research. With Portal, you can:

  • Deliver multiple cargoes simultaneously
  • Achieve high efficiency without viral vectors or harsh chemical reagents
  • Scale experiments reproducibly from bench to high-throughput
  • Work with sensitive primary cells that don’t tolerate conventional methods
  • Deliver virtually any cargo type: RNA, proteins, gene editors, probes, impermeable small molecules or peptides, and more

We’re looking for bold application ideas; proposals that lead with the science you want to do, not just the delivery method you’d use. Check out our informational webinar to learn more about Portal’s novel capabilities and spark your next idea!

Grant Award

Selected applicants will receive:

  • Access to Portal’s instruments and consumables  
  • Technical collaboration with and ongoing support from Portal scientists
  • Support for presenting research findings at scientific conferences

Proposal Requirements (One Page Maximum)

  1. The Big Idea: What scientific question are you trying to solve? What would success look like?
  2. Current Barriers: What’s stopping you today? How is intracellular delivery the bottleneck?
  3. Approach: How would removing the delivery constraint with Portal change your research?
  4. Experimental Plan & Readouts: Key experiments and metrics for success.

Clarity and feasibility matter. Figures are welcome but must fit within one page.

Proposals will be evaluated on:

  • Innovation
  • Feasibility
  • Potential impact
  • Delivery as a genuine bottleneck (is removing the delivery constraint central to the application?) 

Eligibility & Timeline

  • Current PhD students or post-doctoral researchers affiliated with an accredited academic or research institution
  • Submission Deadline: December 4, 2026
  • Award Notification: December 18th, 2026
  • Project Start: January  2027

Next Steps:

  • Learn more about Portal’s novel capabilities by the information webinar!

  • Email your one-page PDF proposal to: boost@portal.bio with the subject line: Portal to New Frontiers Submission – [Your Name]

We’re excited to fund researchers with ambitious ideas for what becomes possible when delivery is no longer the bottleneck. Tell us what you’d do  and let us help you make it happen!