Applications for Conferences and Courses Awards in Neuroscience Now Open

A photo of a student looking into a benchtop microscope. — Students at the 2025 Transylvanian Experimental Neuroscience Summer School learning alignment and fine-tuning their own benchtop microscopes. Courtesy of Transylvanian Institute of Neuroscience

The Simons Foundation’s Autism & Neuroscience division is pleased to announce the launch of a request for applications (RFA) for conferences or courses in fundamental neuroscience.

This year, conferences and courses that align with the scientific missions of any of the following programs will be prioritized:

Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI), with a mission to advance the basic science of autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders
Simons Collaboration on Plasticity and the Aging Brain (SCPAB), with a focus on healthy cognitive aging
Simons Collaboration on Ecological Neuroscience (SCENE), with a focus on understanding how interacting with the world shapes representations in the brain and mind
Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain (SCGB), which focuses on the fields of systems and computational neuroscience

We welcome applications from conference or course organizers who are employed by nonprofit organizations; public and private institutions such as colleges, universities, hospitals, laboratories and units of state and local government; and eligible agencies of the federal government.

To be eligible for funding through the 2026 RFA for the Conferences and Courses Award, the first instance of the conference or course must occur between September 1, 2026, and August 31, 2027. Funding requests for the same conference or course, either through this RFA or a previous RFA for conferences and courses, may not overlap across years.

The Gordon Research Conferences (GRC) or Seminars (GRS) are not eligible for funding through this RFA. They are funded through a separate common block grant. Please reach out to the GRC administration to have your conference considered for support through that funding mechanism.

Conferences organized by Patient Advocacy Groups (PAGs) with a focus on one or a few genes linked to autism or related neurodevelopmental disorders are also not eligible for funding through this RFA. If you are interested in support for a PAG-organized conference, you can explore the Conference Grant Support for Rare Neurodevelopmental Disorder Communities Participating in Simons Searchlight RFA.

Applicants must submit a letter of intent (LOI) by 12:00 p.m. (noon) Eastern time on April 15, 2026. LOIs must be completed electronically and submitted through the Simons Award Manager (SAM). Award recipients will be announced by July 31, 2026. See the RFA for detailed information and application instructions.