The Office of Foundations Relations is pleased to share this open call for LOIs from the Simons Foundation.
UCSC Contact: Samantha Forde|forde@ucsc.edu
Funder: Simons Foundation
Program: Simons Collaborations in Ecology and Evolution
Deadline: October 16, 2025, at 9:00 a.m. PT
Overview
The Simons Foundation’s Life Sciences division is soliciting vision statements (Letters of Intent, or LOIs) to identify new, emerging, and breakthrough areas of ecology and evolution that are poised for high-impact funding by the Simons Foundation. The Simons Foundation is 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.
The Simons Foundation 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. Particular interest is placed on projects that cut across boundaries, whether these boundaries entail fields and subfields, diverse methodological approaches and/or the geographical regions from which investigators work.
Proposals should include investigators at multiple levels of seniority and across academic disciplines. The foundation anticipates identifying up to three collaborations, with the funding level of each collaboration determined by the proposed scope and aims of the project (see below).
Please see FAQs here.
Eligibility
- all investigators must hold a Ph.D. or equivalent degree
- must hold a faculty position or the equivalent (eligible for receiving grant funding as a PI)
- must have research space at their institution
Funding
$1–4 million USD per year for five years (inclusive of twenty percent indirect costs). The total budget for 1-3 new Ecology and Evolution Collaborations will be $8 million USD per year.
Timeline
- October 16, 2025 Vision Statement (LOI) Deadline
- March 2, 2026 Invitation to Submit Full Proposal
- April 30, 2026 Full Proposal Deadline
- November 2, 2026 Invitation to Present (Finalists Only)
- Week of December 7, 2026 Presentations (Estimate)
- February 1, 2027 Award Notification
- April 1, 2027 Funding Start Date
Special Instructions
Please notify the Office of Foundation Relations if you are interested in applying to this opportunity (fr@ucsc.edu). For supportin developing your proposal, please contact the Research Development Specialist assigned to your unit or send a request to resdev@ucsc.edu. Within the Division of Social Sciences, please contact Ashlee Tews (ashleeac@ucsc.edu).
Call sent: August 5, 2025
The Office of Foundation Relations is a unit of University Advancement. The FR team creates and maintains mutually beneficial, long-term relationships with private organizations, matching grant initiatives with educational and research programs and centers. FR supports faculty and staff to identify and approach these and other private foundations for funding, to assist in strategic positioning of the grant application, and to facilitate funder campus visits. For a list of recent funding opportunities, please visit the FR website: FR Calls for Funding.