The Simons Foundation is pleased to announce that Louis F. Reichardt of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) will become the next director of the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI). He is to begin his official duties at the foundation’s New York City offices in July.

More than 100 investigators and clinicians who worked together on the Simons Simplex Collection gathered in New York City to celebrate their landmark achievement in autism research.

SFARI scientific director Gerald Fischbach and principal investigator Catherine Lord of the University of Michigan published The Simons Simplex Collection: A Resource for Identification of Autism Genetic Risk Factors on 21 October in the journal Neuron.

In a milestone for the autism research community, SFARI has finished recruiting families to participate in the Simons Simplex Collection (SSC). The foundation has now shifted from recruitment of these families to supporting their continued participation in future research studies.

SFARI is pleased to announce the SFARI Explorer Awards program: an initiative designed to provide timely support to innovative, high-risk experiments relevant to our mission.

Sharmila Banerjee-Basu, founder and president of Mindspec Inc., and Alan Packer, associate director for research at SFARI, have published an article describing a new SFARI Gene module in the community news section of the journal Disease Models & Mechanisms.

The SFARI team is pleased to announce the launch of SFARI Gene, a new online tool for autism researchers.