Simons Collaborations in Ecology and Evolution Grant

The Simons Foundation invites vision statements for new collaborations in Ecology and Evolution, aiming to foster innovative, cross-disciplinary research. With a budget of $8 million per year, the initiative seeks to support up to three projects that explore fundamental ecological and evolutionary dynamics. Eligible applicants include Ph.D. holders in academic or research institutions, focusing on high-impact, idea-generating studies that may be overlooked by traditional funding sources.

The Simons Foundation seeks to create strong collaborations and foster the cross-pollination of ideas between investigators, as these interactions often lead to unexpected breakthroughs. Towards this end, in 2012 the foundation launched a new collaborative funding model, the Simons Collaborations, which funds groups of investigators — often from different disciplines — to work together on a timely and important problem. To date, Simons Collaborations have been launched in and across our Life Sciences, Mathematics and Physical Sciences and Neuroscience divisions.
Their goal is to bring together groups of outstanding scientists to address topics of fundamental scientific importance, with a focus on fields in which significant new developments have created novel opportunities for exploration.
Call for Vision Statements for New Ecology & Evolution Collaborations
The Simons Foundation’s Life Sciences division is now seeking vision statements to identify new, emerging breakthrough areas of ecology and evolution that are poised for high-impact funding by the Simons Foundation. We are interested in idea-generating research that focuses on basic principles of ecological and evolutionary dynamics, especially their interface, and that may be overlooked or too risky for other funding organizations. To enable bold, cutting-edge and innovative research, each collaboration will be funded for five years, with the potential of one renewal.
We will prioritize cross-disciplinary collaborations that integrate levels of scale, for example from genes to species to communities, from local to global processes, or across ecological and evolutionary time scales. We are particularly interested in projects that cut across boundaries, whether these boundaries entail fields and subfields, diverse methodological approaches and/or the geographical regions from which investigators work.
Funding Levels and Period
The total budget for 1-3 new Ecology and Evolution Collaborations will be $8 million USD per year. We anticipate identifying up to three collaborations, with the funding level of each collaboration determined by the proposed scope and aims of the project. As a guideline, we suggest budgets of between $1–4 million USD per year, inclusive of twenty percent indirect costs.

Eligibility

All investigators must hold a Ph.D. or equivalent degree and have a faculty position or the equivalent (eligible for receiving grant funding as a PI) at a college, university, research institute or other research facility. In addition, eligible applicants must have research space at their institution.
Applications may be submitted by domestic and foreign nonprofit organizations; public and private institutions, such as colleges, universities, laboratories, institutes, units of state and local government; and research-oriented agencies of the federal government. There are no citizenship requirements for PIs.PIs and any project personnel listed on the application who will receive funding for salary, travel, support for students, postdocs or research staff, lab equipment, computing time or other individual expenses may not be employees of the Simons Foundation, which includes the Flatiron Institute.

Ineligibility

Simons Foundation employees who receive a W-2 (Wage and Tax Statement) from the Simons Foundation, including employees of the Flatiron Institute, may not apply as a principal investigator (PI) to any Simons Foundation or Simons Foundation International Requests for Applications (RFAs) released by the Simons Foundation.