Category: Funding Opportunities

A new Recovery Act funding announcement from the NIH Office of the Director came out last week, and it offers plenty of opportunities for the NIGMS community.

If you plan to apply for the NIH Director’s Opportunity for Research in Five Thematic Areas (RC4), think big! Only projects with budgets of more than $500,000 in total costs per year for three years will be considered. A key requirement is that the application must be for a research project—no bricks and mortar; no high-end, off-the-shelf instruments—although it can be for a project that develops infrastructure.

The five thematic areas included in the program were enunciated by NIH Director Francis Collins in his first town hall meeting and in the January 1, 2010, issue of Science (PDF 240KB, Acrobat Reader ). They include:

1. Applying genomics and other high-throughput technologies to address questions in a comprehensive way (often described with the word “all,” as in all genes in an organism, all human proteins and their structures, or all major pathways for signal transduction);
2. Translating basic science discoveries into new and better treatments, diagnostics and therapeutics;
3. Using science to enable health care reform—this includes prevention; better and cheaper treatments; research on health disparities, social and behavioral factors; large population studies; comparative effectiveness research; personalized medicine; pharmacogenomics; and health services research;
4. Focusing on global health, from discovery to the development and formulation of prevention and intervention strategies that tackle infectious, parasitic and chronic diseases worldwide; and
5. Reinvigorating the biomedical research community by encouraging new collaborations and by recruiting and retaining new investigators (applications addressing this theme are still expected to be research projects).

Since the funding is limited to three years, projects must have a high short-term impact. Applications for projects with a longer timeframe should include a plan for maintaining the research efforts without any expectation of further financial assistance from NIH.

Letters of intent are due February 15, 2010, and applications are due March 15, 2010.

If you have questions, you can e-mail or call me at 301-594-1158.

We have just issued new program announcements to develop technologies for protein modeling (PAR-10-075, PAR-10-076) and high-throughput structural biology research (PAR-10-074, PAR-10-073). These announcements are part of the PSI:Biology initiative that will apply high-throughput structure determination to a broad range of biological problems. Advances in comparative molecular modeling and high-throughput approaches will play an important role in the success of this initiative.

Protein Modeling

The protein modeling announcements aim to increase the quality of protein structure models. Because they promote collaborative research and exploratory approaches in developing novel comparative modeling technology, we encourage applications from new and established investigators in mathematics, physics, computer science, statistics or other quantitative disciplines.

High-Throughput Structural Biology Research

These announcements solicit proposals for improved experimental methods and techniques for all aspects of structural biology investigations. We particularly welcome projects related to proteins that aren’t currently amenable to high-throughput structural determination by X-ray crystallography and/or NMR spectroscopy.

Successful applicants for all four announcements will become part of the PSI:Biology network.

I can answer specific questions about the modeling announcements, and Charles Edmonds can answer questions about the high-throughput ones.

The Collaborative Research for Molecular and Genomic Studies of Basic Behavior in Animal Models program announcement (PA-07-096) will expire on January 8, 2010. We will be reissuing this program announcement in 2010, but not in time for you to submit an application for the February or March R01 deadlines.

The purpose of PA-07-096 and its successor is to facilitate collaborative research between investigators with expertise in animal behavior and those with expertise in molecular biology and/or genomics that addresses questions about the mechanisms of behavior in animal models. The long-term goal is to develop new or enhanced animal models for studying aspects of behavior relevant to the NIH mission. We encourage applications from multiple PIs.

The first deadlines for applications submitted in response to the reissued program announcement will be June 7, 2010 (for new applications) and July 6, 2010 (for resubmissions). Beginning in June and July 2010, we’ll start accepting applications for the standard R01 deadlines: June/July, October/November and February/March.

Regardless of when you apply or resubmit an application for this reissued program announcement, you’ll need to use the new R01 application forms and instructions with shorter page limits.

Curious about what the reissued announcement will look like? Ask me!

We’re once again soliciting applications for exceptionally innovative research projects whose outcome, if successful, could have a major impact on a broad swath of the scientific community. NIGMS is the lead institute for the EUREKA initiative, and eight other NIH institutes are also participating this year.

If you’ve got an idea that could change the world, and your research interests mesh with those of any of the participating institutes, you should consider applying for a EUREKA grant. In general, we’re looking for projects that can be started and completed during the term of the award. The exceptionally innovative component can be the hypothesis that you’re testing—a novel, unconventional idea that challenges prevailing wisdom—or a clever solution to a technological or conceptual problem that’s impeding progress in your field.

Interested? Check out the funding opportunity announcement in the NIH Guide. You can apply for up to $250,000 (direct costs) per year for a maximum of four years. NIGMS has set aside $6 million for EUREKA awards in fiscal year 2010.

When you look at the application instructions, you’ll see that EUREKA applications are very different from conventional R01s. In your biosketch, you’ll be citing up to 10 publications, patents and meeting abstracts that demonstrate your ability to use innovative approaches to challenge conventional wisdom or solve difficult problems, rather than simply listing your most recent publications. In the research plan, which is only seven pages long, you’ll be answering questions that are designed to focus your attention on the importance of the problem, the novelty of your hypothesis or approach and the magnitude of the potential impact, rather than on experimental details. It’s not as formidable as it sounds. Many of the investigators who applied for EUREKAs in past years have told me that they enjoyed writing their applications—not a comment that we hear very often from the scientific community!

The receipt deadline for EUREKA applications is November 24, 2009. This is a special receipt date, so you won’t be able to get an extension for personal reasons or study section service. We’ll be reviewing applications in March or April 2010, and plan to make awards (around 20) in the summer of 2010.

For more information about EUREKA, check out our Frequently Asked Questions (Link no longer active).

The trans-NIH Biomedical Information Science and Technology Initiative (BISTI) funds a range of projects that advance computer science and technology to address problems in biology and medicine. BISTI, which is led by NIGMS, has just reissued four broad-based program announcements to support “innovations in biomedical computing.” In the past, BISTI has awarded 198 of these grants ranging from $200,000 to $3 million.

The announcements cover traditional research projects; exploratory, high-risk/high-impact projects; small business innovation research; and small business technology transfer grants. They apply to most areas of NIH research, from basic to clinical, and require that more than 50 percent of the proposed research involve computing. For example, investigators can request funds for scientists and software personnel to develop models to analyze a disease, and they can also request funds to obtain data or perform experiments to validate the models. Again, in all cases the majority of effort should be on the computing side.

If you want to significantly expand your computing efforts and capabilities, these funding announcements are a really great opportunity!