Funding Opportunities

SPARK is a SFARI initiative intended to recruit, engage and retain a community of 50,000 individuals with autism, and their family members, in the United States. This research cohort includes children and adults who span the full autism spectrum and individuals of all socio-demographic backgrounds.

Through this RFA, SFARI will add additional clinical sites to its existing clinical site network for the purposes of recruiting SPARK participants. Selected clinical sites will receive funding of up to $200,000/year, including indirect costs, for a maximum of three years.

Grants awarded through this RFA are intended to advance our understanding of the genetic basis of autism. Investigators who are interested in analyzing genomic data in innovative ways from thousands of SPARK families are encouraged to apply.

Available data will include whole-exome and genome-wide genotyping data from approximately 4,500 individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their biological parents. Approximately half of these families will also have genomic data from an unaffected sibling. In addition, whole-genome sequencing data will be available from approximately 400 other ASD individuals, plus their biological parents and unaffected siblings. A limited phenotypic dataset for all participants will be available.

We expect to fund several awards in the range of $100,000 (direct costs) for 18 months. Higher budgets will be considered, but we expect such budgets to be strongly justified.

Application type for proposals requesting support of exploratory experiments that will strengthen hypotheses and lead to the formulation of competitive applications for subsequent larger-scale funding by SFARI or other organizations. Innovative, high-risk/high-impact proposals are encouraged. We especially encourage applications from investigators who are new to the field of autism, but who have expertise that could be brought to bear on this complex disorder. The maximum budget is $80,000, including indirect costs, for one (1) year, non-renewable.

** Note: The Explorer Award program has ended (the last receipt of applications was June 15, 2018). Please read our blog post for more information.

Grants awarded through this RFA are intended to advance our understanding of the genetic basis of autism, and in particular, to begin to assess genetic variants conferring risk in non-coding regions and in coding regions of the genome that may be less accessible to whole-exome sequencing. Investigators who are interested in developing innovative and efficient ways to analyze whole-genome sequencing data from 500 Simons Simplex Collection (SSC) families are encouraged to apply. The maximum budget is $250,000, including indirect costs, for eighteen months, non-renewable.

Grants awarded through this RFA are intended to advance our understanding of the genetic basis of autism, and in particular the potential role of missense and in-frame deletion variants in conferring risk. Investigators who are interested in developing medium- or high-throughput screens to test the functional effects of missense and in-frame deletion variants identified in the Simons Simplex Collection (SSC) and other autism collections are encouraged to apply.

Grants awarded through this RFA are intended to advance our understanding of the impact of activation of the innate immune system on behavioral, circuit, synaptic and neuronal functions in order to understand the consequences of infection and immune activation on autism-related behaviors. Experiments should include physiologically relevant activation/inhibition of the innate immune system in animal models of autism and should focus on neuronal, synaptic and circuit function.

This RFA seeks proposals that take advantage of the unique combination of biospecimens and rich phenotypic information collected by the Simons Variation in Individuals Project (Simons VIP). Although SFARI is open to many different approaches, we will likely give priority to those that aim to accomplish a comprehensive characterization of RNA expression differences and correlate such expression patterns with phenotypes. Furthering the ability to include genomic analysis would be an additional strength. The data produced in this effort will be made available to the research community with minimum delay and thus will be a valuable resource for all researchers.

Grants awarded through this RFA are intended to advance our understanding of the circuit basis for behavioral and cognitive alterations relevant to autism spectrum disorders. The goal is to determine the downstream consequences of autism-associated genetic perturbations on neural circuitry, with an emphasis on how collections of neurons operate in concert during autism-relevant behaviors. Experiments should include investigations of neural circuits in awake, behaving rodent models of autism. It is anticipated that SFARI will work closely with awarded investigative teams on all major aspects of the project, including selection of rodent models, data coordination and dissemination.

This RFA seeks proposals that aim to comprehensively analyze the behavior of mouse models that have been generated with targeted genetic mutations based on strong human genetic evidence implicating them in autism spectrum disorders. We expect investigators will test at least three genetic models in the same background strain (C57BL/6). In addition, investigators should analyze the behavior of one of the selected autism mouse models in a different genetic background, such as a hybrid background from two inbred strains. Proposals should include: 1) sophisticated automation in data collection, 2) long-term monitoring of spontaneous behavior, 3) an analysis of both sexes, and 4) a minimum of three developmental time-points, particularly those during critical periods of brain development.