Group items tagged

CMMT supports theoretical and computational materials research in the topical areas represented in DMR's Topical Materials Research Programs (these are also variously known as Individual Investigator Award (IIA) Programs, or Core Programs, or Disciplinary Programs), which include: Condensed Matter Physics (CMP), Biomaterials (BMAT), Ceramics (CER), Electronic and Photonic Materials (EPM), Metals and Metallic Nanostructures (MMN), Polymers (POL), and Solid State and Materials Chemistry (SSMC). The CMMT program supports fundamental research that advances conceptual understanding of hard and soft materials, and materials-related phenomena; the development of associated analytical, computational, and data-centric techniques; and predictive materials-specific theory, simulation, and modeling for materials research.Research may encompass the advance of new paradigms in materials research, including emerging data-centric approaches utilizing data-analytics or machine learning. Computational efforts span from the level of workstations to advanced and high-performance scientific computing. Emphasis is on approaches that begin at the smallest appropriate length scale, such as electronic, atomic, molecular, nano-, micro-, and mesoscale, required to yield fundamental insight into material properties, processes, and behavior, to predict new materials and states of matter, and to reveal new materials phenomena. Approaches that span multiple scales of length and time may be required to advance fundamental understanding of materials properties and phenomena, particularly for polymeric materials and soft matter.

The solar and heliospheric research communities are dedicated to promoting enhanced understanding of, and predictive capabilities for, solar disturbances that propagate to the Earth. Broad-based, grass-roots associations such as SHINE have developed to focus community effort on these scientific questions. Proposals are solicited for research directly related to topics under consideration and discussion at community workshops organized by SHINE. Information on the current activities of SHINE may be found at the following web site: http://www.shinecon.org

NineSigma, representing a major food manufacturer, seeks a technology of in vivo fluorescence labeling of any protein or mRNA using antibodies/probes. Specifically, the client anticipates proposals for technologies such as: Technology to design/produce fluorescence-labeled detection probes (antibodies, low molecular weight probes, etc.) Technology to easily introduce the fluorescence-labeled detection probe into living cells in a highly efficient manner

The Nano-Bio Manufacturing Consortium is expected to grow the US-centric innovation ecosystem that will risk reduce material supply (including nanomaterials & biomaterials), processing techniques, and flexible/stretchable device concepts by demonstrating component- and system-level functionality relevant to human-integrated technologies, such as airman-performance monitoring (APM) and augmentation (APA) systems. This public-private partnership should build upon the foundation of research & development excellence that has been established within NBMC since its 2013 inception. It is envisioned that technology development will require teaming between academia and industry in partnership with government researchers as well as with appropriate members of the regulatory and operational DoD communities. A balance between enabling component- and systems-level prototype development is expected to be realized through end-technologies between TRL 3 and TRL 6. It is expected that during the completion of certain NBMC projects, lab and/or field demonstrations will be conducted in partnership with relevant DoD partners to ensure that members of military human performance and/or aeromedical communities can assess the utility of developments and provide iterative feedback with respect to critical path issues.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) invites cooperative agreement applications that will contribute to a higher resolution understanding of the physical and functional organization of the human islet tissue environment by describing the composition (cellular and molecular) and function of important components of the pancreatic islet and peri-islet tissue architecture, the cell-cell relationships and means of communications used by cell types and cell subtypes within the pancreatic tissue ecosystem, and/or the contribution of adjacent (including acinar, ductal, lymphatic) and neighboring (intestinal, mesenteric and adipose) tissues to islet cell function and dysfunction. Successful projects will integrate the Human Pancreas Analysis Consortium (HPAC), that will consist of the research teams funded in response to this FOA with the Human Pancreas Analysis Program (HPAP), a resource-generation program that was funded in 2016 in response to RFA-DK-15-027. HPAC will become the fifth consortium of the Human Islet Research Network (HIRN, https://hirnetwork.org/ ). HIRN's overall mission is to support innovative and collaborative translational research to understand how human beta cells are lost in T1D, and to find innovative strategies to protect and replace functional beta cell mass in humans. This FOA will only support studies with a primary focus on increasing our understanding of human tissue structure and function, and human disease biology (as opposed to rodent or other animal models). This FOA is not intended to support the conduct of a clinical trial.

This initiative will support projects that exploit Omics assays to address outstanding questions regarding molecular regulation of persistent HIV (e.g. latency or reservoirs) in the context of chronic substance use or substance use disorder (SUD).

The Communications, Circuits, and Sensing-Systems (CCSS) Program is intended to spur visionary systems-oriented activities in collaborative, multidisciplinary, and integrative engineering research. CCSS supports systems research in hardware, signal processing techniques, and architectures to enable the next generation of cyber-physical systems (CPS) that leverage computation, communication, and algorithms integrated with physical domains. CCSS supports innovative research and integrated educational activities in micro- and nano- electromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS), communications and sensing systems, and cyber-physical systems. The goal is to design, develop, and implement new complex and hybrid systems at all scales, including nano and macro, that lead to innovative engineering principles and solutions for a variety of application domains including, but not limited to, healthcare, medicine, environmental and biological monitoring, communications, disaster mitigation, homeland security, intelligent transportation, manufacturing, energy, and smart buildings. CCSS also supports integration technologies at both intra- and inter- chip levels, new and advanced radio frequency (RF), millimeter wave and optical wireless and hybrid communications systems architectures, and sensing and imaging at terahertz (THz) frequencies.

The Communications, Circuits, and Sensing-Systems (CCSS) Program is intended to spur visionary systems-oriented activities in collaborative, multidisciplinary, and integrative engineering research. CCSS supports systems research in hardware, signal processing techniques, and architectures to enable the next generation of cyber-physical systems (CPS) that leverage computation, communication, and algorithms integrated with physical domains. CCSS supports innovative research and integrated educational activities in micro- and nano- electromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS), communications and sensing systems, and cyber-physical systems. The goal is to design, develop, and implement new complex and hybrid systems at all scales, including nano and macro, that lead to innovative engineering principles and solutions for a variety of application domains including, but not limited to, healthcare, medicine, environmental and biological monitoring, communications, disaster mitigation, homeland security, intelligent transportation, manufacturing, energy, and smart buildings. CCSS also supports integration technologies at both intra- and inter- chip levels, new and advanced radio frequency (RF), millimeter wave and optical wireless and hybrid communications systems architectures, and sensing and imaging at terahertz (THz) frequencies.

The Electronics, Photonics and Magnetic Devices (EPMD) Program supports innovative research on novel devices based on the principles of electronics, optics and photonics, optoelectronics, magnetics, opto- and electromechanics, electromagnetics, and related physical phenomena. EPMD's goal is to advance the frontiers of micro-, nano- and quantum-based devices operating within the electromagnetic spectrum and contributing to a broad range of application domains including information and communications, imaging and sensing, healthcare, Internet of Things, energy, infrastructure, and manufacturing. The program encourages research based on emerging technologies for miniaturization, integration, and energy efficiency as well as novel material-based devices with new functionalities, improved efficiency, flexibility, tunability, wearability, and enhanced reliability.

The Ithildin program seeks to develop novel sorbent materials for chemical sampling and storage. The focus of the program will be to provide enhanced sorbent capabilities at the molecular, nanoscale and mesoscale level, independent of the sampler design.

The Nanomanufacturing program supports fundamental research and education on design and manufacturing at the nanoscale.  Emphasis of the program is on advancing manufacturing technology using production systems based on thermal, electrical, chemical and mechanical processes as well as biological actors (viruses, cells and bacteria) to fabricate nanostructures and to integrate these into micro-devices and meso- and macroscale systems.  Examples include carbon, polymeric and bio-molecular architectures that exploit nanoscale features for nanomotors, nanorobots, and other nanomachinery.  A goal of the program is to enable manufacturing scalability leading to commercial production, including improvements in component reliability, yield, efficiency and affordability.  The program also targets environmental health and safety in nanomanufacturing.

The Biological and Environmental Interactions of Nanoscale Materials program is part of the Environmental Engineering and Sustainability cluster, which also includes: 1) Environmental Engineering; and 2) Environmental Sustainability. The goal of the Biological and Environmental Interactions of Nanoscale Materials program is to support research to advance fundamental and quantitative understanding of the interactions of nanomaterials and nanosystems with biological and environmental media. Materials of interest include one- to three-dimensional nanostructures, heterogeneous nano-bio hybrid assemblies, quantum dots, and other nanoparticles. Such nanomaterials and systems frequently exhibit novel physical, chemical, photonic, and biological behavior in living systems and environmental matrices as compared to the bulk scale. Research areas supported by the program include:

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA), entitled "Toward Translation of Cancer Nanotechnology Interventions (TTNCI)" is to enable the translation of nanotechnology-based cancer interventions relying on next-generation nanoparticle formulations and/or nano-devices. The TTNCI initiative encourages applications for advanced pre-clinical research, supporting translation of nanotechnology-based cancer diagnostics and therapeutics. The "Toward Translation of Nanotechnology Cancer Interventions" (TTNCI) awards are designed to mature experimental nanomedicines relying on "next-generation" nanoparticles and nano-devices which demonstrate strong potential to improve treatment effectiveness and/or tackle cancers that currently have a very limited arsenal of approved therapies or diagnostic strategies. TTNCI awards are expected to enable further development of proposed nanotechnology-based interventions to the stage in which they could continue on a developmental path towards the NCI Experimental Therapeutics (NExT) and other NCI translational programs.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) encourages applications that will develop novel technologies and/or tools for the isolation and characterization of extracellular vesicles (EVs) of Central Nervous System (CNS) origin. The primary focus of the technology development includes robust and reproducible CNS-EV isolation methods. Specifically, there is a need to establish technologies for the isolation and purification of CNS-EVs from peripheral samples and the characterization of CNS-EV types, cargos, and origin, as well as to validate these methods for further analyses. Validation of these technologies may include the analysis of the full range of EV composition such as RNA, proteins, lipids, and metabolites.

The purpose of this funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is twofold: 1. to accelerate translational and clinical Phase I and II a/b safety and efficacy studies for substantiating measurable functional benefits of probiotic/prebiotic components and/or their combinations; and; 2. to understand the underlying mechanisms of their action(s), and variability in responses to these interventions. This FOA calls for interdisciplinary collaborations across scientific disciplines engaged in microbiome and pro/prebiotic research including, but not limited to: nutritional science, microbiology, virology, microecology and microbiome, genomics, immunology, computational biology, chemistry, bioengineering, as well as integration of omics and computational approaches in DNA technologies.

The focus of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is on in vivo human studies, and in vitro studies on human cells or tissues, aimed at potential identification of therapeutic targets or and/or testing of interventions for healthy aging. Potential therapeutic targets include FOXO3 itself and upstream and downstream regulators in pathways mediated by FOXO3. The range of research areas of interest in this FOA includes studies that: 1) examine in vivo phenotypic effects of human FOXO3 variants, and/or 2) elucidate effects of these variants on cellular functions and the pathways that mediate them, and/or 3) identify and evaluate candidate therapeutic targets (e.g., target validation studies, testing of candidate compounds) for potential interventions based on FOXO3 functional pathways. Projects involving whole genome sequencing of new or existing cohorts are outside the scope of this FOA. However, targeted resequencing on a limited sample set in an existing cohort could be supported by this FOA.

The Nano-Biosensing program is part of the Engineering Biology and Health cluster, which includes also 1) Cellular and Biochemical Engineering; 2) Engineering of Biomedical Systems; 3) Biophotonics; and 4) Disability and Rehabilitation Engineering. The Nano-Biosensing program supports fundamental engineering research on devices and methods for measurement and quantification of biological analytes. Proposals that incorporate emerging nanotechnology methods are especially encouraged. Areas of interest include: Multi-purpose sensor platforms that exceed the performance of current state-of-the-art devices. Novel transduction principles, mechanisms and sensor designs suitable for measurement in practical matrix and sample-preparation-free approaches. These include error-free detection of pathogens and toxins in food matrices, waterborne pathogens, parasites, toxins, biomarkers in body fluids, and others that improve human condition. Nano-biosensors that enable measurement of biomolecular interactions in their native states, transmembrane transport, intracellular transport and reactions, and other biological phenomena. Studies that examine intracellular measurements must include discussion on the significance of the measurement.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is associated with the Beau Biden Cancer MoonshotSM Initiative that is intended to accelerate cancer research. The purpose of this FOA is to establish Centers of collaborating investigators with the goal of identifying and advancing research opportunities for translating immunotherapy concepts for children and adolescents with cancer toward clinical applications. Specifically, this FOA targets the following area designated as a scientific priority by the Blue Ribbon Panel (BRP): Recommendation (B) that calls for the establishment of a pediatric immunotherapy translational science network. The network was envisioned by the BRP as focusing on identifying new targets for immunotherapies, developing new pediatric immunotherapy treatment approaches (e.g., cancer vaccines, cellular therapy, combinations of immunotherapy agents, and others), and defining the biological mechanisms by which pediatric tumors evade the immune system. The Pediatric Immunotherapy Discovery and Development Network (PI-DDN) Centers will address and implement these BRP recommendations.

The purpose of this FOA is to invite applications that investigate aspects of lymphatic vessel physiology, development and pathophysiology related to health and diseases of the digestive system. Studies to understand the factors that control local lymphatic vessel functional anatomy and physiology and development during health or disease in this system and its organs, and the mechanisms by which alterations of lymphatic vessel function affect organ function, are of interest. However, studies with the major focus on immune mechanisms, role of lymphatics in cancer metastasis and study of lymphatic vessels in organs other than those from the digestive system will not be considered responsive.

Research supported by the Division of Materials Research (DMR) focuses on advancing fundamental understanding of materials, materials discovery, design, synthesis, characterization, properties, and materials-related phenomena. DMR awards enable understanding of the electronic, atomic, and molecular structures, mechanisms, and processes that govern nanoscale to macroscale morphology and properties; manipulation and control of these properties; discovery of emerging phenomena of matter