2025 Amplitude Ventures Pre-Amp Fellowship

Eligibility

Open to creative, self-starting PhD candidates, Post-docs, and MD/MD-PhD students in life sciences, bioinformatics, or AI/ML.

Requirements

• Deep scientific or business background aimed at life sciences
• Canadian work authorization required
• Academic excellence and self-starter mentality
• Creativity and the ability to solve complex scientific and business problems
• Ongoing or completed M.D. training, Ph.D. or Post- Doc with a research focus on the life sciences or healthcare
• Within 1 year of completion of academic training / ready for employment

Summary

Driven by Amplitude Ventures, Canada’s foremost life science VC firm, Pre-Amp is a biotech venture creation studio to discover, incubate and drive innovation to enable the launch of tomorrow’s leading biotechnology companies. The Pre-Amp Fellowship is a crucible where Canada’s brightest health-focused PhD candidates, post docs and MDs - many of whom are also inventors - come together each summer to explore “what if” biotech concepts as the first step in creating novel, life-changing health science companies.

Each year Pre-Amp runs a nation-wide search for candidates to join the Fellowship for three months, June through August. These Fellows work in teams of two or three, in lockstep with leaders from Pre-Amp and Amplitude Ventures, to conduct a series of in-depth, one-month explorations to identify hypotheses for novel healthcare ventures.

The Fellows are immersed in the front end of Pre-Amp’s three-phase company creation model… EXPLORE - REFINE - LAUNCH. The Fellows are exposed to an alternate path to academia by fostering an environment that balances imagination, translational science, and rigorous scientific thinking while allowing them to remain engaged in creative science.

The Pre-Amp Fellowship provides opportunities to:

• Do something different with your graduate training by applying your scientific expertise, entrepreneurial talents, and self-starter mentality toward creating new ventures.
• Build relationships with our network of experts across academia and industry, and explore opportunities for ongoing mentorship.
• Explore cutting-edge science and technology.
• Learn how to ideate a concept into a new venture and find practical applications for your skills and expertise.
• Potentially assume a full-time position at Pre-Amp or at one of Amplitude or Pre-Amp’s early-stage ventures.

Details

• Full time, paid roles: late May – end August 2025
• Hybrid virtual / in-person format with multiple in person sessions throughout the summer across our offices in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver
• Build relationships with our network of experts across academia and industry
• Explore the cutting edge of science and technology
• Seminars from portfolio company leadership and KOLs
• Learn how to ideate a concept into a new venture
• Find practical applications for your skills and expertise

Application deadlines

RSO detailed review deadline

RSO final internal review deadline

Program application deadline

NOTE: Consult your Faculty Associate Dean (Research) (ADR) regarding Faculty-specific deadlines and submission processes.

Principal Investigators: Complete a Research Management System (RMS) record, including a copy of your complete application, and submit this for approvals in RMS.

Postdocs, students, and trainees: For fellowships and externally-sponsored research training awards or opportunities, you must complete the Research Funding Application Approval (RFAA) Trainee PDF form, and submit it, along with a complete copy of the application, to Research Services at rsotrainee@ucalgary.ca. Trainees should not use RMS at this time.

Approvals: The University of Calgary requires that all funding applications be approved prior to submission. Approval requires signatures via either RMS or the RFAA Trainee form, in the following order:

• Principal Investigator
• Department Head
• Faculty ADR/Dean
• Research Services (on behalf of the Vice-President Research)

Read the Meaning of Grant Signatures policy to understand what your approval means. Please see the agency guidelines for details about which signatures are required on your application, as it may differ from internal requirements.

Late submissions: Late submissions will only be accepted in cases of medical or family emergencies, or other exceptional circumstances. If you submit your RMS record to Research Services after the internal deadline has passed, you must secure additional approvals. Please read: Late Applications Process.

Apply Online

• Send resume and cover letter to fellowship@amplitudevc.com
• Accepting up to 10 candidates
• Deadline to apply for the 2025 program will be January 31, 2025

Pre-Amp Flyer