Recommenders for Packard Fellowship

[doc700]

Hello all.  I am new to this forum and had a question I was hoping to get feedback on.

I am a third year assistant professor in physics/materials science.  I received a nomination from my university to the Packard Fellowship competition.  I was wondering how to select the recommendation letters.  It says one should come from a person with no supervisory or collaborative contact.  Does that imply the other two should come from a supervisor or collaborator?  I understand a strong letter from someone at arms distance would be more supportive to my application, however I would know that person less well so they likely couldn't write as detailed of a letter.  I do have a few names of people who could write who know my work well and aren't collaborators, however they are in Europe and while established, might not be "famous"/very well known to the broad Packard review board.

I did reach out to my sponsored projects office for support but my university hasn't had someone win the Packard in several years.  I was hoping that someone hear might have some experience or recommendations.  I really appreciate the support!

[fizzycist]

Here are my opinions as someone who has applied for numerous young investigator things of the Packard sort with some success, but have only sat on one panel to review them (not Packard).

The outside letter writer doesn't need to know you personally well,  they just need to think highly of your work. They are not being asked to comment on details of your research strategy or your personal qualities, rather they are supposed to reflect on how the field overall views your work and the general topic you are pursuing.

I think the ideal person to ask for these things is a friendly competitor. Someone who will say something like "I wish we had done that first, but the applicant's team did it and then they wrote a really nice paper which my lab carefully reviewed in our journal club. Etc"

Ideally that person will be a senior faculty at an elite institution or at least well known in their field. No different from the people you might recommend for external writers for your tenure package.

In fact, if you had written a post on how to decide which external reviewers to choose for tenure package you would probably get a lot more responses.

[polly_mer]

The outside letter writer doesn't need to know you personally well,  they just need to think highly of your work. They are not being asked to comment on details of your research strategy or your personal qualities, rather they are supposed to reflect on how the field overall views your work and the general topic you are pursuing.

This. 

The question is to what degree you are impacting the field.

If no one knows what you are doing other than the people who have essentially raised you academically, then that's a mark against you.

If someone fairly senior in the field indicates they know what you are doing and it's good stuff, then that's a mark in your favor. 

Is there anyone fairly senior who has been nice to you at conferences etc. who clearly thinks of you as a rising peer who could write such a letter?  If not, then a friendly peer as fizzycist suggests is also good, especially if you didn't come out of the same graduate program or weren't postdocs together in the same group.