Financial Support

Financial support is provided to all graduate students in the Pharmaceutical Sciences PhD program through a combined mechanism of fellowships, research assistantships (RA), and teaching assistantships (TA). Some students may qualify for predoctoral campus-based traineeships on a variety of federally funded training grants, and several of our students have been awarded prestigious external fellowships such as NSF Graduate Research Fellowships.

Funding packages for first-year graduate students in the Pharmaceutical Sciences PhD Program are provided by the School of Pharmacy (for the first academic year), and typically consist of a mixture of fellowship and/or TA support. We also provide a “First Year Flexible Fund Award” to students as they begin our program. Beginning in the summer of the first graduate year, students are supported by their faculty advisor via RA appointments, or via a combination of RA and TA appointments. Some project assistantships are available in the school’s Analytical Instrumentation Center and in the Zeeh Pharmaceutical Experiment Station.

All Pharmaceutical Sciences graduate students receive a stipend ($33,000 for 2023-24), full tuition remission (i.e. tuition is not the student’s responsibility), and low cost options for individual or family comprehensive health insurance, life insurance, and supplemental medical coverage. Details on benefits, including out of pocket expenses for UW Graduate Assistants, can be found on UW HR’s Benefits page.

Additionally, due to the generosity of alumni and friends of our program, three categories of student travel awards are available annually to Pharmaceutical Sciences PhD students.

• The Witiak Travel Award, named in honor of former Dean and Professor Donald Witiak, is awarded to three Pharmaceutical Sciences graduate students in Drug Discovery.
• The Robinson Travel Award, named in honor of the late Professor Joseph Robinson and his wife Bonna, is awarded to three Pharmaceutical Sciences graduate students in Drug Delivery.
• The Drug Action Travel Award (supported by the Pharmacology Graduate Student Support Fund), is awarded to three Pharmaceutical Sciences graduate students in Drug Action.