Introduction

The mission of the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) is to improve the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) by funding innovative research of the highest quality and relevance.

Several prospective pregnancy cohorts, across multiple continents, are being recruited during the COVID-19 pandemic. These cohorts afford the opportunity to better understand the impact of maternal infection and inflammation on risk for neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism.

Budget

Awards made for projects that recruit at a single site will have a maximum budget of $250,000 (total) over 3 years of funding, including 20 percent indirect costs. Projects that recruit at two or more sites may request a maximum budget up to $400,000 (total), including indirect costs.

Eligibility

Applications should include the following elements:

• Cohort: Please describe the current and expected total cohort size, current and expected racial/ethnic composition of the cohort, strategy for determining COVID-19 exposure status and number of mothers in the cohort who are known or expected to be exposed to COVID-19 during pregnancy.
• Existing cohort funding: The duration and amount of existing support for your cohort efforts will be critical elements in the evaluation of applications.
• Biospecimens: Describe biospecimen types and collection schedule under the support you currently hold

Application

The Simons Foundation uses an electronic grants submission process. All interested grant applicants must submit their applications online through proposalCENTRAL. Once you are logged into proposalCENTRAL:

• Navigate to the grant opportunities tab.
• Select Simons Foundation from the 'Filter by Grant Maker' drop-down list.
• You will then see the list of current Simons Foundation grant opportunities.

In case of interest, please contact lnorton(ELIMINAR)@fsjd.org