EXPIRED
April 5, 2021
PA-20-272 - Administrative Supplements to Existing NIH Grants and Cooperative Agreements (Parent Admin Supp Clinical Trial Optional)
NOT-OD-20-073 - Notice of Special Interest (NOSI): Administrative Supplements to Support Enhancement of Software Tools for Open Science
Office of The Director, National Institutes of Health (OD)
National Eye Institute (NEI)
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)
National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)
National Institute on Aging (NIA)
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS)
National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB)
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR)
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK)
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)
National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD)
National Library of Medicine (NLM)
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH)
National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS)
National Cancer Institute (NCI)
This Notice announces the continuing availability of administrative supplements NOT-OD-20-073 to active awards that focus on biomedical software development or have a significant software development component. The goal of these supplements is to invest in research software tools with recognized value in a scientific community to enhance their impact by leveraging best practices in software development and advances in cloud computing. This initiative is part of a plan for implementing the NIH Strategic Plan for Data Science which describes actions aimed at modernizing the biomedical research data ecosystem and making data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) with high impact for open science. The supplements are intended to support collaborations between biomedical scientists and software engineers to enhance the design, implementation, and “cloud-readiness” of research software. Through these awards, the NIH Office of Data Science Strategy (ODSS) intends to help researchers who have developed scientifically valuable software to make tools sustainable, contribute to open science, and take advantage of new data science and computing paradigms.
Background
As part of their research projects, investigators often produce innovative, scientifically valuable software tools. The tools have enabled scientists to efficiently process, manage, mine, analyze, visualize, and interpret biomedical research data. However, much of this valuable software has been built and supported under conditions that are no longer optimal in a rapidly changing technical and scientific landscape. Additionally, investigators lack the resources to adapt and revise the software to take advantage of new technologies and computing paradigms. As part of the ODSS mission to catalyze data science strategy and implementation at NIH, the goal of this opportunity is to help researchers redeploy and optimize these research software tools to be robust and sustainable in a shared data and cloud computing ecosystem envisioned by the NIH, to meet growing computing challenges of big data processing and analysis, and to be accessible to a broader community.
The challenges are considerable. For example, many tools were developed and customized for data held on-premises, often optimized for local computing platforms (including the supporting libraries) and cannot be readily scaled or applied to open science data, such as data stored in a cloud environment. Software tools have often been developed in academic settings in absence of input from software engineers or industry professionals who could aid in this transition to operational efficiency and sustainability. There have been few practical ways to support joint efforts between researchers and software engineers with skills to develop and revise research tools for robust design, accessibility and scalability on modern computing platforms. The traditional grant funding process has emphasized innovation for research progress over the use of software engineering best-practices and design principles, which are essential for reliability and sustainability in an era of large-scale, integrated data.
Building a robust software foundation is expected to speed progress across biomedical research and clinical translation. A first round of ODSS software supplements (supported by NOT-OD-20-073) includes a wide range of projects across NIH ICs and diverse approaches.
It is the NIH vision to establish a modernized and integrated biomedical data ecosystem that adopts the latest data science technologies, including cloud computing, AI technology, and best practice guidelines arising from community consensus, such as the FAIR principles and open-source development. This effort is described in the NIH Data Science Strategic Plan and led by ODSS. In addition to major efforts in IT infrastructure, data resources, workforce development, and policy considerations, the data science strategic plan includes goals to enhance software and workflows for the modern data ecosystem.
Research Objective
The goal of this Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) is to encourage researchers to engage in new types of collaborations that focus on improving the quality and sustainability of research software from a software engineering perspective. Supplements will support efforts that address robustness, sustainability, reusability, and scalability of existing biomedical research software tools and workflows of recognized scientific value. These efforts are expected to adhere to software engineering best practices and design principles and take significant steps toward sustainability in open source cloud-based environments. A broad range of projects that have significant biomedical research software or workflow development components are eligible, regardless of the scientific area of emphasis. The scope of each proposed project is defined by and limited to the aims of the funded project for which the supplement is being sought. Significant software engineering skills are expected to be needed to develop robust implementations and to adapt the software to changing computing paradigms.
These skills may need to be found through new collaborations either within or across institutions. Thus, the supplements are primarily intended to provide support for software engineering staff and storage and computing costs that are required to improve software tools with significant user base or demonstrated potential for community adoption.
Delivering reliable, sustainable, and reusable software across multiple platforms is a whole-lifecycle effort, as illustrated in the following examples. Software development can be improved with enhancements to the development environment, including resources for building, testing, and community contribution. Robustness and reliability can be improved through active community engagement to contribute to code made available with appropriate open source licensing. Reusability can be enhanced by improving dissemination channels for important algorithms and tools (e.g., inclusion in package distribution channels), by publication of tools in shared container registries, and by refinement of operating manuals. Interoperability and reusability can be enhanced by adding compliance with open interfaces and data formats, especially through engagement in relevant communities and standards efforts. Refactoring can be performed to take advantage of new hardware or compute environments (e.g. parallelizing a process or using a standard workflow language that can run in cloud environments).
Projects can propose to test cloud-readiness in a local, commercial, or public cloud environments. Working with the NIH STRIDES initiative (https://datascience.nih.gov/strides) is strongly encouraged. Cloud readiness is a blanket term that can encompass a range of activities. In this announcement, cloud readiness refers to adapting to cloud architecture and extending the usefulness of software.
Examples to produce robust, sustainable or cloud-ready research software include, but are not limited to:
The supplement application must provide details of how the best software engineering practices and design principles will be employed in the supplement project. Examples of relevant projects that address one or more of the challenges toward becoming ready for open science and cloud environment include, but are not limited to:
Supplement applications must i) demonstrate that to-be-improved software is being used by the scientific community by describing its user base or demonstrate clear potential for increased adoption by the user community and ii) discuss how the proposed improvements will help to increase the number of users and community diversity as well as the usage, and impact of the software.
Projects involving significant new scientific features as opposed to software engineering are NOT appropriate for this NOSI.
Projects with no active software development components that would like to add one are NOT eligible for this NOSI.
Application and Submission Information
Budget
To be eligible, the parent award must be able to receive funds in FY2021 (Oct. 1, 2020 - Sept. 30, 2021) and not be in the final year or in a no-cost extension period at the time of the award.
Projects that have already received awards under NOT-OD-20-073 are NOT eligible for this NOSI.
One-time supplement budget requests cannot exceed $150,000 direct costs. The number of awards will be contingent on availability of funds and receipt of meritorious applications. It is currently anticipated that 15 awards or more will be made depending on available funds.
Eligible Activity Codes:
Additional funds may be awarded as supplements to parent awards using any Activity Code, with the following exceptions. Small business activity codes (e.g. R41, R42, R43, R44, U44, and Fast Track), as well as G20, PS1, P60, R13, U13, U42, UG1, and S10 are NOT ELIGIBLE. Note that not all participating NIH Institutes and Centers (ICs) support all the activity codes that may otherwise be allowed. Applicants are therefore strongly encouraged to consult the program officer of the parent grant to confirm eligibility.
Centers and multi-project grant mechanisms are eligible but must provide a strong justification for why existing funds cannot be reallocated toward the proposed project.
For awards that are already primarily funded to deliver software resources to the community (e.g., R24, U24, P41), applicants should provide strong justification for why additional funds are needed to support software enhancement and best practices, given that these activities could already be supported through the parent award.
Additional Information
Applications for this initiative must be submitted using the following opportunity or its subsequent reissued equivalent.
All instructions in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide and PA-20-272 must be followed, with the following additions:
Administrative Evaluation Process
Submitted applications must follow the guidelines of the IC that funds the parent grant. Administrative Supplements do not receive peer review. Each IC will conduct administrative reviews of applications submitted to their IC separately. The most meritorious applications will be evaluated by a trans-NIH panel of NIH staff and supported based upon availability of funds. The criteria described below will be considered in the administrative evaluation process:
Other Information:
It is strongly recommended that the applicants contact their respective program officers at the Institute supporting the parent award in advance to:
Investigators planning to submit an application in response to this NOSI are also strongly encouraged to contact and discuss their proposed research/aims with the scientific contact listed on this NOSI in advance of the application receipt date.
Following submission, applicants are strongly encouraged to notify the program contact at the IC supporting the parent award that a request has been submitted in response to this FOA in order to facilitate efficient processing of the request.
Scientific/Research Contact(s)
Fenglou Mao
Office of Data Science Strategy
Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives
Office of the Director
Telephone: 301-451-9389
softwaresupplements@nih.gov