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Understanding the dynamic activity of neural circuits is central to the NIH BRAIN Initiative.  This FOA seeks applications for proof-of-concept testing and development of new technologies and novel approaches for large scale recording and manipulation of neural activity to enable transformative understanding of dynamic signaling in the nervous system.  In particular, we seek exceptionally creative approaches to address major challenges associated with recording and manipulating neural activity, at or near cellular resolution, at multiple spatial and/or temporal scales, in any region and throughout the entire depth of the brain.  It is expected that the proposed research may be high-risk, but if successful could profoundly change the course of neuroscience research.

Understanding the dynamic activity of neural circuits is central to the NIH BRAIN Initiative.  This FOA seeks applications for proof-of-concept testing and development of new technologies and novel approaches for large scale recording and manipulation of neural activity to enable transformative understanding of dynamic signaling in the nervous system.  In particular, we seek exceptionally creative approaches to address major challenges associated with recording and manipulating neural activity, at or near cellular resolution, at multiple spatial and/or temporal scales, in any region and throughout the entire depth of the brain.  It is expected that the proposed research may be high-risk, but if successful could profoundly change the course of neuroscience research.

This FOA seeks applications for proof-of-concept testing and development of new technologies and novel approaches for large-scale recording and manipulation of neural activity to enable transformative understanding of dynamic signaling in the nervous system.  In particular, we seek exceptionally creative approaches to address major challenges associated with recording and manipulating neural activity, at or near cellular resolution, at multiple spatial and/or temporal scales, in any region and throughout the entire depth of the brain. 

Invasive surgical procedures provide the unique ability to record and stimulate neurons within precisely localized brain structures in humans. Human studies using invasive technology are often constrained by a limited number of patients and resources available to implement complex experimental protocols and are rarely aggregated in a manner that addresses research questions with appropriate statistical power. Therefore, this RFA seeks applications to assemble diverse, integrated, multi-disciplinary teams that cross boundaries of interdisciplinary collaboration to overcome these fundamental barriers and to investigate high-impact questions in human neuroscience. Projects should maximize opportunities to conduct innovative in vivo neuroscience research made available by direct access to brain recording and stimulating from invasive surgical procedures.

Invasive surgical procedures provide the unique ability to record and stimulate neurons within precisely localized brain structures in humans. Human studies using invasive technology are often constrained by a limited number of patients and resources available to implement complex experimental protocols and are rarely aggregated in a manner that addresses research questions with appropriate statistical power. Therefore, this RFA seeks applications to assemble diverse, integrated, multi-disciplinary teams that cross boundaries of interdisciplinary collaboration to overcome these fundamental barriers and to investigate high-impact questions in human neuroscience. Projects should maximize opportunities to conduct innovative in vivo neuroscience research made available by direct access to brain recording and stimulating from invasive surgical procedures. Projects should employ approaches guided by specified theoretical constructs and quantitative, mechanistic models where appropriate. Awardees will join a consortium work group, coordinated by the NIH, to identify consensus standards of practice, including neuroethical considerations, to collect and provide data for ancillary studies, and to aggregate and standardize data for dissemination among the wider scientific community.

Understanding the dynamic activity of neural circuits is central to the NIH BRAIN Initiative. Although invention and proof-of-concept testing of new technologies are a key component of the BRAIN Initiative, to achieve their potential these technologies must also be optimized through feedback from end-users in the context of the intended experimental use. This FOA seeks applications for the optimization of existing and emerging technologies and approaches that have potential to address major challenges associated with recording and manipulating neural activity, at or near cellular resolution, at multiple spatial and temporal scales, in any region and throughout the entire depth of the brain. This FOA is intended for the iterative refinement of emergent technologies and approaches that have already demonstrated their transformative potential through initial proof-of-concept testing, and are appropriate for accelerated development of hardware and software while scaling manufacturing techniques towards sustainable, broad dissemination and user-friendly incorporation into regular neuroscience practice. Proposed technologies should be compatible with experiments in behaving animals, and should include advancements that enable or reduce major barriers to hypothesis-driven experiments. Technologies may engage diverse types of signaling beyond neuronal electrical activity for large-scale analysis, and may utilize any modality such as optical, electrical, magnetic, acoustic or genetic recording/manipulation. Applications that seek to integrate multiple approaches are encouraged. Applications are expected to integrate appropriate domains of expertise, including where appropriate biological, chemical and physical sciences, engineering, computational modeling and statistical analysis. Also listed under R01

The Emily M. Gray Award is given for significant contributions to education in biophysics, contributions that may include a distinguished record of excellence in classroom instruction, in mentoring research scientists at any level, in developing novel educational methods or materials, in promoting scientific outreach efforts to the public or to youth, in generating a track record of attracting new students to thefield of biophysics, or in otherwise fostering an environment exceptionally conducive to education in biophysics. The Emily M. Gray Lecture will be the keynote presentation at the Student Symposium at the Annual Meeting. The winner receives an honorarium of $750.

The purpose of this FOA is to promote the integration of experimental, analytic, and theoretical capabilities for large-scale analysis of neural systems and circuits. This FOA seeks applications for exploratory research studies that use new and emerging methods for large scale recording and manipulation of neural circuits across multiple brain regions. Applications should propose to elucidate the contributions of dynamic circuit activity to a specific behavioral or neural system. Applications should seek to understand circuits of the central nervous system by systematically controlling stimuli and/or behavior while actively recording and/or manipulating relevant dynamic patterns of neural activity and by measuring the resulting behaviors and/or perceptions. Studies should incorporate rich information on cell-types, on circuit functionality and connectivity, and should be performed in conjunction with sophisticated analysis of complex, ethologically relevant behaviors. Applications should propose teams of investigators that seek to cross boundaries of interdisciplinary collaboration by bridging fields and linking theory and data analysis to experimental design. Exploratory studies supported by this FOA are intended to develop experimental capabilities and quantitative, theoretical frameworks in preparation for a future competition for larger-scale, multi-component, Team-Research Circuit Programs (U19) awards.

The objective of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Outstanding Investigator Award (OIA) is to provide long-term support to accomplished investigators with outstanding records of cancer research productivity who propose to conduct exceptional research. The OIA is intended to allow investigators the opportunity to take greater risks, be more adventurous in their lines of inquiry, or take the time to develop new techniques. The OIA would allow an Institution to submit applications nominating established Program Directors/Principal Investigators (PDs/PIs) for the NCI OIA. It is expected that the OIA would provide extended funding stability and encourage investigators to embark on projects of unusual potential in cancer research. The research projects should break new ground or extend previous discoveries toward new directions or applications that may lead to a breakthrough that will advance biomedical, behavioral, or clinical cancer research.

The objective of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Outstanding Investigator Award (OIA) is to provide long-term support to accomplished investigators with outstanding records of cancer research productivity who propose to conduct exceptional research. The OIA is intended to allow investigators the opportunity to take greater risks, be more adventurous in their lines of inquiry, or take the time to develop new techniques. The OIA would allow an Institution to submit applications nominating established Program Directors/Principal Investigators (PDs/PIs) for the NCI OIA. It is expected that the OIA would provide extended funding stability and encourage investigators to embark on projects of unusual potential in cancer research. The research projects should break new ground or extend previous discoveries toward new directions or applications that may lead to a breakthrough that will advance biomedical, behavioral, or clinical cancer research. 

A central goal of the BRAIN Initiative is to understand how electrical and chemical signals code information in neural circuits and give rise to sensations, thoughts, emotions and actions. While currently available technologies can provide some understanding, they may not be sufficient to accomplish this goal. For example, non-invasive technologies are low resolution and/or provide indirect measures such as blood flow, which are imprecise; invasive technologies can provide information at the level of single neurons producing the fundamental biophysical signals, but they can only be applied to tens or hundreds of neurons, out of a total number in the human brain estimated at 85 billion. Other BRAIN FOAs seek to develop novel technology (RFA-NS-16-006) or to optimize existing technology ready for in-vivo proof-of-concept testing and collection of preliminary data (RFA-NS-16-007) for recording or manipulating neural activity on a scale that is beyond what is currently possible. This FOA seeks applications for unique and innovative technologies that are in an even earlier stage of development than that sought in other FOAs, including new and untested ideas that are in the initial stages of conceptualization.

Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, a nonprofit foundation that has evolved from a young cancer patient's front-yard lemonade stand to a national foundation for childhood cancer, awards grants designed to fill critical voids in current pediatric cancer research. Through its Innovation Grants program, the foundation awards two-year grants of up to $250,000 to researchers with a novel approach to pediatric oncology scientific investigation. That can include a change in research direction and/or an innovative new idea that moves away from an investigator's prior research but has potential impact for childhood cancers. Innovation Grants will support research proposals to be carried out by investigators who are already established, have a track record of peer-reviewed publications, and can demonstrate evidence of having successfully competed for extramural funding.

Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, a nonprofit foundation that has evolved from a young cancer patient's front-yard lemonade stand to a national foundation for childhood cancer, awards grants designed to fill critical voids in current pediatric cancer research. Through its Innovation Grants program, the foundation awards two-year grants of up to $250,000 to researchers with a novel approach to pediatric oncology scientific investigation. That can include a change in research direction and/or an innovative new idea that moves away from an investigator's prior research but has potential impact for childhood cancers. Innovation Grants will support research proposals to be carried out by investigators who are already established, have a track record of peer-reviewed publications, and can demonstrate evidence of having successfully competed for extramural funding.

Understanding the dynamic activity of neural circuits is central to the NIH BRAIN Initiative.This FOA seeks applications for proof-of-concept testing and development of new technologies and novel approaches for large-scale recording and manipulation of neural activity to enable transformative understanding of dynamic signaling in the nervous system.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) encourages research project grant (R01) applications to leverage large-scale, real-world data from electronic health records (EHRs) from a variety of systems (e.g., the Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrative claims, as well as public or private health care systems and networks) to understand risk, onset, course, and impact of treatments and services for mental and neurological disorders and to identify promising new mental health and neurological disorders research. There is particular interest in leveraging EHRs and administrative data to 1) understand and improve the treatment of post traumatic psychopathology, including posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, traumatic brain injury (TBI), and risk for suicide; and 2) characterize post-trauma multi-symptom recovery trajectory patterns of TBI, that may include post traumatic stress disorder, depression, cognitive impairment, pain, substance abuse disorder and risk for suicide. NIMH also invites innovative approaches to use EHR and administrative data to understand risk, onset, course, and impact of treatments and services for mental disorders more broadly.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is intended to address the problem of misidentified cell lines. Many advances in biomedical science have arisen from studies of cultured cell lines, which are widely used for basic research on cell function, as models for disease, and for drug screening.  In most of this research, correct identification of the cell lines used is necessary to replicate experiments.  In addition, in a majority of the projects the cell lines used were chosen because they are predicated to recapitulate biologically important features of the tissue and/or tumor of origin, for example, driver mutations, expression patterns, and functional correlates of the differentiated state of the original tissue. Cell line origins are documented by chain of custody (a continuous chronological record documenting their source, transfer, analysis, and disposition).  However, cell lines in culture are prone to contamination by foreign cells, which may rapidly displace the original cells.  The identity of cultured cells should be routinely verified, but a majority of laboratories do not monitor the identity of their cell lines, and many cell lines are misidentified.  Analyses of cells submitted to major repositories such as the ATCC (American Type Culture Collection) and the DSMZ (Deutsche Sammlung von Mikroorganismen und Zellkulturen) have found that 15-40% of cell lines submitted by investigators are misidentified, i.e., they have a tissue or species of origin that differs from the one reported.  Similar frequencies of misidentification have been reported by research laboratories that have examined cell line collections.

The SCORE Program is a developmental program designed to increase the research competitiveness of faculty and research base of institutions with a historical mission and/or demonstrated track record of training and graduating students from backgrounds underrepresented in biomedical research. In addition, eligible institutions must award science degrees to undergraduate (B.S. or B.A.) and/or graduate students (M.S. or Ph.D.) and have received on average less than 6 million dollars per year of NIH R01 support (total cost) in the last 2 fiscal years.

The L'Oréal USA For Women in Science fellowship program is a national awards program that annually recognizes and rewards five U.S.-based women researchers at the beginning of their scientific careers. Recipients receive up to $60,000 each that they must put towards their postdoctoral research. The program's partner, AAAS, manages the peer-review process. Launched in 2003 as the U.S. Fellowships component of the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science International Fellowship program, the program aim to: Raise awareness of the contribution of women to the sciences Identify exceptional female researchers in the U.S. to serve as role models for younger generations An inter-disciplinary panel of scientists reviews all applications submitted. The top candidates chosen by the review panel are then forwarded for final selection to a distinguished Jury of career scientists and former North American L'ORÉAL-UNESCO For Women in Science Laureates. The Jury seeks candidates with exceptional academic records and intellectual merit, clearly articulated research proposals with the potential for scientific advancement and outstanding letters of recommendation from advisers. New to the program this year, applicants will also be evaluated in part on their commitment to supporting women and girls in science.

The Scleroderma Research Foundation is dedicated to bringing talented early-career scientists to scleroderma research. The Scleroderma Research Foundation Fellows Program aims to attract outstanding postdoctoral fellows with strong records of accomplishment, who have a clear sense of direction and/or novel idea they wish to develop in the field of scleroderma research. In particular, the SRF encourages exploration of new approaches and hypotheses on the pathogenesis of scleroderma.

Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF) is committed to creating opportunities for new and innovative research into treatments and cures for childhood cancers. Innovation grants are designed as seed funding for researchers with a novel approach to pediatric oncology scientific investigation. This may represent a change in research direction and/or an innovative new idea that moves away from an investigator's prior research but has potential impact for childhood cancers. Innovation Grants will support research proposals to be carried out by investigators who are already established, have a track record of peer-reviewed publications and evidence of successfully competing for extramural funding. The grant is for two years up to $125,000 per year. A one year no cost extension is encouraged.

This program provides fellowships, through academic departments and programs of IHEs, to assist graduate students with excellent records who demonstrate financial need and plan to pursue the highest degree available in their course study at the institution in a field designated as an area of national need.

The third annual Lupus Insight Prize, presented in a collaboration among the Alliance for Lupus Research (ALR), the Lupus Foundation of America (LFA) and the Lupus Research Institute (LRI), will be awarded by the three organizations to recognize and honor an outstanding investigator with a documented record of creativity, innovation and productivity. The researcher will also be someone who has made a novel insight and/or discovery in an area of research that is applicable to the pathogenesis or treatment of lupus and is judged to have a high likelihood of generating further advances by applying that insight to lupus.

The American Society for Radiation Oncology is accepting applications for its 2019 Minority Summer Fellowship Award. The annual program is designed to introduce medical students from backgrounds that are underrepresented in medicine to the discipline of radiation oncology early in their medical education. Although medical students in all years are encouraged to apply, preference will be given to first- and second-year students. In an effort to promote radiation oncology as a career choice, the fellowship will expose medical students to clinical, basic, and translational research questions in radiation oncology. The fellowship provides each student with a $4,500 package that includes a $3,500 stipend for the eight-week training program (exceptions can be made for a longer program but will need to be approved by ASTRO's Committee on Health Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, or "CHEDI") and $1,000 toward the cost of travel to the organization's 2019 annual meeting. To be eligible, applicants must be enrolled in a United States medical school and be able to identify a mentor with a successful record of research productivity. The mentor should be an ASTRO member. In addition, research must be undertaken at a North American institution during the summer of 2019.