The foundation's goals, through the use of grants, are to "improve the lives of children, enable creative pursuit of science, advance reproductive health, and conserve and restore earth's natural systems.

[5] Fellows receive an award of $875,000, distributed over five years, which has "no strings attached" and are designed to provide maximum flexibility in pursuing new scientific questions and frontiers in their fields of study.

An advisory panel of distinguished scientists and engineers carefully reviews the nominations and selects roughly 18 Fellows to receive individual grants of $875,000, distributed over five years.

Packard Fellows' work has contributed to breakthroughs like the creation of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technique, the discovery of soft tissues in dinosaur fossils, and the first-ever observation of a neutron star collision.

Fellows have gone on to receive a range of accolades, including Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Physics, the Fields Medal, the Alan T. Waterman Award, elections to the National Academies, and MacArthur, Sloan, Searle, and Guggenheim fellowships.