Deadline for applications: 16 Feb, 16 Jun, 16 Oct each year
Purpose
The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to support projects that utilize open-access data, alone or in combination with other datasets, to address knowledge gaps in basic and/or clinical research in infectious diseases.
Background
NIAID has made significant investments in the generation of data to better inform our understanding of infectious diseases, their progression, risk and severity and, treatment and prevention. In particular, the omics-related programs have generated high-throughput genomic, proteomics, integrated "omics" data sets, and other related resources to the scientific community to further basic and applied research in infectious diseases. These are available via the Bioinformatics Resource Centers (BRCs) - https://www.niaid.nih.gov/research/bioinformatics-resource-centers - for the scientific community to better enable the use of open access data.
Much of these datasets have potential utility beyond the specific hypotheses and questions for which they were originally generated. Further investigation of existing datasets provides opportunities to answer novel research questions for infectious diseases at relatively low cost, enhance the value of NIAID investments in research, and re-use open-access data sets. Existing dataset usage also fosters a research paradigm that leverages public data to generate and/or refine hypotheses prior to experimental design. The combination of multiple previously collected datasets may reveal interesting hypotheses or directions for infectious disease research. The resulting studies might also reveal any barriers to data re-use and help identify tools needed and/or metadata that could be collected to better enable data re-use by the community.
In recent years, new principles for data management and stewardship have emerged as well, which state that data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable (FAIR) - https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201618. NIAID is committed to sharing data in alignment with these principles and to exploring how current NIAID repositories, knowledgebases, tools and other resources may need to be re-configured to coexist in a truly interoperable and usable research data ecosystem.
Research Objectives
This primary objective of this FOA is to invite applications that seek to answer novel scientific questions by using data in the BRCs. Research projects may propose combining data from other data repositories, including private user-generated data but must use data in the BRC. Projects focused on influenza, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB), antimicrobial resistance and malaria are encouraged although projects based on other pathogens relevant to NIAID will be supported. Data, tools and other resources generated are expected to meet the FAIR principles and credit all contributors including data generators. Applicants are encouraged to contact the Scientific/Research staff listed below to ensure proposed projects are within the scope of this funding opportunity.
For more information, or to apply, visit the call webpage.
