The Simons Foundation is now accepting applications from undergraduate students to participate in its Shenoy Undergraduate Research Fellowship in Neuroscience (SURFiN) program for the 2024–2025 academic year. The program’s goal is to spark and sustain interest in neuroscience among undergraduate students whose backgrounds and experiences are underrepresented in science. The paid fellowships will run from September 2024 through May 2025.

SFARI is pleased to announce that it intends to fund three grants in response to the 2023 Human Cognitive and Behavioral Science request for applications.

This year’s new cohort of National Academy of Medicine members includes two investigators funded by the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI). Election to the academy “recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service.”

SFARI is pleased to announce that it intends to fund 9 grants in response to the 2023 Winter Pilot Award request for applications.

In order to advance the frontiers of research in science, the Simons Foundation recognizes the need for a diversity of ideas and perspectives contributing to the scientific enterprise. To that end, the foundation supports talented early-career scientists from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds as they transition from mentored training to independent research positions.

The Simons Foundation is pleased to announce this year’s recipients of its prestigious independence awards. The 13 fellows will receive support as they transition from mentored training to independent research positions.

Phenotypic data from 328,973 participants enrolled in SPARK, including 132,138 individuals with ASD, are now available to approved researchers. Genomic data also is available for 116,693 SPARK participants, specifically 106,744 (44,304 ASD) with whole exome sequencing, and 12,519 (3,575 ASD) with whole genome sequencing. A total of 2,570 individuals have both.

A SFARI initiated and funded reanalysis of previous studies reveals consistent biological signals in the human microbiome and other physiological signals associated with autism and highlights the need for long-term studies to determine autism’s underlying causes.

On January 30–31, SFARI convened its first annual meeting of the SFARI Sex Differences Collaboration (SSDC). Funded in 2021, the SSDC collaboration consists of five groups of researchers who seek to understand the male overrepresentation in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnoses; how this comes about could hold important insights into the nature of autism itself.

Earlier this year we announced here that this summer we would be issuing a request for applications (RFA) for the Genomics of ASD grants. However, as we have occasionally done in the past, this summer the SFARI science team will regroup to evaluate our entire grant portfolio to identify gaps where SFARI funding is likely to create the most impact. To allow sufficient time for these activities we have decided to postpone the 2023 Genomics of ASD RFA.