Complex and challenging research questions benefit from the integrated efforts of teams/labs employing complementary approaches with multiple areas of expertise. Team-based efforts can converge on high-impact discoveries, such as creating new disciplines, resolving longstanding or intractable problems, or defining new areas that challenge existing paradigms.
This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) encourages Collaborative Program Grant applications from institutions/organizations that propose projects addressing complex and challenging biomedical problems within the mission of NIGMS. Multidisciplinary research teams must have a highly integrated approach for each of their project goals. The Collaborative Program Grant is designed to support research in which funding a team of interdependent investigators to achieve a unified scientific goal offers significant advantages over supporting individual research project grants.
Features of successful applications include:
- Each PD/PI is committed to team science and willing to devote a major part of their research effort to the team project.
- Achieving the goal(s) requires a team approach.
- Each biological question posed requires a cohesive team with an integrated approach.
- A team management structure is developed for achieving program goals.
NIGMS recognizes that diverse teams working together and capitalizing on innovative ideas and distinct perspectives outperform homogeneous teams. There are many benefits that flow from a diverse scientific workforce, including fostering scientific innovation, enhancing global competitiveness, contributing to robust learning environments, improving the quality of the research, advancing the likelihood that underserved populations participate in, and benefit from, research and enhancing public trust. To support the best science, NIGMS encourages inclusivity in research. Examples of structures that promote diverse perspectives include but are not limited to:
- Engagement from different types of institutions and organizations (e.g., research-intensive, undergraduate-focused, minority-serving, community-based).
- Individual applications and partnerships that enhance geographic and regional engagement.
- Investigators and teams composed of researchers at different career stages.
- Participation of individuals from diverse backgrounds, including groups traditionally underrepresented in the biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research workforce (see NOT-OD-20-031), such as underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, those with disabilities, those from disadvantaged backgrounds, and women.
- Project-based opportunities to benefit early- and mid-career investigators.
Applications may address any area of science within the NIGMS mission. NIGMS supports generalizable, foundational basic research that increases understanding of biological processes at a range of levels, from molecules and cells, to tissues, whole organisms, and populations. NIGMS also supports research in a limited number of clinical areas that affect multiple organ systems. Truly new interdisciplinary ideas for approaching significant biological problems are encouraged. Applications that bridge the research interests of more than one area of science supported by NIGMS are also encouraged but must remain within the NIGMS mission.
Program Organization
Applications submitted to this FOA are expected to propose a single, well-integrated research plan of sufficient scope, complexity, and impact to justify the investment of significant resources. Applicants are expected to describe a cohesive program with a single set of specific aims sufficient to accomplish program objectives that can be achieved within a maximum of ten years (one five-year program with one competitive five-year renewal). Program objectives that are unlikely to be achieved within ten years are not appropriate for this FOA.
If you intend to submit complete the notification form to provide your contact information and the title and brief description of your project.
If Interest exceeds the institutional limits, faculty that have submitted their notice of intent will be notified to prepare a two-page project description and NIH biosketches of PI/CoPIs for internal downselect.
Questions concerning the limited submissions process may be submitted to limitedsubs@psu.edu.