Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Funds 180 Young Scientists

The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation announced its 2026 class of 180 Young Investigator grantees on October 7, committing more than $12.5 million in two-year awards to early-career scientists working on basic, translational and clinical research in brain and behavior disorders. The grantees were selected from 993 applications by the foundation's Scientific Council, a volunteer body of 192 scientists and clinicians drawn from psychiatry and neuroscience.

"BBRF Young Investigators represent a new generation of researchers who will pioneer breakthroughs in mental health research," said Jeffrey Borenstein, M.D., the foundation's president and chief executive. The awards are the foundation's main instrument for seeding high-risk ideas early in a researcher's career, and the 2026 portfolio shows where the field's next questions are clustering.

Depression, schizophrenia and a broad diagnostic spread

More than half of the funded projects — 52 percent — are relevant to depression or schizophrenia. The remaining awards span anxiety disorders, addiction and substance use disorders, autism spectrum disorders, PTSD, bipolar disorder, ADHD, OCD and suicide prevention. More than 30 projects, about one in six, focus on prenatal brain development or childhood and adolescence, reflecting sustained attention to the early biological and environmental roots of mental illness.

The methodological mix the foundation reported is weighted toward upstream science: 88 percent of the grants support basic research, 24 percent support work on next-generation therapies, 17 percent advance diagnostic tools and early intervention, and 3 percent focus on new technologies. Individual projects can count in more than one category.

The work on next-generation therapies includes efforts to extend the benefits of rapid-acting treatments for postpartum depression and studies of psychedelic compounds such as psilocybin and 5-MeO-DMT, alongside non-invasive brain stimulation for depression. The addiction and substance use projects sit in the same portfolio as those psychiatric studies, which matters because medication for opioid use disorder remains the rare area of addiction care with a settled evidence base — most of the field's treatment questions, from relapse prevention to dual diagnosis, are still open enough to attract basic-science funding.

"BBRF Young Investigator grants fund groundbreaking research aimed at reducing suffering in people with mental illness," said Judith M. Ford, Ph.D., president of the foundation's Scientific Council and co-chair of the grant selection committee. "These early-career scientists are pushing the boundaries in basic and clinical research to establish new approaches to early prediction, prevention, and intervention and to develop next-generation therapies that offer hope for those with brain and behavior illnesses."

A global, mostly American cohort

Seventy-nine percent of the 2026 grantees are based in the United States, and the remaining 21 percent come from 15 other countries. The foundation said it has awarded more than $487 million to more than 5,900 scientists since 1987, and that 100 percent of every dollar donated for research goes to research, with operating expenses covered by separate foundation grants. It publishes a full list and summaries of the funded projects in its annual grants booklet.

What Young Investigator money buys

Grant programs like this one occupy a specific niche in mental health research: they fund the pilot work that larger federal awards will not yet touch, and they carry weight precisely where public funding is most exposed to political swings. The federal grants that anchor most academic addiction and psychiatric research run on multi-year cycles, which means a shift in appropriations takes time to reach laboratory benches — but a young investigator whose pilot funding lapses rarely gets a second window.

For families and clinicians, the near-term effect of the 2026 class is indirect. None of the 180 projects is a finished treatment, and the foundation frames the round as an investment in the pipeline rather than a result. But the concentration of awards in depression, schizophrenia and early-life development is a signal about where researchers believe the next generation of interventions — including treatments that address co-occurring mental health and substance use conditions — is most likely to move.