Announcing the Recipients of the 2026 Fellows

Announcing the Recipients of the 2026 Fellows-to-Faculty Awards The Simons Foundation is pleased to announce the 2026 class of its Fellows-to-Faculty program. The program supports talented early-career scientists and their research visions as they transition into tenure-track faculty positions in areas of science supported by the Simons Foundation’s Autism & Neuroscience division. The 15 recipients will be supported through the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) and the Simons Collaboration on Plasticity and the Aging Brain (SCPAB). “We are excited to welcome this talented cohort of scientists to the Simons community,” says Kelsey Martin, executive vice president of autism and neuroscience at the Simons Foundation. “Their diverse expertise, including clinical insights and computational approaches, reflects the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of basic science, and we look forward to seeing all that they accomplish.” Fellows receive funding toward the end of their postdoctoral careers and a $600,000 faculty research grant commitment over three years. The next Fellows-to-Faculty request for applications will open in October 2026. The program will accept fellows whose research aligns with the missions of SFARI, SCPAB and the Simons Collaboration on Ecological Neuroscience (SCENE). This will be the final cycle to host fellows within SCPAB. Prospective applicants are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the program information page. Meet the 2026 fellows: SFARI Joao Couto, Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles Mechanisms Underlying Altered Brain-Wide Coordination in Autism Models Gustavo Della Flora Nunes, Ph.D. University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus The Contribution of Oligodendrocytes to Autism Pathogenesis Erin Duffy, Ph.D. Harvard University Neuronal Activity-Regulated RNA Stability Modulates Dosage of Autism-Associated Genes Travis Faust, Ph.D. University of Massachusetts Medical School Microglia-Astrocyte Crosstalk During Synapse Remodeling Melissa Franch, Ph.D. Baylor College of Medicine Single Neuron Computations Underlying Social Interactions in Individuals with Autism Shohei Furutachi, Ph.D. University College London Neural Circuit Mechanism of the “Overfitting Spiral” in Autism Tamar Regev, Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Investigations of Speech Prosody Using Brain Imaging and Neural Network Models in Neurotypical and Autistic Individuals Diane Shao, MD, Ph.D. Boston Children’s Hospital Somatic Genetic Architecture in Autism Rajan Thakur, Ph.D. Brown University Lipid Transport Proteins in Neurodevelopment and Autism Ruofan Yu, Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania Decoding Nuclear Speckle-Driven Gene Regulatory Pathways in Development and Autism SCPAB Gregor Bieri, Ph.D. University of California, San Francisco Brain Vascular Regulators of Homeostasis and Cognition in Aging Krithi Irmady, M.D., Ph.D. Rockefeller University RNA Regulation in Synaptic Plasticity and Aging Michael Kelberman, Ph.D. University of Colorado Boulder A Novel Model to Investigate How Social Bonds Shape Cognitive Aging Mauro Monsalve Mercado, Ph.D. Columbia University Mechanistic Neural Geometry: Linking Biology to Cognition in the Aging Brain Titas Sengupta, Ph.D. Princeton University Epigenetic Regulation of Memory in Response to Aging and the Environment