The Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) has selected the project of Drs. Xinyu Zhao (Neuroscience), Qiang Chang (Medical Genetics and Neurology), Daifeng Wang (Biostatistics & Medical Informatics, Computer Sciences), and Andre Sousa (Neuroscience) as recipient of the 2022 SFARI Pilot Award.
SFARI plans to commit approximately $4.88 million in funding over the next two years to 16 investigators from the United States and internationally.
Their project is: Assessing functions of autism genes in deep layer neurons during primate midfetal development using knockdown-patch-seq.
The goal of the Pilot Award program is to provide early support for exploratory ideas, particularly those with novel hypotheses, that have the potential to yield transformative results in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) research. The research projects funded in this cycle will focus on a variety of topics, including functional analyses of ASD risk genes, epigenetic mechanisms perturbed in ASD, and neural circuits underlying differences in social communication, motor control and sensory perception in ASD.
Congratulations, Xinyu and Andre!