Vice President and Senior Scientific Officer, SFARI

About the role

The Vice President and Senior Scientific Officer (VP/SSO) will serve as a member of the Autism and Neuroscience (A&N) division's leadership team. Reporting to the Executive Vice President (EVP), the VP/SSO will oversee a team of 3 - 5 Scientific/Senior Scientific Officers.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the scientific lead for the SFARI grants process, including RFA development, evaluation of progress of funded grants, leading scientific review panels, making funding recommendations, analysis of current portfolio, etc.
• Optimally leverage SFARI resources, including its cohorts, data, and biospecimens, in the RFA process.
• Lead process improvement efforts pertaining to the full grant making cycle.
• Manage a portfolio of funded grants, working directly with investigators to evaluate progress and review relevant reporting, and collaborating with the Simons Foundation's grants team.
• Contribute to shaping and advancing SFARI's strategic planning and scientific priorities, organizing and leading working groups and workshops/meetings.
• Partner with SFARI leadership to design strategies to increase inclusive excellence in autism research, work to advance scientific collaboration and data sharing, and identify opportunities to partner with other organizations.
• Provide leadership support for Autism BrainNet (ABN), organizing scientific workshops to define program goals and strategy, assembling and coordinating the ABN Scientific Advisory Council.
• Collaborate with other funders in the autism space to ensure synergy/non-duplication of efforts, potentially collaborating across multidisciplinary scientific and computational fields.
• Maintain a future focus on emerging fields that may bring new scientific tools, technologies, and approaches to autism research.
• Stay abreast of the field of autism research and related fields by reading the relevant scientific literature and attending relevant external scientific seminars and meetings.
• Attend relevant scientific seminars, workshops, and courses hosted by the Simons Foundation, including the Flatiron Institute.
• Collaborate with the Simons Foundation's communications team, making recommendations for areas of science to highlight on the website and newsletters, contributing content, reviewing draft articles, etc.
• Oversee a team of Scientific/Senior Scientific Officers, providing support and guidance as needed.

Qualifications

• A Ph.D. and/or M.D. in a neuroscience-related field, ideally relevant to the study of autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders.
• 10+ years of work experience post-training, including 5+ years of strong operational management with a proven track record of leading, developing, and motivating high-performing teams who are experts in their field.
• Strong scientific background, broad knowledge of neuroscience, and deep understanding of academic neuroscience research and strong knowledge across human and animal model systems.
• Experience collaborating with multidisciplinary teams of clinicians, neuroscientists, geneticists, and experimental researchers to address scientific questions.
• Experience with data-sharing and open science initiatives, experience directing an independent research group is strongly valued.

Preferred Qualifications

• Foundation in computational approaches to neuroscience, biology, or a related quantitative discipline.
• Ability to recognize and support the value of integrating theoretical and computational methods with experimental approaches in neuroscience.
• Commitment to expanding pathways to science and opportunities for all, supporting partners, programs, and initiatives that seek to broaden the scientific community and open pathways to science and mathematics careers.