Key Dates

Related Announcements

PA-20-272 - Administrative Supplements to Existing NIH Grants and Cooperative Agreements (Parent Admin Supp Clinical Trial Optional)

Issued by

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)

Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)

National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)

National Cancer Institute (NCI)

All applications to this funding opportunity announcement should fall within the mission of the Institutes/Centers. The following NIH Offices may co-fund applications assigned to those Institutes/Centers.

Office of Data Science Strategy (ODSS)

Purpose

The purpose of this Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) is to highlight interest in supporting supplemental funding applications for award recipients currently funded by participating NIH Institutes and Centers to prepare data assets relevant for infectious- and immune-mediated disease research for inclusion in the NIAID Data Ecosystem. Research may include studies that strive to generate a better understanding of mechanisms for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of infectious- and immune mediated diseases. Relevant data must already have been collected and applicants must demonstrate that the data assets have value to other researchers for studies of infectious- and immune-mediated disease. The supplemental funding will enable applicants to prepare their data assets for meeting technical specifications for inclusion in the NIAID Data Ecosystem. The proposed supplemental activities must be within the scope of the approved aims of the parent award.

Scope of Interest

The NIAID Data Ecosystem aims to improve the discovery and (re-)use of data for research on infectious- and immune-mediated disease research. Development of the NIAID Data Ecosystem is ongoing and the public launch is expected in the next year. The NIAID Data Ecosystem comprises: (1) a data discovery portal that indexes structured metadata from a broad range of data repositories and that enables researchers to search and find data relevant to their research; and (2) a cloud-based workspace that enables researchers to analyze data with publicly available software applications or with their own applications.

The NIAID Data Ecosystem is currently indexing metadata for data assets hosted by domain and general-purpose repositories to enable discovery of data assets through the Ecosystem data discovery portal. Many data assets that could be valuable for infectious- and immune-mediated diseases are not yet in such repositories or have no structured, high-quality metadata. Through this NOSI, NIAID and other participating ICs seek applications for administrative supplements that will provide award recipients with the resources to prepare existing data assets of high value for infectious- and immune-mediated disease research for inclusion in the NIAID Data Ecosystem. Data assets can be data repositories, databases, knowledge bases, datasets, or other digital objects collected by individual researchers or research groups. Examples of the types of datasets appropriate for the NIAID Data Ecosystem include, but are not limited to, genomic, proteomic, laboratory assay, clinical, and epidemiological data related to pathogens and pathogen exposures, human host immune response, or similar datasets. Data assets created primarily for research outside the infectious- and immune-mediated disease domain, such as cancer immunology, could be in scope for this supplement if the applicants can demonstrate the value of the data for research on infectious- and immune-mediated diseases, e.g., to gain mechanistic insight or to develop new diagnostics, therapeutics, or vaccines.

Examples of projects that might be candidates for supplement activities include, but are not limited to, data repositories, data management and coordination centers, and projects that create unique datasets. Depending on their situation, applicants could propose to make their repository compatible with Ecosystem specifications, as described below, to create metadata that can be included in the Ecosystem Data Discovery Portal, to deposit their dataset in a repository and create high-quality metadata, or similar work. Also see examples of eligible activities below.

To be included into the NIAID Data Ecosystem, data assets need to meet certain technical requirements. A data asset needs to be deposited in a professionally managed repository or at least managed by a mature data management or coordination center, see NIH NOT-OD-21-016 about selecting a repository, and Office of Science and Technology Policy guidance on desirable characteristics of data repositories for federally funded research. The NIAID Data Ecosystem is not a repository, and data deposition in a repository or data management center is required to ensure sustained availability of the data to the user community for at least the foreseeable future. Data assets should also follow the technical specifications of the FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Data assets need to have high-quality, complete, structured metadata that is represented in a format compliant with schema.org or with an alternative highly used metadata standard that can be mapped to schema.org. An example of a metadata format and schema is the NIAID Data Ecosystem Specifications listed by the Data Discovery Engine. The metadata will need to be accessible to the NIAID Data Ecosystem via a well-documented Application Programming Interface (API) or FHIR Server that follows global standards. For proposed integration of data assets with the NIAID Data Ecosystem Workspace, data assets should be accessible to the NIAID Data Ecosystem via an API that follows the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) Data Repository Service (DRS) specifications. If authentication or authorization is required for data or metadata assets, the identity provider or service for the data asset should allow for integration with services that support multiple identity providers, such as the NIH Researcher Auth Service (RAS)

Examples of activities to prepare data assets for inclusion in the NIAID Data Ecosystem include, but are not limited to:

• Augmenting metadata by improving completeness (e.g., include biologically relevant metadata elements) and FAIR compliance, including representing metadata elements according to standard vocabularies and ontologies.
• Registering complete and FAIR compliant metadata with highly used metadata catalogues, such as the Data Discovery Engine, FAIRSharing, DataCite, or others.
• Re-representing metadata according to schema.org or alternative schema’s that are highly used and that can be mapped to schema.org;
• Exposing FAIR-compliant metadata via a well-documented API, Elasticsearch, or FHIR service.
• Exposing data assets via a well-documented API that follows GA4GH DRS, the FAIR Data Point specification, or similarly highly used and well-documented API standards.
• Depositing data in a professionally managed data repository (see NIH and OSTP guidance on selecting a repository) or an established data coordination/management center, and creating high-quality and complete metadata.

This notice encourages applications to prepare existing data assets for discovery and (re-)use by others through the NIAID Data Ecosystem, leveraging the FAIR Guiding Principles as technical specification for how to prepare data assets.

Eligibility

• Only awardees currently funded by one of the participating NIH ICs are eligible to apply. Applicants are strongly encouraged to consult the Program Officer and the Grant Management Officer of the parent award to confirm eligibility and that the supplement falls within the scope of the parent award.
• Non-domestic (non-U.S.) Entities (Foreign Institutions) are eligible to apply. Non-domestic (non-U.S.) components of U.S. Organizations are eligible to apply.
• The proposed project period of the supplement cannot extend beyond the project period of the parent award.
• The parent grant may not be in its first or last 12 months of award at the time the supplement is requested. Awards in a No Cost Extension (NCE) by the time the supplement would be made are ineligible.

Application and Submission Information

Applications for this initiative must be submitted using the following opportunity or its subsequent reissued equivalent.

• PA-20-272 - Administrative Supplements to Existing NIH Grants and Cooperative Agreements (Parent Admin Supp Clinical Trial Optional)

All instructions in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide and PA-20-272 must be followed, with the following additions:

• Application Due Date(s) – February 13, 2023, February 13, 2024, and February 13, 2025 by 5:00 PM local time of applicant organization.
• For funding consideration, applicants must include “NOT-AI-23-009” (without quotation marks) in the Agency Routing Identifier field (box 4B) of the SF424 R&R form. Applications without this information in box 4B will not be considered for this initiative.
• Applicants are strongly encouraged to notify the program contact at the Institute supporting the parent award that a request has been submitted in response to this FOA in order to facilitate efficient processing of the request.

Budget

• Requests may be for one year of support only.
• Examples of allowable effort include, but are not limited to, programmer effort to create API’s, curator effort to prepare or augment (meta)data for more effective sharing or submitting data to repositories.

Research Strategy

• Describe how the preparation of the data asset will be completed in one year and what work must be done to meet the target specifications.
• Provide evidence that the applicants have the technical expertise to conduct the proposed work.
• Provide evidence for the potential value of their data asset to the research community, e.g., through describing the number of data requests, data sharing history, or through a compelling rationale with the potential user community in mind.
• The Research Strategy section is limited to 6 pages.

Letters of Support

• Submit letters of support from all collaborating partners which describes their roles and responsibilities on the project. Letters of support may not exceed two pages.

Evaluation

• Only applications proposing preparation of existing data assets that are of value for infectious- and immune-mediated disease research will be considered for funding.
• Generation of new data will not be supported and will be considered non-responsive to this notice.

Inquiries

NIAID plans to hold an informational webinar for this NOSI around the middle of December 2022. Details about the webinar will be posted on the NIAID Data Science website. Participation in the webinar is not required to submit an application in response to this NOSI.

Please direct all inquiries to the contacts in Section VII of the listed funding opportunity announcements with the following additions/substitutions:

Office of Data Science and Emerging Technologies
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
Telephone: 301-761-7328
Email: [email protected]

Juli Klemm, Ph.D.
National Cancer Institute (NCI)
Telephone: 202-853-7889
Email: [email protected]

Rebecca Rosen, Ph.D.
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
Telephone: 301-827-4602
Email: [email protected]

Zhongzhen Nie, Ph.D.
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)
Telephone: 301-496-1433
Email: [email protected]

Laura Biven, Ph.D.
Office of Data Science Strategy (ODSS)
Telephone: 301-480-4021
Email: [email protected]

Ishwar Chandramouliswaran
Office of Data Science Strategy (ODSS)
Telephone: 301-761-7822
Email: [email protected]