Funding Opportunities

The SPARK Research Match Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity RFA aims to address historic disparities in research participation by Black or African American individuals by soliciting studies on autism that recruit Black or African American participants. Funding will provide per-person participant incentive (e-gift cards) for participation in projects that utilize SPARK Research Match to recruit participants into new research studies.

The maximum budget is $20,000 in per-person incentive funding per study.

Grants awarded through this RFA are intended to produce foundational knowledge about the neurobehavioral differences associated with ASD. Many of these projects are expected to inform or relate to the development or refinement of tools needed for translational efforts, such as biomarkers and outcome measures. Special emphasis is placed on objective, quantitative measures that may be used in conjunction with standardized clinical measures and genomic information to better triangulate phenotypic and neurobiological variability within and across individuals with ASD.

Two tracks are offered within this RFA solicitation: Explorer and Expansion. The Explorer track is appropriate for early-stage projects where establishing feasibility and proof-of-concept are the most relevant outcomes of the grant period. The total budget is $500,000 or less, inclusive of 20 percent indirect costs, over a period of up to two (2) years. The Expansion track is appropriate for more mature projects with evidence of feasibility and preliminary validity, for which goals such as scalability, generalizability and/or ecological validity are now the most relevant translational outcomes. The total budget is $900,000 or less, inclusive of 20 percent indirect costs, over a period of up to three (3) years.

Grants awarded through this RFA are intended to provide early support for exploratory ideas, particularly those with novel hypotheses for autism. Appropriate projects for this mechanism include those considered higher risk with less assurance of ultimate impact, but with the potential for transformative results.

Investigators new to the field of autism are encouraged to apply for these awards. The total budget of a Pilot Award is $300,000 or less, including 20 percent indirect costs, over a period of up to two (2) years.

SFARI is invested in supporting the next generation of top autism researchers. The Bridge to Independence Award program engages talented early-career scientists to pursue autism research by facilitating their transition to research independence and providing grant funding at the start of their faculty positions at a U.S. or Canadian research institution.

Applications from groups that have been historically underrepresented or excluded in the biomedical workforce, including but not limited to racial and ethnic groups, sexual orientation and gender identities, individuals with mental/physical disabilities and those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, are encouraged.

Requests for applications (RFA) open each year and are aimed at scientists with a Ph.D. and/or M.D. who are currently in training positions but intend to seek tenure-track research faculty positions during the upcoming academic year. Fellows receive a commitment of $495,000 over three years, activated upon assumption of a tenure-track professorship, as well as a designated $10,000 gift for professional development activities to be spent during the transition year.

Grants awarded through this request for applications are intended to advance the understanding of autism spectrum disorder through analyses of human postmortem brain tissue donated to the Autism BrainNet collection.
 
The annual budget is between $300,000 and $1,000,000, inclusive of 20 percent indirect costs, for a period of two (2) years.
 
We encourage proposals from multiple investigators only when such collaborations are well justified by the expected benefits to the proposal. For collaborative proposals, the annual budget can exceed the project cap stated above but should not exceed a total of $2,000,000 inclusive of 20 percent indirect costs.

Grants awarded through this RFA are intended to capitalize on the rat as a model system to advance our understanding of the behavioral and circuit neuroscience mechanisms driving autism. This RFA will support a consortium of investigators to collaboratively use SFARI autism rat models to examine the biological basis of complex behaviors and the underlying neural circuits relevant for autism. We welcome applications from individual labs, as well as collaborative applications of up to three (3) principal investigators.

Each lab may request a maximum of $300,000, inclusive of 20 percent indirect costs, for each year of funding over a period of two (2) to three (3) years.

Grants awarded through this RFA will supplement funding from other agencies for ongoing pregnancy cohorts to broaden biospecimen collection and to extend post-natal family tracking. These cohorts and biospecimen collections can be leveraged in future research to understand the effects of gestational infection and inflammation on autism risk in children.

The maximum budget is $250,000 for projects recruiting at a single site, and $400,000 for projects recruiting at two or more sites.

SFARI Collaborations are a new funding mechanism that will provide substantive and stable funding support to multidisciplinary teams of investigators tackling critical issues in the autism research field. Collaborations will be led by a director who oversees interdisciplinary, synergistic research efforts across multiple laboratories. Investigative groups within a Collaboration will focus on the same conceptually unified topic but will incorporate different scientific disciplines, multiple levels of analysis, and will include a robust data-sharing infrastructure.
 
SFARI Collaborations have a maximum budget of up to $8,000,000, including 20 percent indirect costs, over an initial period of four years, with a possible three-year extension.
 
For our first Collaboration RFA, SFARI solicits applications to investigate sex differences in autism.

Grants awarded through this RFA are intended to provide support for the investigation of key unresolved research questions in autism, particularly those that connect etiology to brain function and behavior. SFARI welcomes risk and novelty in Research Award proposals, but potential impact on the autism research field will be the most important criterion. Competitive applications will have preliminary data or other relevant groundwork that justifies substantial investment on the proposed topic.

The maximum budget is $1,300,000, including indirect costs, over a period of up to four years.

Grants awarded through this request for applications are intended to develop and validate outcome measures that are suitable for use in intervention studies that target the core symptoms of autism spectrum disorder. Such measures should provide objective data with strong psychometric properties, be scalable for use in large, multisite studies, not be unduly burdensome to participants and families, and have evident clinical relevance. They would ideally capture naturalistic rather than laboratory behavior and be applicable to subjects across a wide range of ages and levels of functioning.

We expect to fund several awards through this mechanism. The maximum budget is $300,000 per year, including indirect costs, for up to three years. Higher budgets will be considered, but such budgets must be strongly justified.