Genomic Analysis for Autism Risk Variants in SPARK – Request for Applications: How to Apply

The deadline for application submission is Friday, July 27, 2018, at 5 p.m. EDT.

proposalCENTRAL Login Information
Prospective applicants must submit an application via proposalCENTRAL (pC). To start an application in pC, users must first login to their pC account.

To submit a full application, the following proposalCENTRAL sections must be completed:

1. Title Page: Enter proposal title in this section.
2. Download Templates and Instructions: All templates necessary to complete your proposal are available for download in this module (or the PROPOSAL ATTACHMENTS module, where attachments are submitted as PDF-only files; see the “Proposal Attachments” section below for more details).
3. Enable Other Users to Access this Proposal: This section allows you to give other users access to your grant application. You have the option of giving them one of three levels of permission: View, Edit or Administrator.
4. Applicant/PI: The Principal Investigator (PI) should be listed here. For grants with multiple PIs, the contact PI should be listed here.
5. Organization/Institution: Contact information for the signing official and financial/fiscal officer from your institution is required; select the correct person or enter new names in this section.
6. Key Personnel: Indicate Key Personnel, including but not limited to: PIs, Co-investigators, Consultants and Postdoctoral Research Associates. In rare circumstances, the applicant organization may designate multiple individuals as PIs who share the authority and responsibility for leading the project, intellectually and logistically. For more information on the responsibilities of PIs, please refer to the personnel definitions in the Genomic Analysis RFA FAQ.
7. Abstracts: Enter the Abstracts as text in this section.
8. Budget Period Detail: Enter your budget period detail in this section.
   1. Award start date: Proposals selected for funding will be announced by November 14, 2018, and funding will begin on December 1, 2018.
   2. Indirect costs (IDC): IDCs are limited to 20 percent of direct costs, with the following exceptions: equipment, tuition, and any subcontracts with budgets including IDCs. IDCs paid to a subcontractor may not exceed 20 percent of the direct costs paid to the subcontractor. While IDCs on equipment are not allowable, IDCs on small equipment (equipment up to $10,000) are permissible.
   3. Equipment: The Simons Foundation (SF) will own equipment purchased with SF grant funds with a unit cost of $50,000 or more. At the end of the grant funding period or in the case of grant termination for any reason, SF reserves the right to retain ownership or cede ownership to the PI’s institution. Equipment with a unit cost of less than $50,000 shall be the property of the institution.
   4. Budget: Awards will be made in the range of $100,000 (not including indirect costs), for a period of 18 months. Exceptions with good justification will be considered but are not encouraged. Proposals should include a realistic budget sufficiently detailed for evaluation of needed resources. SFARI will work closely with investigative teams with competitive applications to arrive at a suitable budget. Applicants should detail a strategy and estimate a budget for computing costs (either cloud or academic computing facility). SFARI will pay directly for cloud storage costs, so these costs need not be included.
   5. Multiple PIs:
      1. Please note that the applicant PI will be the designated Contact PI for the project. The Contact PI will be responsible for directing the project and will act as the main point of contact for the foundation by coordinating all administrative deliverables.

       

      1. Applications with multiple PIs from different institutions who would like to be paid separately must upload in the PROPOSAL ATTACHMENTS section:
         1. Signed signature page for each PI (available for download in the PROPOSAL ATTACHMENTS and DOWNLOAD TEMPLATES AND INSTRUCTIONS sections).

          

         1. Budget Template for each non-applicant PI (available for download in the PROPOSAL ATTACHMENTS and DOWNLOAD TEMPLATES AND INSTRUCTIONS sections).

          

         1. The direct and indirect costs for all non-applicant PIs. Direct costs must be included in Section 8 (Budget Period Detail) in the CONSORTIUM & CONTRACTUAL DIRECT section, and indirect costs should be included in the INDIRECT COSTS section. Please enter both direct costs and indirect costs for each non-applicant PI on separate lines.

          

      2. Applications with multiple PIs from different institutions who will be paid directly by the contact PI’s institution are considered subcontracts. Please refer to the subcontract instructions in the section below.
      3. Applications with multiple PIs from the same institution do not need to submit additional materials. Additional non-applicant PIs should be listed as Key Personnel in section 6 (KEY PERSONNEL) and Section 8 (BUDGET PERIOD DETAIL), and only one signature page is needed.
   6. Subcontracts:
      1. Applications with subcontracts (including PIs who will be paid directly by the contact PI’s institution) must submit:
         1. Subcontract Detailed Budget (available for download in the PROPOSAL ATTACHMENTS and DOWNLOAD TEMPLATES AND INSTRUCTIONS sections) for each subcontract.

          

         1. Subcontract direct and indirect costs. Subcontract direct costs must be included in the CONSORTIUM & CONTRACTUAL DIRECT section, and subcontract indirect costs should be included in the INDIRECT COSTS section. Please enter both direct costs and indirect costs for each subcontract on separate lines.
9. Budget Summary: The Budget Summary will be populated from the saved detailed budget.
10. Organization Assurances: Indicate use of human participants or vertebrate animals in this section and status of approval from the institutional review board or Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. Grants cannot activate without current human participant and/or animal research ethical approval.
11. Proposal Attachments: The following documents are to be uploaded in this section, where they are also available for download:
    1. Proposal narrative: The proposal narrative should not exceed six (6) pages of single-spaced, size 11 text, with 0.5-inch margins. The narrative should describe the specific aims of the project, background relevant to the application, significance of the proposed studies, preliminary results, experimental design, pitfalls and alternative strategies, relevance to autism, timeline, and milestones. Figures and figure legends are not included in the page limit and should be included in the narrative PDF document. SF’s preference is for figures to follow the narrative rather than be embedded in the text. References are also not included in the page limit; please include them at the end of the narrative in the same PDF file.
    2. Biographical sketch of Key Personnel
    3. Budget justification
    4. Budget templates:
       1. Multiple PIs: Applications with multiple PIs from different institutions who would like to be paid separately must submit a signed budget template for each PI institution.

        

       1. Subcontract: Applications with subcontracts must submit a budget template.
    5. Research environment and resources: PIs should demonstrate access to appropriate resources for high-capacity data analysis and computation.
    6. Renewable reagents and data-sharing plan: The plan should include the sharing of all analyzed data in addition to the sharing of any new algorithms/data visualization tools that are a direct result of this award. SFARI will work closely with awarded investigative teams to ensure that the plan includes timely dissemination of data.
    7. Current and pending support: Please upload current and pending support for both PI(s) and Key Personnel.
    8. Signed signature page: Applications with multiple PIs from different institutions who would like to be paid separately must submit a signed signature page from each PI institution.
12. PI data sheet: Your professional profile will populate this section of the application. If revisions are required, please select EDIT PROFESSIONAL PROFILE and go to section 4 (PERSONAL DATA FOR APPLICATIONS).
13. Validate: You must click the VALIDATE button to check for any missing required information or files. All missing required information will be listed on the screen. Please supply any missing information before proceeding to the next step.
14. Signature page(s): The signed signature page is available for download in this section and must be signed by the signing official, then re-uploaded in the PROPOSAL ATTACHMENTS section. Applications with multiple PIs from different institutions who would like to be paid separately must submit a signed signature page for each PI institution.
15. Submit: You will be unable to submit if you have not provided all the required information. Any missing information will be listed on the screen. If your submission is successful, you will receive a confirmation message on the screen and a confirmation email.

Please note that narratives exceeding six (6) pages (not including figures, figure legends and references) will not be reviewed. No extensions will be given.

Contacts

Administrative inquiries:
[email protected]
646-654-0066

Scientific inquiries and requests:
[email protected]
646-654-0066

SPARK data and recruitment questions:
[email protected]
646-654-0066

proposalCENTRAL:
[email protected]
800-875-2562