The mission of the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) is to improve the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) by funding innovative research of the highest quality and relevance.
Grants awarded through this request for applications (RFA) are intended to advance the understanding of ASD through analyses of human postmortem brain tissue donated to the Autism BrainNet collection.
Through this RFA, we encourage individual and collaborative applications that study and compare gene expression at the tissue and single-cell level. Such analyses could also include alternative splicing/isoform analysis, RNA editing, noncoding RNAs, epigenetic modifications and/or proteomics. We also welcome studies of cellular neuroanatomy and immunohistochemical research on identified transmitter systems. For all studies, there is a nonexclusive emphasis on the cortex.
Deadline: Jan. 10, 2022
All applicants and key collaborators must hold a Ph.D., M.D. or equivalent degree and have a faculty position or the equivalent at a college, university, medical school or other research facility. Applications may be submitted by domestic and foreign nonprofit organizations; public and private institutions, such as colleges, universities, hospitals, laboratories, units of state and local government, and eligible agencies of the federal government. Applications may also be submitted by for-profit companies, in which case the funds provided for the grant are to be used only for charitable purposes toward research related to autism spectrum disorders. There are no citizenship or national residence requirements.
The annual budget is between $300,000 and $1,000,000, inclusive of 20 percent indirect costs, for a period of two (2) years.
This wide range will allow applications for proposals and durations appropriate for the scope of their specific aims. We expect that analyses of greater depth and that are applied to multiple regions and cell types using state-of-the-art ‘omics’ technologies will require larger budgets.
It is at the foundation’s discretion to modify final budgets as needed.
