The Autism & Neuroscience division at the Simons Foundation is accepting applications for funding of courses or conferences. This year, courses and conferences that align with the scientific missions of any of the following programs will be prioritized: Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI), with a mission to advance the basic science of autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders, the Simons Collaboration on Plasticity and the Aging Brain (SCPAB), with a focus on healthy cognitive aging, and the Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain (SCGB), with a focus on the fields of systems and computational neuroscience.

SFARI is accepting applications for funding of Patient Advocacy Group Family Conferences, with a focus on groups in the Simons Searchlight community. This funding is intended to support and enhance the research component of conferences, from scientist presentations to in-person research opportunities for families. It is open to both patient advocacy groups (PAGs) with well-established conferences as well as those in early years of convening families and connecting to science. As they plan their conferences, we encourage PAGs to connect with the SFARI science team who may be able to facilitate connections to scientists with whom to explore possible conference involvement.

The Fellows-to-Faculty Award program supports talented early career scientists by facilitating their transition into tenure-track faculty positions. The focus of this program is the $600,000 USD three-year faculty research grant. Additionally, fellows engage with a community of investigators and receive mentoring and peer support during their transition.

The Simons Foundation’s Autism & Neuroscience division offers the program to nurture new talent and to broaden the community of scientists contributing to the scientific missions of our programs. We drive innovation and collaboration by supporting scientists with a diverse mix of minds, backgrounds and experiences.

The SPARK Research Match Expansion RFA is an effort to engage with and increase research participation by individuals whose genetic ancestries have been undersampled in clinical research. Funding will provide per-person participant incentives (e.g., gift cards) for participation in projects that utilize SPARK Research Match to recruit participants into new research studies or to broaden participation in ongoing Research Match studies.

Grants awarded through this request for applications (RFA) are intended to recharge and extend a consortium of researchers using rats as an experimental system to advance our understanding of the behavioral and circuit neuroscience mechanisms underlying autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD).

The Linking Early Neurodevelopment to Neural Circuit Outcomes RFA aims to bridge the gap in our understanding of whether and how developmental phenotypes caused by autism risk gene mutation lead to altered circuit formation and function. We strongly encourage proposals involving close collaboration between investigators from a range of backgrounds, such as developmental neurobiologists and circuit neuroscientists, in order to convincingly demonstrate causal links between disparate phenotypes in the chosen model(s).

The goal of the Pilot Award is to provide early support for exploratory ideas considered higher risk but with the potential for transformative results, particularly those with novel hypotheses for autism. This funding mechanism is particularly suitable for investigators new to the autism field, though we encourage applicants to consult with experts in autism research to ensure their projects are relevant to the human condition. We encourage applications that propose research to link genetic or other ASD risk factors to molecular, cellular, circuit or behavioral mechanisms and set the stage for development of novel interventions, including work in human subjects.

The goal of the Pilot Progression Award is to provide continuing support for projects initiated during SFARI Pilot awards that have advanced significantly and produced insights that justify an extension.

Grants awarded through the Cross-Species Studies of ASD RFA were intended to support multi-disciplinary teams of PIs with expertise in both human and animal research to perform coordinated cross-species studies to advance our understanding of ASD-relevant behaviors and their underlying neurobiological mechanisms, with the potential for developing novel biomarkers or interventions.