To ensure that our funding is as impactful as possible, SFARI will be undergoing a strategic planning process in the first half of 2024. We have thus adjusted our request for applications (RFA) schedule to ensure that the SFARI science team can devote sufficient time and energy to this effort. In 2024, we will hold the Bridge to Independence (BTI) RFA, and one call for Pilot Awards, in tandem with a call for continuation funding for former Pilot Award grantees whose projects have been successful. We will also hold a targeted RFA on Bridging Early Neurodevelopment and Emerging Neural Circuits, as well as a call for proposals for an updated version of SFARI Gene.

In this blog, Alice Luo Clayton assesses the first five years of the SFARI Bridge to Independence Award program, the impact the award has had on the fellows’ careers and the directions in which the program is moving forward.

In this blog post, Paul Wang discusses the importance of supporting the development and validation of objective clinical outcome measures for autism. He also provides an overview of four new SFARI-funded projects that aim to develop such tools.

In this blog post, Wendy Chung and John Spiro outline some of the important ways in which the Simons Searchlight program has been recently expanded, including increasing the number of genes and copy number variants that are being studied.

In this blog post, the SFARI science team provides insight into why SFARI’s request for applications grant programs are being revamped, which award types are being changed and how the new changes will be implemented.

SFARI’s requests for grant applications will be undergoing a number of changes in the coming months. These changes include ending the Explorer Award program, updating the Pilot Award program to have twice-yearly receipt dates, and having a revamped Research Award program with an annual receipt date.

Alan Packer, senior scientist at SFARI, discusses a number of recent review articles that provide interesting and complementary overviews of what we currently know about the neurobiology of autism. Together, these reviews reveal how much basic research on autism has grown over the past decade.