NIH: Continued Development and Maintenance of Software (R01)

Sponsor: The National Institutes of Health (NIH)

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is aimed at satisfying one of the needs created by the parallel achievements and increased interdependence of the biological and computing sciences. This interdependence offers an unprecedented opportunity for sophisticated approaches to computer-enabled research in the biological, clinical, and behavioral sciences. The purpose of this program announcement is to assure the availability and continued usefulness of existing biomedical informatics/computational biology software.

This program announcement is meant for existing software that serves a biological, clinical, or behavioral community of users. Applicants who are interested in developing new software should consult the funding section of the BISTI web page http://www.bisti.nih.gov/bistic_funding.cfm for appropriate program announcements. Applications under this program announcement can seek support to improve the existing software in several different ways listed below. Any of these improvements should benefit the existing user community and/or have high potential for attracting significantly more users.

First, contemporary software must be easy to modify and extend, and must be fully documented. Users who experience problems with software should be able to correct the problem with limited effort and a mechanism must exist for incorporating these corrections into the software. As the needs of a community of users change, the software that supports their research efforts must be adaptable as well. The ability of software to be repaired and to evolve is particularly important because the scientific discovery process is open-ended and ever-changing. Applications to modernize existing software to meet these standards are welcome under this program announcement.

Second, interoperability among different software packages or among software and existing databases is a major concern. Applications with the goal of extending interoperability are welcome under this program announcement. Portability to different types of hardware is a related area of concern. Applications with the goal of improving software so that it operates on a variety of platforms employing different operating systems also are encouraged.

Finally, efforts to combine existing software with modern ontologies or libraries of controlled vocabularies also are well suited to the goals of this program announcement. Such applications might include (1) assessing data flow and use; (2) defining the terms used for data, fields, operations, etc.; (3) defining the relationships among terms and functions; (4) defining data models and schemas; and (5) other similar activities. It is important to emphasize that these activities are appropriate as they relate closely to the particular software itself, or to making the particular software interoperable with other specific software or databases. Thus the use of widely used ontologies, data models, etc. is encouraged.

Awards made under this program announcement will support the continued development, evaluation, and testing of pre-existing bioinformatics/computational biology software. Support will be provided to improve software in any of the areas mentioned above or in closely related areas.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is interested in efforts to enhance software that can be used to advance the understanding of basic brain and behavioral sciences relevant to NIMH or designed to better understand etiology, treatment, and prevention of mental disorders.

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) is interested in supporting continued improvement and modernization of software that has proven critical in cardiovascular, lung, blood, or sleep research but requires continued development to sustain its benefit to the research community.

The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) is interested in supporting the continued development and maintenance of tools for sequence analysis, integration and analysis of genomic datasets, complex trait mapping, and genetic variation. Of particular interest are software for methods necessary for statistical analysis of genome-wide data on population-based observational studies and clinical trials. Under exceptional circumstances and with prior approval from program staff, NHGRI will accept applications under this program announcement that propose to support software for resources such as databases or web-based tools.

Amount: Mechanism of Support. This FOA will utilize the NIH Research Project Grant (R01) award. Funds Available and Anticipated Number of Awards Because the nature and scope of the proposed research will vary from application to application, it is anticipated that the size and duration of each award will also vary. The total amount awarded and the number of awards will depend upon number, quality, duration, and costs of the applications received.

Deadline:

Release/Posted Date: February 23, 2007
Opening Date: April 17, 2007 (Earliest date an application may be submitted to Grants.gov)
Application Submission/Receipt Date(s): May 17, 2007 and September 13, 2007 Expiration Date: September 14, 2007

For further information, please visit: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-07-235.html