SFARI 2020 Bridge to Independence Award – Request for Applications
The Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) is pleased to announce the 2020 Bridge to Independence Award request for applications (BTI RFA).
The BTI Award program engages talented early-career scientists in autism research by facilitating their transition to research independence and providing grant funding at the start of their professorships. Fellows receive a commitment of $495,000 over three years, activated upon assumption of a tenure-track professorship at a U.S. or Canadian research institution.
One of the most salient milestones in a scientific career is the transition from formal mentorship to an independent position. Unfortunately, this transition has become increasingly tenuous in recent years, in part because of the decreasing number of tenure-track faculty positions, which has been compounded by the increasing number of Ph.D. graduates and postgraduate traineeships. SFARI created the BTI Award program to address this issue and to encourage continued excellence in the autism research field.
This RFA is aimed at Ph.D. and M.D. – holding scientists who are currently in training positions but intend to seek tenure-track research faculty positions during the 2020–2021 academic year. The program’s selection process is uniquely designed to enhance the BTI fellow’s job prospects by specifying SFARI’s financial commitment contingent upon successful transitions to tenure-track research faculty positions.
We welcome applications that span the breadth of science that SFARI normally supports, including genetics, molecular mechanisms, circuits and systems, and clinical science. While we encourage applications from scientists who are working on autism-related projects, we would like to stress that this award is also open to researchers who are not currently working on autism but who are interested in starting research projects in this area and have expertise that could be brought to bear on this complex disorder.
The deadline for Letters of Intent and letters of recommendation is March 2, 2020. Detailed information and application instructions are available here.