Simons Puts $80 Million Into How the Brain Pays for Thinking. There Is No Open Call, but the Collaboration Still Changes the Funding Map
November 4, 2026 · 7 min read
Granted Research Team · Editorial policy
The human brain is about 2 percent of body weight and uses roughly 20 percent of the energy the body produces. Neuroscientists have known this for decades, and for most of that time it has been treated as a background fact rather than a research program. Grant panels fund circuits, behavior, molecular pathways and disease models. Very few fund the question of how a neuron pays for the computation it does, or what happens to that computation when the supply runs short.
On November 2, 2026, the Simons Foundation made a 10-year bet that this should change. It launched the Simons Collaboration on Brain Energetics (SCOBE) with $80 million over 10 years for 26 investigators in systems and computational neuroscience, cellular and molecular biology, engineering and theory. The co-directors are Thomas Clandinin of Stanford and Anna Devor of Boston University.
"Every thought and action depends on neurons performing computations that are extraordinarily costly in energy terms," said Kelsey Martin, the foundation's executive vice president for autism and neuroscience. Alyssa Picchini Schaffer, vice president and senior scientific officer, called energy "one of the backbone constraints for understanding the brain that we need to address to push the field forward."
The first point for most readers is simple: you cannot apply for this money. The roster is set. But a decade-long, $80 million investment in a small field affects who gets funded next, which tools become standard, and which grant narratives reviewers find convincing. That is what this analysis covers.
What the Collaboration Funds
The collaboration page states the mission as understanding "how the mechanisms underpinning energy generation, supply and utilization in the brain place fundamental limits on neuronal computation and behavior." The foundation's release divides the work into four areas:
| Area | Core question | Why it matters outside the collaboration |
|---|---|---|
| Single-cell energetics | How individual neurons and glia make, move and spend energy, including new sensors for glucose and ATP | New genetically encoded sensors tend to spread fast once published and shared |
| Circuit energetics | How energy limits shape computation in vision, navigation and memory | Gives systems neuroscientists a new variable to put in grant aims |
| Neurovascular coupling | How blood flow tracks neural demand | Directly affects how fMRI signals are interpreted, so it matters to every human imaging lab |
| Adaptation to scarcity | How the brain functions under metabolic stress such as diabetes, low oxygen and pregnancy | Connects basic neuroscience to diseases that NIH institutes already fund heavily |
The work spans worms, flies, mice and humans, with what the foundation calls a strong emphasis on theory, computation and open data. "We are also committed to open data," said Hannah Bayer, a senior scientific officer.
The Arithmetic
Simons has not published per-investigator budgets. Averages still help:
- $80 million ÷ 10 years = $8 million a year for the collaboration overall.
- $8 million ÷ 26 investigators ≈ $308,000 per investigator per year, before any money held back for meetings, shared infrastructure, data platforms and the directors' coordination costs.
That is roughly the size of a well-funded NIH R01, and it lasts 10 years instead of five. The length matters more than the amount. A decade of committed support lets a lab build a sensor, validate it, deploy it across species and run the long experiments that metabolic questions require. An R01 renewal cycle rarely permits that.
For comparison, Simons' other active neuroscience collaborations, including the Simons Collaboration on Ecological Neuroscience (about 20 PIs) and the Simons Collaboration on Plasticity and the Aging Brain, follow the same model: a fixed, invited roster, a mission statement and multi-year funding with no rolling intake. The Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain now describes itself in the past tense, which is a reminder that these collaborations end and their investigators then go back to competing for other money.
Who Is on the Roster
The 26 investigators come mostly from elite U.S. institutions, with a significant international group. Stanford is the hub: besides Clandinin, the list includes Kwabena Boahen, Surya Ganguli, Lisa Giocomo, Nirao Shah and Longzhi Tan. Others include Anton Arkhipov (Allen Institute), Emily Jane Dennis and Alison Tebo (HHMI Janelia), Laura Lewis (MIT), Gary Yellen and Chenghua Gu (Harvard), Daniel Colón-Ramos (Yale), Priya Rajasethupathy (Rockefeller), Tim Ryan (Weill Cornell), Vidhya Rangaraju (Max Planck Florida), and, outside the U.S., Gaute Einevoll (University of Oslo), Nathalie Rochefort (Edinburgh) and Tim Vogels (IST Austria).
Two patterns are useful for strategy:
- Engineers and theorists are core members. Boahen builds neuromorphic hardware. Ganguli and Vogels are theorists. Einevoll models the biophysics of neural signals. Simons is betting that energy is a problem where theory can set hard limits and experiments then test them, so computational researchers are full participants.
- Imaging physics is included. Lewis and other members work on how vascular and metabolic signals relate to neural activity in humans. That is the group most likely to produce findings that change standard practice for fMRI researchers.
Why Energy Is Fundable Now
Three trends explain why a foundation would put $80 million into this area in 2026.
Sensors finally exist. Measuring ATP, glucose, lactate and NADH in living neurons, in real time, with cell-type specificity, was largely impossible 15 years ago. Genetically encoded metabolic sensors have since moved from proof of concept to working tools, and the collaboration's first area is intended to push them further.
Theory has a target. Theoretical neuroscience has long used efficiency arguments such as sparse coding and wiring economy. A dedicated experimental program lets those arguments be tested against measured energy budgets instead of assumed ones.
The clinical relevance is direct. Diabetes, stroke, hypoxia, aging and neurodegeneration all involve failing brain energy supply. By including pregnancy and diabetes in its scarcity area, Simons is signaling that this basic-science collaboration is meant to connect to conditions that federal agencies spend billions on.
What It Means if You Are Not One of the 26
1. Expect tools and data before you expect papers. Open-data commitments from Simons collaborations usually produce shared datasets, code and reagents. Researchers who build on SCOBE tools early, and cite them in proposals, will be able to point to an established, foundation-backed resource in their preliminary-data sections. Watch the collaboration page and investigators' lab sites for sensor constructs and datasets.
2. Put energy into your own aims, and do it carefully. Reviewers at NIH and NSF will see more energy-related submissions as the collaboration publishes. A systems neuroscience proposal that adds a well-designed metabolic measurement to an established circuit question will stand out. A proposal that only mentions "energy" as a keyword will not. The collaboration's framing, energy as a limit on computation, gives you vocabulary a panel will recognize.
3. fMRI labs should pay attention. If the neurovascular-coupling work changes how BOLD signals are interpreted under altered metabolic states, human imaging studies of diabetic, aging, pregnant or hypoxic populations will face new reviewer questions. Labs in those areas should follow this work closely and consider collaborating with SCOBE investigators on validation studies.
4. Collaborate with the roster. Simons collaborations are closed to new applicants but not to co-authors. An investigator with a model organism, patient cohort or imaging setup the collaboration lacks is a useful partner. A letter of collaboration from a SCOBE investigator in your next federal proposal shows reviewers you are connected to the field's most heavily funded effort. Note that NIH is replacing letters of support with letters of collaboration, so the relationship needs to involve real work.
5. Watch for the next Simons call. Simons does run open competitions for new collaborations. A November 14, 2022 announcement titled "Simons Foundation Seeks Proposals for New Neuroscience Collaborations" is still linked from the SCOBE page, and the collaboration launched now appears to come from a call of that kind. Those competitions come infrequently and are usually team-based. Groups planning to compete next time should start forming now.
Open Simons Programs You Can Apply To
The foundation's funding opportunities page currently lists no open collaboration call, but several programs with near-term deadlines are relevant to computational and early-career researchers:
| Program | Deadline | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Simons Postdoctoral Fellowships in Plant Biology (2027) | December 3, 2026 | Outside neuroscience but relevant to metabolism researchers |
| Targeted Grants to Math+AI Institutes (2027) | December 1, 2026, noon ET | Institutes only. See our analysis of the call |
| Utilizing the Full Power of Empire AI (2027) | December 1, 2026 | Six to 12 proposals expected |
| Fellows-to-Faculty (2027) | January 13, 2027 | $600,000 over three years for new faculty |
| Scientific Software Research Faculty Award (2027–2028) | January 21, 2027 | Fits groups that build open neuroscience tools |
| Targeted Grants in MPS | Rolling letters of intent | Mathematics and physical sciences, including theory |
Confirm eligibility and dates on each program page before planning around them.
The Bigger Picture
Large private science funders increasingly act as agenda-setters, not gap-fillers. In the same week as SCOBE, Simons also funded 11 Ukrainian Centers of Excellence in science and mathematics with grants of up to $600,000 each over three years, and in October it partnered with Anthropic and OpenAI on AI for mathematics. With federal research policy in flux and most federal awards still running on five-year cycles, a 10-year, $80 million commitment to one question is a strong signal about where private science money is going.
For neuroscientists the practical point is this: in 2026, brain energetics went from niche topic to a funded field with a defined agenda. The 26 investigators will set its early direction. Everyone else should decide now whether to build on that work, collaborate on it, or compete with it in the next round.
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