NSF MSPRF Recipients and Award History 2026

This guide is for: Mathematics and statistics PhD students in their final year, recent doctorates, sponsoring scientists, and department postdoc coordinators who want to see who actually won NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships, where those fellows went, and what the award pays before the October 21, 2026 deadline.

Last updated: October 12, 2026

Full answer: NSF awarded 28 MSPRF fellowships with 2026 award dates, the lowest count from 2019 through 2026, according to a Grantsights pull of the NSF Awards API on October 12, 2026. Each 2026 fellowship carries $190,000 in obligated funds. From 2022 through 2026, MIT hosted 22 fellows, more than any other institution. The current solicitation is NSF 23-603, with the next deadline on October 21, 2026.

Next route: Read the NSF MSPRF application guide, compare it with the NSF GRFP winner history and the NSF CAREER winner history, and use the free grants search to find nearby federal math funding.

NSF MSPRF Recipients and Award History: 2026 Fellows, Hosts, and Amounts

Data note: Grantsights pulled the NSF Awards API on October 12, 2026 with the fund program name MathSciPDFel for award dates January 1, 2019 through October 12, 2026, then kept the 348 records carrying program element code 060Y00 (Workforce MSPRF). Counts use the record's award date, which for these fellowships is the initial award date. "Obligated amount" is the fundsObligatedAmt field, the money NSF has committed to the award so far; for MSPRF it equals the full fellowship because NSF funds it at once. Host institution comes from the record's place-of-performance field, with two misspelled names corrected. The full API response is kept as JSON for checking.

According to the NSF MSPRF program page, MSPRF supports postdoctoral fellows doing research and training in mathematics and statistics, including applications to other fields, and offers two options: a Research Fellowship and a Research Instructorship. NSF's page lists an October 21, 2026 full-proposal deadline and the third Wednesday in October each year after that.

According to the NSF 23-603 solicitation, NSF expects 35 to 45 awards and $8,500,000 in total funding per competition, subject to available funds. Each fellowship totals $190,000 over 48 months.

Grantsights analysis of 348 award records shows a program that held steady at roughly 40 fellows a year, peaked at 58 in 2022, and then dropped to 28 in 2026. The 2026 awards also arrived later than usual: every 2026 record is dated between May 18 and June 26, while earlier cohorts were dated from late February through early June.

That drop matters for anyone planning an October 2026 submission. The solicitation's estimate hasn't changed, but the latest funded cohort came in 7 fellowships below the bottom of that range.

MSPRF Awards By Year, 2019 To 2026

NSF made 28 MSPRF awards dated in 2026, down 30% from 40 in 2025 and down 52% from the 2022 peak of 58, according to the October 12, 2026 Grantsights pull of NSF award records.

Three patterns stand out. First, the fellowship size moved from $150,000 to $190,000 starting with the 2023 cohort, and every record since then shows exactly $190,000. Second, the 2021 and 2022 cohorts were unusually large, at 57 and 58 fellows, so treating those years as the norm would overstate the odds. Third, total obligations in 2026 fell to $5.32M, well under the $8.5M the solicitation anticipates.

Don't read these counts as a success rate. NSF award records don't include proposal counts, and the API only lists funded fellowships. A smaller cohort could reflect fewer dollars, fewer proposals, or both, and the public record doesn't say which.

The 28 Fellows In The 2026 MSPRF Cohort

All 28 fellowships dated in 2026 show $190,000 obligated and the Mathematical Sciences section of NSF's Mathematical and Physical Sciences directorate as the managing unit. Names and host institutions below come from public NSF award records.

The 2026 list spans pure and applied work. At least 6 of the 28 titles name statistics, computing, machine learning, data science, or decision-making under uncertainty, while the rest sit in geometry, topology, number theory, analysis, and probability. That mix tracks the solicitation's language about mathematics and statistics "including applications to other disciplines."

5 Host Institutions That Took The Most MSPRF Fellows

From 2022 through 2026, 211 MSPRF fellows held their awards at hosts in 27 U.S. states plus a handful of foreign sites, and 6 institutions accounted for 67 of them, according to the October 12, 2026 pull.

Because the fellow, not the university, is the awardee, these counts measure where fellows chose to go. They aren't institutional quotas, and a host doesn't apply on the fellow's behalf. NSF's program page says there's no limit on how many fellows one institution may host.

Foreign hosts are allowed but uncommon. The 2026 cohort includes 4 fellows abroad (two in Canada, one in Sweden, one in Switzerland), and the 2025 cohort had 7, the highest count in the pull.

4 Program Rules That Shape The Applicant Pool

NSF 23-603 sets 4 eligibility rules that narrow who can appear on the award list, according to the solicitation checked on October 12, 2026.

The award terms also shape planning. According to NSF, the $190,000 total includes a monthly stipend of $5,833 (up to $70,000 a year) for 24 months of support and a $50,000 allowance paid in lump sums of $30,000 and $20,000. The fellowship runs 48 months, the appointment must start between June 1 and October 1 of the award year, and up to two months of paid leave is allowed within the period.

A common mistake is assuming the $190,000 is an annual figure. It's the total for the whole fellowship, and the stipend covers 24 months spread across 48, so how the remaining months are paid for depends on the option chosen and on the host. Settle that with the sponsoring scientist and department before accepting.

What NSF Award Search Doesn't Tell You About MSPRF

NSF Award Search shows 28 funded fellows for 2026, but at least 5 facts an applicant would want are missing from those records.

The honest limit is the denominator. Without proposal counts, nobody outside NSF can compute an MSPRF success rate from public data, and pages that publish one are guessing. The award list tells you who won and where they went. It can't tell you how many strong proposals lost.

The second limit is field balance. NSF's records give a project title and an abstract, not a standardized subfield code, so splitting winners into algebra, analysis, probability, and statistics takes manual reading. Grantsights didn't assign subfields beyond the rough count of applied and data-focused titles above.

The third limit is timing. A record dated 2026 belongs to the competition whose deadline fell in October 2025. Comparing a 2026 cohort with the 2026 deadline mixes two different competitions.

Apply, Wait, Or Skip: 6 Checks Before October 21

The October 21, 2026 deadline is 9 days after this pull, so these checks are about whether to submit now or plan for the October 2027 round.

Specifically, the solicitation asks the sponsoring scientist's statement to include a mentoring plan, the sponsor's availability, and the training opportunities at the host. A thin sponsor letter is a red flag that reviewers can see right away, and it's one part of the proposal the applicant can't write alone.

If the deadline is too close, it's often better to skip this round than to submit a rushed plan. Each person can submit only one MSPRF proposal a year, and anyone whose degree is recent has a second year of eligibility. Check the date math against the 2-year rule first, though: a doctorate conferred in 2025 is eligible for the 2027 cohort but will be too old by January 1, 2028, so this cycle is its last.

For people outside the citizenship rule, the MSPRF isn't an option, and the better route is usually a postdoc funded by a faculty member's NSF research grant. The NSF analysis program guide covers one of those math research programs, and the NSF mathematical sciences infrastructure guide covers institute and workshop funding. Grantsights checked in October 2026 that both programs now sit under NSF 26-520 and accept proposals at any time.

How The MSPRF Compares With 3 Nearby NSF Awards

Three other NSF awards show up in the same career searches, and they differ in size, stage, and who applies, according to NSF program pages and the Grantsights award pulls.

The GRFP and MSPRF share a design: the person, not the university, holds the award. That's why both lists read like rosters. CAREER is different, because the university is the awardee and the faculty member is the PI, so CAREER history clusters by institution in a way MSPRF history doesn't.

For astronomers, the parallel program is the AAPF, covered in the NSF astronomy and astrophysics postdoctoral fellowship guide. For broader NSF context, the NSF grants complete guide explains how directorates and programs fit together.

3 Takeaways From 348 MSPRF Records

According to NSF award records pulled October 12, 2026, MSPRF funding averaged about 43 fellows a year from 2019 through 2026, but the latest year sits at 28.

First, the program is small and steady in size per award, but not in headcount. Every recent fellowship is $190,000, so any change in funding shows up as fewer fellows, not smaller awards.

Second, host choice concentrates at a few departments. MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley alone hosted 47 of the 211 fellows dated 2022 through 2026, about 22%. That reflects where fellows wanted to go and where sponsors agreed, not an NSF preference.

Third, the 2026 shortfall against the 35 to 45 estimate is the number to watch. It's one year of data, and NSF hasn't published an explanation in the program page or solicitation checked today. Treat it as a reason to submit the strongest possible proposal, not as a reason to assume the 2027 cohort will be equally small.

Sources

• NSF MSPRF program page - nsf.gov
• NSF 23-603 solicitation - nsf.gov
• NSF Awards API, pulled October 12, 2026 - api.nsf.gov
• NSF Award Search - nsf.gov
• NSF PAPPG - nsf.gov

Related Guides

• NSF MSPRF application guide
• NSF GRFP winner history
• NSF CAREER winner history
• NSF astronomy and astrophysics postdoctoral fellowship guide
• NSF grants complete guide