The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is seeking applications to provide support for a Human Islet Research Enhancement Center (HIREC) that will supply the infrastructure needed to support research coordination, collaboration and dissemination of advances made by the NIDDK funded Human Islet Research Network (HIRN).
Donor Name: National Institutes of Health (NIH)
State: All States
County: All Counties
U.S. Territories: Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 09/18/2023
Size of the Grant: $1,200,000
Grant Duration: 5 years
Details:
The HIREC will also be responsible for managing the HIRN Opportunity Pool involving the solicitation, review, award and financial oversight of Pilot Studies focused on research areas relevant to HIRN.
HIRN brings together investigators from potentially disparate fields to focus on compelling needs in Type 1 diabetes research. Central to the success of this effort is the ability to foster novel research synergies and rapidly share HIRN advances with the broader scientific community. The Human Islet Research Enhancement Center will be tasked with addressing these needs for the HIRN.
Objectives and Scope:
The Human Islet Research Enhancement Center (HIREC) will consist of a single U24 award led by Program Director(s)/Principal Investigator(s) (PD(s)/PI(s)) with expertise in the management of resource-based operations that serve the biomedical research community, such as reagent-generating or service-providing consortia. The HIREC will be responsible for coordinating and enhancing collaborations among the five current HIRN consortia, and for outreach to the broader scientific community including attracting new talent to HIRN research and disseminating information about resources developed by HIRN to the external community. Given that the composition of the network may change over time as HIRN evolves, the HIREC should be designed with future flexibility in mind.
Teams should be able to handle the following required functions of the Human Islet Research Enhancement Center:
Research coordination and collaboration:
- Organize scientific meetings, including the annual scientific retreat of the network and meetings of internal HIRN groups such as steering committees, working groups, expert scientific panels, and the Trans-Network Committee;
- Manage the HIRN Opportunity Pool fund, including providing efficient methods to solicit, review, and fund subawards under this program. Importantly, defining the scientific scope of the HIRN Opportunity Pool program is not the responsibility of the HIREC. Instead, HIREC’s primary responsibility is to manage the initiative process on behalf of the HIRN investigator community and NIH staff. Under certain circumstances, the HIREC may be called upon to contribute to the development of initiative ideas by assisting NIH staff with the organization of workshops in specific topic areas. While a defined pool of funds has been set aside in this NOFO to support the HIRN opportunity pool, additional funds may be made available at a later time to support and expand opportunity pool collaborative activities should uniquely compelling opportunities arise.
Resource dissemination and outreach:
Develop and continually improve a community website that will provide user-friendly access to network information, including resources, publications, data and metadata, and biologist-friendly bioinformatics tools. Plans to regularly assess usability, utility and impact of the website should be central to ensuring appropriate evolution of the website over time;
- Promote sharing of pre-publication data among HIRN members, using novel strategies that will encourage rapid information and data exchange; develop metrics to measure the extent and scientific impact of early data sharing among HIRN membership;
- Ensure timely dissemination of HIRN-related advances to the biomedical community, by facilitating public access to HIRN resources, including experimental models, protocols, biomaterials, resources, reagents and omics- and image-based data collections. Ensure and track deposition of any HIRN-related resources and datasets to appropriate databases or public repositories; evaluate the effectiveness of HIRN outreach on an annual basis;
- Implement standardized resource and data formats and identifiers, and apply any needed metadata to ensure HIRN data and resources are appropriately curated and comply with FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable); develop and implement strategies to track usage and impact of HIRN resources and data;
- Use and extend biomedical ontologies related to HIRN’s mission, as needed, and research approaches to improve data annotation and enable more powerful data mining of HIRN studies;
- Create webinars and workshops and develop robust outreach strategies to optimize use of HIRN resources by the network and by the community-at-large; and
- Facilitate interactions with other NIH-supported research efforts or non-NIH partners, including consortia, large clinical studies, bio-repositories, databases or non-profit organizations involved in T1D research. The focus should be on developing interactions that can benefit both HIRN investigators and HIRN partners through the sharing of information, expertise, and reagents, or through leveraging the coordination of research and technology development in areas of common interest.
Funding Information
- NIDDK intends to commit $1,600,000 in FY 2024 to fund ONE award.
- Application budgets are limited to $1,200,000 Direct Costs per year.
Project Period
- The maximum project period for an application submitted in response to this funding opportunity is five years.
Eligible Organizations
Higher Education Institutions
- Public/State Controlled Institutions of Higher Education
- Private Institutions of Higher Education
The following types of Higher Education Institutions are always encouraged to apply for NIH support as Public or Private Institutions of Higher Education:
- Hispanic-serving Institutions
- Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
- Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs)
- Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions
- Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs)
Nonprofits Other Than Institutions of Higher Education
- Nonprofits with 501(c)(3) IRS Status (Other than Institutions of Higher Education)
- Nonprofits without 501(c)(3) IRS Status (Other than Institutions of Higher Education)
For-Profit Organizations
- Small Businesses
- For-Profit Organizations (Other than Small Businesses)
Local Governments
- State Governments
- County Governments
- City or Township Governments
- Special District Governments
- Indian/Native American Tribal Governments (Federally Recognized)
- Indian/Native American Tribal Governments (Other than Federally Recognized)
Federal Governments
- Eligible Agencies of the Federal Government
- U.S. Territory or Possession
Other
- Independent School Districts
- Public Housing Authorities/Indian Housing Authorities
- Native American Tribal Organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments)
- Faith-based or Community-based Organizations
- Regional Organizations
Foreign Institutions
- Non-domestic (non-U.S.) Entities (Foreign Institutions) are not eligible to apply.
- Non-domestic (non-U.S.) components of U.S. Organizations are not eligible to apply.
- Foreign components, as defined in the NIH Grants Policy Statement, are allowed.
For more information, visit Grants.gov.
