The primary purpose of the predoctoral fellowship is to provide funding to support exceptional research training opportunities for highly qualified candidates. Fellows will work directly with mentors who are leading autism researchers across a wide variety of fields broadly related to autism research. Autism Speaks encourages applications on all topics, but applications on the following topics are particularly encouraged: 

• Adult transition and life course outcomes (including aging and older adulthood)
• Behavior dangerous to self and others, including certain self-injurious behaviors, and innovative, person-centered supports and interventions (e.g., addressing social or environmental triggers of behaviors) to promote physical and emotional well-being 
• Co-occurring medical and mental health conditions (particularly seizures and GI problems/microbiome), with an emphasis on intervention studies and can also include immunology/inflammation
• Development and validation of measures:
• Examining outcomes important to community members (e.g., well-being)
• Including novel or non-traditional modalities (e.g., machine learning, biological measures)
• Gender, sexual health and/or reproductive health
• Innovative implementation of technology to enhance reach and impact of services, with an emphasis on diagnosis and intervention in low resource settings
• Pre-clinical studies aimed at helping to ameliorate the most disabling challenges associated with autism
• Research addressing interactions with service systems that can inform systematic policy changes
• Research that benefits communities who experience compounded marginalization (for research that involves human participants, Autism Speaks will prioritize study designs that include and benefit the diversity of the community that they serve)
• Studies addressing the mental health and well-being of autistic people (as defined by them)
• Studies that focus on individuals who experience autism with intellectual disability, who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), or those for whom communication solutions are unavailable

• Others (see text field entitled "Additional Eligibility Criteria" for clarification)