Build an academic CV for US/EU faculty or postdoc applications, with proper section ordering, professional service, mentoring statements, and NSF/NIH biosketch cross-reference. Use when applying to tenure-track or postdoctoral positions.
Installation
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Build an academic CV for US/EU faculty or postdoc applications, with proper section ordering, professional service, mentoring statements, and NSF/NIH biosketch cross-reference. Use when applying to tenure-track or postdoctoral positions.
license
MIT
Academic CV (US/EU Faculty/Postdoc)
Hard rules
No fabricated citations. Every cited work must resolve to a verifiable
No claim without provenance. Every quantitative or factual claim
No silent failure. Every script invocation, API call, or tool use must declare its exit status and what to do on non-zero. A skill that silently swallows errors is a violation.
When to use
Preparing an application packet for a tenure-track assistant professor position (R1 or R2).
Preparing an application for a postdoctoral scholar position at a US or EU institution."
Building the "long-form CV" that underpins a biosketch, a tenure dossier, or a promotion file.
Annual review materials for assistant or associate professors maintaining a current CV.
Fellowship applications that request a CV in addition to a personal statement (Hertz, Ford, AAAS Mass Media).
When NOT to use
Industry or consulting resume — see ors-career-navigation-industry-transition. An academic CV is far too long and is structured for academic evaluation, not recruiter triage.
NIH/NSF biosketch only (5-page) — this skill covers the long-form CV; for the short biosketch, follow the agency's current format page and the agency's SciENcv/NIH instructions.
Tenure dossier case — see ors-career-navigation-tenure-dossier. The CV is a component of the dossier, but the dossier requires research statement, teaching portfolio, and external letters.
Faculty interview packet — see ors-career-navigation-faculty-interview for job talk and chalk talk preparation.
Prerequisites
Complete, accurate record of publications (DOIs, PubMed IDs, ORCID if available).
Funding history with agency, grant number, role, total amount, and period.
Teaching history including course numbers, enrollment, evaluations, and modality.
Mentoring history: trainees' names, level, project, current position.
ORCID (free at orcid.org) — strongly recommended; increasingly expected by search committees.
Core workflow
1. Choose a section ordering convention
Two common orderings:
US R1 / R2 convention (preferred when applying in the United States):
Contact information / header
Education
Professional appointments / positions
Publications
Funding and grants
Teaching
Mentoring
Professional service
Invited talks
Software, datasets, and code releases
Awards and honors
Professional memberships
EU / Max Planck / CNRS / Helmholtz convention (preferred for European applications):
Personal information
Education
Current and previous positions
Research grants and funding
Supervision of students and postdocs
Teaching activities
Publications (often first in some German forms)
Invited talks
Conference organization
Service to the community
Awards
Public engagement
The order of Education and Positions is largely fixed; publications and funding are higher-weighted in the United States than in many EU applications, where funding is a separate, prominent section.
2. Header / contact information
Include name (with any prior or maiden name if relevant for publication linkage), current position and institution, mailing address, email, and ORCID. Do not include a photograph in US applications; some EU forms do request one — check the call.
3. Education
List degrees in reverse chronological order. For each entry, include:
Degree (PhD, MSc, BSc)
Field and sub-field
Institution, city, country
Year of conferral
Dissertation title and advisor
Defense date (if different from conferral)
Include a section for "Postdoctoral training" immediately after if applying to a tenure-track position.
4. Professional appointments and positions
Reverse chronological list. For each role, include rank, department, institution, dates, and a one-line description of responsibilities or scope. Distinguish visiting, acting, and interim positions clearly. For a tenure-track applicant, this section is short; for a senior associate or full professor case, it is lengthy and may include prior administrative appointments.
5. Publications
Use clear sub-sections:
Peer-reviewed articles — most important; subdivide by author role:
Corresponding/senior-author papers
First-author pre-prints and papers
Co-author papers
Preprints — list with DOI or server name (bioRxiv, arXiv, medRxiv, ChemRxiv). Many search committees want to see in-prep work.
Reviews and chapters
Books and edited volumes
Conference proceedings — distinguish peer-reviewed (often high-quality) from abstracts.
Theses — your own dissertation, if recent.
For each entry, use a consistent citation style. Many CVs use the same style as the field's flagship journal. Include DOIs, and bold your name to aid committee scanning.
If using Google Scholar metrics, do not list them in the publications section. Use a separate, optional "Bibliometrics" section (see h-index caveats below).
6. Funding and grants
Two formats: a compact list (one line per grant) or a structured table.
Grant
Role
Agency
Mechanism
Total ($)
Period
Status
Title
PI/Co-PI
NIH
R01
1.8M
2022-2027
Active
Title
Co-Investigator
NSF
CAREER
0.8M
2023-2028
Active
Distinguish "Current" and "Completed" subsections. For training or mentored grants (NSF GRFP, NIH F-series), list with role "Predoctoral Fellow" or "Postdoctoral Trainee".
7. Teaching
Subdivide:
Classroom courses — course number, title, level (undergraduate/graduate), institution, term(s), enrollment, your role (Instructor of record, Co-instructor, TA, Guest lecturer).
Curriculum development — new courses you designed; the section motivates a teaching-focused hire.
Guest lectures — list when there are many; for a senior CV, summarize by year.
Include student evaluation summary statistics in a teaching portfolio, not the CV — see ors-career-navigation-tenure-dossier.
8. Mentoring
Critical for the assistant professor case. Subdivide:
Doctoral students — same fields; distinguish chair from committee membership.
Master's and undergraduate thesis students
Rotation students / visiting scholars
High-school interns / outreach mentees — only if applying to institutions with strong outreach expectations.
Include co-authored papers as a metric: list mentees and count their first-author papers with you.
9. Professional service
Subdivide:
Editorial service — journal editorial boards, guest editorships, ad hoc reviewing (summarize by year and journal for senior CVs; for an assistant, list the most relevant 5-10 journals).
Grant review panels — agency, study section / panel name, dates.
Conference service — program committees, session organization.
Department, school, and university service — committees, governance roles.
Service to the discipline — society leadership, working groups.
10. Invited talks
Two sub-sections:
Plenary / keynote — small set, top-of-list.
Invited seminars and conference talks — for a junior CV, list all; for a senior CV, summarize by year with total counts and notable venues.
Include talk title, venue, city, date. For seminars, indicate whether in person or virtual.
11. Software, datasets, and code releases
Increasingly expected in computational and quantitative fields. Include:
Software packages (name, language, license, GitHub URL, citation if any).
Reverse chronological. Distinguish peer-reviewed (NSF CAREER, Packard, Pew) from internal (teaching awards, dissertation prizes). Include year, awarding body, and a one-line description if the award is not well-known.
13. Optional bibliometrics
If you include a "Bibliometrics" section, present it transparently:
h-index and i10 (Google Scholar)
Total citations (with the database and date)
Field-normalized indicators (Field-Weighted Citation Impact from Scopus, Relative Citation Rate from iCite, etc.)
Caveats that should accompany the metrics:
Database choice matters: Google Scholar counts preprints and predatory-journal citations; Web of Science and Scopus are more conservative. Do not mix numbers across databases.
Field and seniority matter: h-index correlates with career length; a field-normalized indicator is more informative.
Authorship position matters: corresponding/senior-author citation count differs from total citations; committee members read these numbers with care.
The h-index was proposed in 2005 (Hirsch, PNAS) as a quick indicator; it has known weaknesses (insensitivity to highly cited single papers, insensitivity to authorship position, database-dependent counts).
For US applications, a brief metrics block is acceptable but not required; for European applications, especially in continental Europe, it is often expected.
14. Cross-referencing the biosketch
The CV is the long-form document. The biosketch is the short, structured form required by NSF and NIH. Keep these in sync.
NSF PAPPG 24-1 (current at the time of writing) biosketch requirements (verify against the latest PAPPG):
Personal statement — up to one page; relate training to the proposed work.
Publications — most relevant to the proposal; full list may be in the CV or the SciENcv-generated PDF.
Synergistic activities — up to one page; up to five examples of broader impacts and integrated activities.
Mentoring plan (where required) — see mentorship-teaching/ors-mentorship-onboarding.
NIH biosketch structure (5 pages max for each Senior/Key person):
Personal Statement — tailer the statement to the specific application.
Positions and Honors
Contributions to Science — up to four contributions, each with up to four publications or research products; a short narrative on the impact of each.
Ongoing and completed research support — list every active grant that benefits the project, with overlap and effort statements.
SciENcv (NIH's biosketch generator) integrates with ORCID, eRA Commons, and NSF. Use it to keep the personal statement and positions sections in sync.
# [Name]
[Position], [Institution] | [email] | ORCID: [id]
## Education-**PhD**, Field, Institution, Year. Advisor: [Name].
## Positions-**Year--Present**: Rank, Department, Institution.
## Publications### Peer-reviewed- Author1, **Jayaram P**, Author3. "Title." *Journal* (Year). doi:...
## Funding
| Grant | Role | Agency | Total | Period |
|-------|------|--------|-------|--------|
| Title | PI | NSF | $X | 2024-2029 |
ORCID-aligned publication export
# Pull ORCID works for cross-referencing the CVimport requests
orcid_id = "0000-0000-0000-0000"
r = requests.get(
f"https://pub.orcid.org/v3.0/{orcid_id}/works",
headers={"Accept": "application/json"},
)
works = r.json().get("group", [])
for w in works:
title = w["work-summary"][0]["title"]["title"]["value"]
year = w["work-summary"][0]["publication-date"]
print(f"{year}: {title}")
Common pitfalls
Pitfall
Why it fails
Fix
Photograph in US CV
Many US search committees flag this; violates norms
Omit photograph for US applications
Using a one-page industry resume
Academic CV is comprehensive; one-page signals a lack of record
Use the long form; trim only invited talks and minor service
Mixing citation styles in publications
Hard to scan; appears careless
Pick one style (e.g., field's flagship journal); apply uniformly
Bold only your name inconsistently
Search committees scan for your name; make it easy
Bold your name on every publication entry
Listing every talk and every service item
60+ page CV; signal-to-noise collapses
Group minor items by year; list only 5-10 best invited talks as named entries
Out-of-date CV
Search committees notice; questions about attention to detail
Refresh within 30 days of any application; maintain a "live" source document
DOIs missing
Search committees may verify; missing DOIs look unfinished
Include DOIs for all peer-reviewed work; preprints get a DOI from the server
Undefined "PI" / "Co-I" / "Senior personnel"
Confusion over role
Define roles in a footnote on first use; follow agency conventions
Bibliometrics without caveats
Looks naive
Include database, date, and a one-line caveat about field-dependence
Confusing CV with biosketch
The biosketch is structured (NSF, NIH); do not just paste your CV into the format
Use SciENcv or follow the agency's current format page
Not tailoring to the call
Some calls request a "research statement" plus CV; CV is the data, statement is the narrative
Cross-reference the CV from the statement; do not duplicate
Including personal data not requested
Some EU forms request date of birth, citizenship, marital status — include only if asked
Match the form's field list; do not volunteer extra
Validation
A complete academic CV satisfies:
Header with current contact information and ORCID
Education and positions in reverse chronological order
Publications subdivided by role; bold your name; DOIs included
Funding table with role, agency, mechanism, total, period, status
Teaching history with course numbers, terms, roles
Mentoring history with trainee names, periods, current positions
Professional service in editorial, panel, conference, university, and discipline sub-sections
Invited talks with venue and date
Software and datasets listed for computational work
Awards in reverse chronological order
Optional bibliometrics with database, date, and caveats
Cross-reference check: every grant in the CV appears in the biosketch's "research support" section; every publication appears in SciENcv with consistent author name and order
Page count consistent with norms (assistant professor: 10-25 pages; tenured full professor: 30-60 pages; the CV is a living document and grows)
PDF/A compliant; accessible (tagged headings)
Open alternatives
Commercial / proprietary
Open equivalent
Trade-offs
Microsoft Word CV templates
Pandoc + Markdown, LaTeX (moderncv, Awesome-CV)
Pandoc/LaTeX gives precise typography and a version-controlled plain-text source
Adobe InDesign design
LaTeX (overleaf.com with IEEE or ACM templates)
LaTeX is the academic standard; design templates are not needed
SciENcv (NIH) — proprietary but free and required for NIH
ORCID, Google Scholar profiles
Use both; SciENcv satisfies the format, ORCID keeps the canonical record
LinkedIn "Featured"
Personal website (Hugo, Jekyll, Quarto)
Personal site is open, version-controlled, and not vendor-locked
Hirsch JE (2005). "An index to quantify an individual's scientific research output that takes into account the effect of multiple coauthorship." PNAS 102(46): 16569-16572.
Bornmann L, Marx W (2012). "HistCite analysis of papers constituting the h-index research front." Journal of Informetrics.
University of California, Berkeley Office of Faculty Affairs: faculty CV guidance
Helmholtz Association guidelines for CV (European academic CV conventions)
DORA (Declaration on Research Assessment): https://sfdora.org/ — discusses responsible use of journal-based metrics.
COARA (Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment): https://coara.eu/ — European framework for assessment reform.
Related Skills
ors-career-navigation-tenure-dossier — assembling the tenure case from the CV plus statements
ors-career-navigation-faculty-interview — job talk, chalk talk, and start-up package
ors-career-navigation-fellowship-application — predoctoral and postdoctoral fellowship packets
ors-career-navigation-industry-transition — translating the CV to an industry resume
ors-mentorship-teaching-ors-mentorship-onboarding — onboarding mentees (for the mentoring section)
1.0.0 (2026-06-10): Initial adaptation by Pradyumna Jayaram. Compiled from public agency guidance (NSF PAPPG, NIH biosketch), university faculty affairs offices (UC Berkeley, Stanford), and bibliometric literature (Hirsch 2005, DORA, CoARA).
