Key Dates

Related Announcements

• October 9, 2020 - Administrative Supplements to Existing NIH Grants and Cooperative Agreements (Parent Admin Supp Clinical Trial Optional). See NOFO PA-20-272. 

Issued by

National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK)

Purpose

The Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases (DDEMD) in NIDDK currently supports numerous data rich projects designed to collect an array of human data types with the goal of understanding the heterogeneity and pathogenesis of Type 2 Diabetes (T2D), and to develop appropriate prevention and treatment strategies.  

The goal of this Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) is to provide support through administrative supplements collaborations to improve interoperability/re-use for NIDDK supported T2D data sets and related resources such as repositories and knowledgebases.  This initiative is aligned with the NIDDK Strategic Plan for Research, which describes research opportunities aimed at developing innovative technologies and resources to expand data science to advance scientific progress and enhance health, and to utilize data science to improve clinical studies.  

This NOSI is soliciting administrative supplements from existing awardees funded by NIDDK's DDEMD. Projects are eligible to apply if they have at least one year of support remaining in the project period as of July 1, 2023.  

Background 

NIDDK currently supports a range of data rich projects designed to collect multi-modal data types with the goal of understanding the heterogeneity and pathogenesis of T2D, and to develop appropriate prevention and treatment strategies. These include large consortia efforts such as AMP-CMD, HPAP-T1D, HPAP-T2D, TEDDY, and RADIANT as well investigator-initiated RC2/R01/DP1 projects.  They are not only generating large data sets but also developing related resources such as data repositories and knowledge bases to facilitate sharing the reuse of their data sets.  NIDDK mandates its funded projects to comply with the FAIR principles, i.e., making all data sets and related resources Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable.  While Findability and Accessibility are usually achieved, many projects face unexpected challenges in making their data sets and related resources Interoperable with that from other programs and projects, which consequently also affect the Reusability.  This also poses obstacles in the reuse of data and tools that capitalize on the latest data science advancements such as those in AI/ML, where the greatest potential lies in automated integration of large multi-modal data types for discovery and novel hypothesis generation.      

Several confounding factors have contributed to the challenges.   For examples, these projects may be following different standards for ontology, common data elements and meta data. In addition, they may be developing their own extensions of standards for many uncommon data types (such as behavioral and contextual data types), where community standards still do not exist.  When these projects involve sensitive human data, different models may have been used for privacy protection (such as enclaved, federated, and differential privacy models), thus adding another layer of hurdles in making data from these resources interoperable and integrable. Data interoperability and reusability are intricately dependent on the tools to process and analyze them, and the community effort to establish best practice standards, such as the FAIR for Research Software (FAIR4RS), only began very recently, after most of these projects have started.  Consequently, harmonization across different data sets and tools run into many un-expected difficulties.   

Research Objective  

This Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) is meant to drive collaborative interactions and enable maximal data interoperability, and reuse by aligning with the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles. This NOSI provides an opportunity for currently funded NIDDK DDEMD projects focused on gathering human T2D data to increase data “FAIR”-ness, through collaborations with partner projects, funded by NIDDK or other agencies, with related data sets and resources relevant to T2D.   

Proposed activities must not exceed one year.  

Applications in response to this NOSI are strongly encouraged to include the following information: 

1. A description of the parent research project(s) that will be working as partners in testing data re-use and interoperability  
2. A description of the datasets and data types under consideration and reasons for this choice 
3. A description of the challenges and unmet needs to be addressed  
4. A description of the proposed method for improving interoperability and reusability, including plans for data harmonization 
5. A description of the relevant expertise of the supported collaboration 
6. A description of the potential impact of scientific advances that could be made from integration of interoperable data and tools from different resources. 
7. A proposal of use cases to demonstrate the interoperability of improved data and tools between the parent and partner projects    
8. A plan for how the proposed work will be sustained beyond the year of funding (e.g., how will improved data management practices be maintained) 
9. Indicate if cloud solutions will be leveraged  
10. Provide a timeline and milestones to carry out the proposed work in the supplement funding period 
11. A description of how activities funded through this supplement will be communicated to the broader research community, such as through dkNET 

These supplements may be used to support a variety of activities that address unexpected challenges including, but not limited to, the following: 

• Development of tools to transform and harmonize standards being used in different projects for common data elements, ontologies, and meta data 
• Refactoring and enhancements of exiting software tools and workflows that make them interoperable between different resources  
• Adding APIs and services to existing software tools and workflows, especially when compliant to FAIR4RS standards   
• Development with partners to establish format and protocols for data curation, storage and exchange, and a conformance format to determine interoperability 
• Exploration of the benefits of shared computational environments or scaling of environments using cloud 
• Preparing data for multi-modal multi-scale AI/ML applications that integrate data across different platforms 
• Developing and sharing documentation 

Who is Eligible to Apply? 

Only PD/PIs of an active award from NIDDK's DDEMD are eligible to apply if they have at least one year of support remaining in the current project period as of July 1, 2023. Applicants are encouraged to contact the Program Official of their current award to confirm funding from NIDDK's DDEMD.

Administrative supplements must support work within the scope of a currently funded basic, behavioral, and/or clinical DDEMD research project. All applicants are strongly encouraged to discuss potential requests with the NIDDK DDEMD program director of the award for which they wish to submit a supplement application. See https://www.niddk.nih.gov/about-niddk/staff-directory/by-office/division-diabetes-endocrinology-metabolic-diseases for DDEMD program director contact information. 

Description of circumstances for which administrative supplements are available.

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)
• Submitted applications must follow the guidelines of NIDDK. Administrative Supplements do not receive peer review. Responsive applications will be evaluated internally by NIH program staff and the most meritorious applications will be supported based upon availability of funds.  

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

• Application Due Date(s) – Thursday, July 11, 2023, by 5:00 PM local time of applicant organization for awards in August to September 2023. 
• Applicants are encouraged to apply early to allow adequate time to make any corrections by the due date to errors found in the application during the submission process.
• For funding consideration, applicants must include “NOT-DK-23-022” (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.
• Requests may be for one year of support only.
• Biosketches for new key personnel should be included in the application. 
• The Research Objectives description are limited to 3 pages.  
• Only PD/PIs of an active award from NIDDK's DDEMD are eligible to apply if they have at least one year of support remaining in the current project period as of July 1, 2023. 
• Administrative supplements must support work within the scope of a currently funded basic, behavioral, and/or clinical DDEMD research project. 
• All applicants are strongly encouraged to discuss potential requests with the NIDDK DDEMD program director of the award for which they wish to submit a supplement application. See https://www.niddk.nih.gov/about-niddk/staff-directory/by-office/division-diabetes-endocrinology-metabolic-diseases for DDEMD program director contact information. 

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

The criteria below will be considered in the administrative evaluation process:  

• The Research Objectives  
• How adequately the gaps in interoperability unique to their dataset(s) are identified and tackled 
• The strength of the collaborative effort 

Applications non-responsive to terms of this NOSI will be withdrawn from consideration for this initiative. 

Budget  

To be eligible, the parent grant must be active and have at least one year in the project period beyond July 1, 2023; the supplement request must not extend beyond the project period of the parent award.  

The one-time supplement budget request cannot exceed $350,000 in total costs. A detailed budget justification describing the supplemental work proposed should be included. 

The number of awards is contingent on availability of funds and receipt of meritorious applications.   

Inquiries

Please direct all inquiries to: 

Xujing Wang, PhD 
Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases 
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease (NIDDK) 
Telephone: 301-451-2862 
Email: xujing.wang@nih.gov  

Norann Zaghloul, PhD 
Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases 
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease (NIDDK) 
Telephone: 301-435-6677 
Email: norann.zaghloul@nih.gov