In this edition:

Feature

Funding (* New Opportunities)

NIH Funding Opportunities Specific to COVID-19

This page contains a listing of active and expired funding opportunities specific to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).

* Atlanta Center for Microsystems-Engineered Point-of-Care Technologies (ACME POCT) – LOI Due March 1

ACME POCT funds pilot projects related to development, refinement, testing, and/or commercialization of microsystems-based POC diagnostic technologies. These technologies are defined as technologies that are enabled by microscale devices with characteristic feature sizes of <1 mm and may be comprised of microelectromechanical systems-based sensors, biosensors, microfluidic components, or even smartphone-based systems, and the data analysis thereof. Our priority for 2021 is to fund clinically relevant microfluidics-based proposals for devices that have already been through some level of investment in research, development, evaluation, or clinical validation but have been unable to progress due to a significant and definable barrier that can be resolved through additional funds and/or targeted expertise in engineering, regulatory, or other type of specific expert contribution.

Using Innovative Digital Healthcare Solutions to Improve Quality at the Point of Care (R21/R33 Clinical Trial Optional)

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality invites R21/R33 applications to its program supporting research projects that test promising digital healthcare interventions aimed at improving quality of care and healthcare services delivery at the point of care. This FOA will use the Phased Innovation Award (R21/R33) mechanism to provide up to 2 years of R21 support for initial developmental activities, and up to 3 years of R33 support for expanded activities.

NIH Support for Conferences and Scientific Meetings (Parent R13 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

The purpose of the NIH Research Conference Grant (R13) is to support high quality scientific conferences that are relevant to the NIH's mission and to the public health. A conference is defined as a symposium, seminar, workshop, or any other organized and formal meeting, whether conducted face-to-face or via the internet, where individuals assemble (or meet virtually) for the primary purpose to exchange technical information and views or explore or clarify a defined subject, problem, or area of knowledge, whether or not a published report results from such meeting.

Emory SOM I3 (Imagine, Innovate and Impact) Nexus Awards – LOI Due March 8

The I3 Nexus Research Awards will provide seed money to fundamental biological and translational investigators for obtaining sufficient data to ultimately develop external collaborative funding applications, and to investigators who may not otherwise engage in multi- and interdisciplinary research. These awards require interdisciplinary team collaboration, with at least one collaborator outside of the home department/division (within the Emory SOM) who brings a different discipline, expertise, or methodology to the project.

* Investigator-Initiated Seed Grants in Healthcare Innovation – LOI Due March 15

The Emory-Georgia Tech Healthcare Innovation Program, with partners including Georgia CTSA, announce seed grants to fund multi-investigator & multi-disciplinary teams examining healthcare services and clinical effectiveness. The funding priority for this round will be for proposals that address issues in dealing with pandemics such as: coordination of public health and healthcare systems in clinical responses, diagnostic testing, provider-patient safety; improving clinical preparedness and communication; impact on healthcare system physicians, nurses, staff.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation 2021 John E. Sawyer Seminars on the Comparative Study of Cultures – Internal Due March 17

This program provides support for collaborative research on historical and contemporary topics of major scholarly significance. The seminars bring together faculty, foreign visitors, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students from a variety of fields mainly in the arts, humanities, and interpretive social sciences for intensive study of subjects chosen by the participants.

RWJF 2021 Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program - Due March 17

The Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program offers four-year postdoctoral research awards to physicians, dentists, and nurses from historically marginalized backgrounds. Scholars should be committed to working toward eliminating health disparities by achieving senior rank in academic medicine, dentistry, or nursing. The Foundation will fund up to 10 four-year awards of up to $420,000 each.

Multi-disciplinary Machine-assisted, Genomic Analysis & Clinical Approaches to Shortening the Rare Diseases Diagnostic Odyssey (UG3/UH3 Clinical Trial Opt.) – LOI Due March 19

This FOA invites researchers to submit applications for multi-disciplinary diagnostic strategies for rare diseases that combine machine-assistance, genomic analysis, and clinical consultation. These strategies must be able to be adopted and performed at the primary or secondary care levels by front-line healthcare providers and be readily integrated into their clinical care workflow. NCATS will host a pre-application webinar March 12, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM. Register for webinar.

* Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Young Investigator Grants – Due March 25

The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation is the largest non-government, donor-supported organization that distributes funds for psychiatric brain and behavior disorder research. Applicants must have a doctoral level degree and already be employed in research training or a faculty research position. The YI Grant is intended to support advanced post-doctoral fellows, instructors and assistant professors (or equivalent). Applicants must have an on-site mentor or senior collaborator who is an established investigator in areas relevant to psychiatric disorders.

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative: Pediatric Networks for the Human Cell Atlas – LOI Due March 30

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative invites applications for three-year collaborative projects for the generation of healthy, single-cell reference data from pediatric tissue samples for the Human Cell Atlas (HCA). The Pediatric Networks should collectively generate new tools, open source analysis methods, and data from a diversity of donors and organs that provide valuable contributions to the HCA community.

Georgia CTSA Biostatistics, Epidemiology & Research Design Grants – Due March 31

Georgia CTSA’s Biostatistics, Epidemiology & Research Design (BERD) program is soliciting proposals to support novel methodological research in biostatistics, epidemiology, or health services research and related areas to advance clinical and translational research (CTR). Review criteria include quantitative methodological research to fill gaps in CTR, innovation, feasibility, and plans for dissemination and translation of results. Awardees are encouraged to disseminate any software developed in their research to relevant publicly available software repositories. Full-time faculty from Emory, Georgia Tech, Morehouse School of Medicine, and UGA may submit proposals. New investigators are encouraged to apply; meritorious applications from new investigators will be prioritized for funding. Two awards up to $20,000 will be awarded.

* Shared Instrumentation Grant (SIG) Program (S10 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) – Due April 1

This program encourages applications from groups of NIH-supported investigators to purchase or upgrade a single item of expensive, specialized, commercially available instruments or integrated systems. The minimum award is $50,000 of direct costs. There is no maximum price limit for the instrument; however, the maximum award is $600,000 of direct costs. Types of instruments supported include: X-ray diffractometers, mass spectrometers, nuclear magnetic resonance, spectrometers, DNA and protein sequencers, biosensors, electron and light microscopes, cell sorters, and biomedical imagers.

Administrative Supplements for Submission of Tissue Chip Data to the Microphysiology Systems Database – Due April 3

This NOSI informs current awardees that the NCATS is providing an opportunity for supplemental funding to support deposition of data generated from tissue chips into the NCATS-funded Microphysiology Systems Database (MPS-Db).

Emory Lung Cancer SPORE/Winship Invest$ Development Research Program Due – April 9

This program aims to identify new and innovative research opportunities by supporting meritorious proposals that could expand into full research projects in the future, including those of high risk-high reward projects that might otherwise not be funded; to foster collaborative research between investigators; and to enhance translational research in lung cancer by increasing the number of meritorious investigators working on lung cancer. Pilot projects must conduct basic, translational or clinical research into the cause, prevention, detection or treatment of lung cancer.

The James S. McDonnel Foundation 2021 Opportunity Award – Due April 9

The James S. McDonnel Foundation Opportunity Award provides up to $250,000 in seed funds expendable over a flexible time period (between 2 and 4 years) as needed by researchers to design and carry out new studies motivated by questioning, revisiting, or re-examining the current state of academic knowledge of human cognition and behavior using a dynamic, context-sensitive lens.

Russell Sage Foundation and William T. Grant Foundation Educational Opportunity Monitoring Project – Due April 29

Russell Sage Foundation seeks research projects that aim to deepen our understanding of educational opportunity and success in the United States by analyzing data on academic achievement from the Stanford Education Data Archive constructed by Sean Studies that can plausibly identify the effects of policies, practices, and conditions on achievement and achievement inequality, or the effects of achievement and achievement gaps on other outcomes and forms of inequality, will be preferred over descriptive or correlational studies.

* High-End Instrumentation (HEI) Grant Program (S10 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) – Due May 1

This program encourages applications from groups of NIH-supported investigators to purchase or upgrade a single item of expensive, specialized, commercially available instruments or integrated systems. The minimum award is $600,001 of direct costs. The maximum award is $2,000,000 of direct costs. Types of instruments supported include: X-ray diffraction systems, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and mass spectrometers, DNA and protein sequencers, biosensors, electron and confocal microscopes, cell-sorters, and biomedical imagers.

Russell Sage Foundation Research Grants Core Programs and Special Initiatives - Due May 4

The Russell Sage Foundation is especially interested in research at the intersection of behavioral economics and behavioral sciences and its other programs—Future of Work; Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration; Social, Political and Economic Inequality. Priority will be given to field experiments, as opposed to lab experiments.

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation RFP: Clinical Quality Measures to Improve Diagnosis – Due May 10

The foundation solicits novel ideas and approaches for developing new clinical quality measures to improve diagnosis, specifically targeting three major categories of disease: acute vascular events (such as stroke and myocardial infarction), infections (such as sepsis and pneumonia) and cancer (such as lung and colorectal).

Screening for Conditions by Electronic Nose Technology (SCENT) (U01 Clinical Trial Optional) - LOI Due May 10

This FOA is seeking applications for a portable sensing device to detect volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emanating from skin and to develop a catalog of VOCs as distinct signatures for at least 20 human diseases and conditions. These sensing devices must be able to associate VOC patterns using artificial intelligence to patients with various conditions for diagnostic purposes along with capabilities to incorporate and integrate vital signs. This FOA requires multidisciplinary collaborations and a team science approach. Groups may include a combination of the following: Biomedical engineers, material scientists, biosensing experts, software engineers, chemists, clinicians, clinical trialists, biostatisticians, data analysts and/or other relevant experts in academia and industry.

New Chemistries for Un-drugged Targets through A Specialized Platform for Innovative Research Exploration (ASPIRE) Collaborative Research Program (UG3/UH3 Clinical Trials Not Allowed) – LOI Due June 8

This FOA aims to promote partnerships between NCATS intramural investigators (e.g., those conducting research within the labs and clinics of NCATS) and extramural investigators (e.g., those conducting research in labs and clinics outside of the NIH). Specifically, The FOA will provide support for extramural investigators to take advantage of the unique research opportunities available at the NCATS ASPIRE Laboratory within the NCATS Division of Pre-clinical Innovation, and develop innovative ASPIRE modules that will facilitate identification of novel chemical entities targeted towards currently undrugged biological space.

Virtual Approaches Towards New Chemistries for Un-drugged Targets through A Specialized Platform for Innovative Research Exploration (ASPIRE) Collaborative Research Program (U18 Clinical Trials Not Allowed) – LOI Due June 8

This FOA will support intramural - extramural collaborations to develop virtual modules that will enhance the platform’s capabilities. The anticipated outcome includes identification, design, synthesis, and validation of new chemical entities as starting points for drug development of novel targets, and the expansion of chemical space available for drug screening.

* Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Systems for Action Systems and Services Research to Build a Culture of Health – Due June 9

Systems for Action is a signature research program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) that builds a Culture of Health by rigorously testing new ways of connecting the nation’s fragmented medical, social, and public health systems. RWJF will fund up to 4 awards of up to $500,000 each.

Education

Phlebotomy 101 Introduction to Venipuncture – March 25 & 26

Phlebotomy 101 is a two-day classroom and clinical, hands-on training to venipuncture offered through the Georgia CTSA Clinical Research Centers (GCRCs). The course is offered bi-monthly to research coordinators from Emory, MSM and UGA.

National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN) Research Study Cohort 3 – March 25 – 26

NRMN SETH will be offering Grant Writing Coaching and Mock Study Section for Junior Faculty, and Early-Stage Investigators who are actively writing NIH style research proposals. The randomized controlled study is specifically designed to meet the needs of diverse investigators at RCMI, CTSA, IDeA and other NIH funded emerging research institutions committed to workforce diversity. Early-Stage Investigators will learn grant writing techniques developed at Northwestern University while working in small coaching groups with up to 5-6 study participants and 1 coach.

Emory Lung Cancer SPORE/Winship Invest$ Career Enhancement Program – Due April 9

This program promotes the advancement of early career lung cancer investigators through the conduct of a mentored Career Enhancement Program (CEP). The goals of the CEP are to provide mentoring and guidance for early career academic physician-scientists, clinician-investigators, and laboratory-based scientists who wish to dedicate their efforts to translational research in the areas of diagnosis, imaging, prevention, treatment, and improvement in quality of life in lung cancer, and to enhance diversity among the lung cancer research community.

Certificate Program in Translational Research (CPTR) – Due April 30

The Certificate Program in Translational Research (CPTR) is a formal 16-credit Emory Laney Graduate School program for trainees who seek to conduct research at the interface between basic and translational science and clinical medicine. Despite the explosive growth in biomedical knowledge, it has been increasingly difficult to translate this knowledge and discovery into applications for the treatment of disease and to benefit human health by addressing gaps between biology and medicine and promoting multidisciplinary team science. The CPTR enhances and transforms translational research training for predoctoral PhD students, postdoctoral fellows (PhD or MD) and junior faculty at Emory, MSM, Georgia Tech, and UGA.

Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation Diversity in Clinical Trials Career Development Program

The BMSF DCTCDP is a 2-year program designed to support the career development of early-stage investigator (as defined by NIH) physicians underrepresented in medicine, or physicians who have a demonstrated commitment to increasing diversity in clinical research, to become independent clinical trial investigators who are engaged in advancing health equity through their research and mentoring. The DCTCDP provides an award for salary support to protect time for all program-related activities. The application is a two-step process, beginning with a Letter of Intent (LOI). The application portal is open now and will close on July 2.

Research Resources

N3C - COVID-19 Analytics Platform

Researchers studying COVID-19 are able to access an innovative analytics platform that contains clinical data from the electronic health records of people who were tested for the novel coronavirus or who have had related symptoms. Part of the NCATS National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) Data Enclave, the centralized and secure data platform features powerful analytics capabilities for online discovery, visualization and collaboration.

Video Provides Overview of Georgia CTSA Clinical Research Centers’ Services

Georgia CTSA Clinical Research Centers (GCRCs) offer dedicated space, experienced staff, and resources to support research at a competitive cost. GCRCs assist investigators of all experience levels from Emory, Georgia Tech, Morehouse School of Medicine, UGA, and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. We serve adult and pediatric patient populations in Georgia. Watch this new video to learn more about how we can help you with your research.

Georgia CTSA Ethical Dilemma of the Week

Informed Consent: Making it Harder to Say No (PDF)

Innovation & Translation

Bench2Market Talks: Explaining Quality Management Systems - March 17

Quality Management Systems are an essential process on the path to FDA approval. Learn what design control means for your medical device and how early implementation of CGMP guidelines impact development of pharma and medical products. Join speaker, Brett Rogers, MBID, from 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM.

Community

Georgia CTSA Community Engagement Forum – April 1–2

Join Georgia CTSA Community Engagement via Zoom for our 5th Biennial Forum! One Georgia: Advancing Health Equity Amidst a New Normal One celebrates translational research and partnerships among community, academics, policy makers and practitioners. This FREE virtual forum will discuss community-academic exemplars’ research, technology and health, student research, and ways our health agencies, organizations, and researchers are navigating COVID-19 and its challenges.

Participants Needed for COVID-19 Vaccine and Therapeutic Trials

Adults 18 and older, from all races and ethnicities, are needed to participate in COVID-19 trials. Please spread the word to help recruit minorities, especially for vaccine trials.

Events

Rigor and Reproducibility Seminar Series – TODAY

Join us via Zoom from 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM to learn what tools support open science throughout the research cycle including planning, data collection, publication, and grant reporting & compliance.

AiR Webinar – March 2

Join AiR (Advances in Research) via Zoom from 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM to learn more about “Force-Dependent Activation and Modulation of von Willebrand Factor" with Graduate Student Nicholas Arce, BS and "Conformational Dynamics and Mechanoregulation of von Willebrand Factor" with Graduate Student Emily Legan, BS.

Southeast Regional Clinical and Translational Science Conference - March 4 - 5

Hosted by the Georgia CTSA, register now to virtually join us as we bring together researchers from across the region to present the best new clinical and translational research and build collaborative partnerships.

COVID FORCE Collaborative Seminar Series – March 5

Join us via Zoom from 11:00 AM – 11:45 AM. This seminar series is designed to highlight COVID research being conducted here at Emory University and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and is sponsored by the following centers: Center for Childhood Vaccines and Infections, Center for Clinical Translational Research, and Atlanta Center for Microsystems Engineered Point of Care Technologies (ACME-POCT).

International GMP Conference – March 8 – 11

The International Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) Conference was established in conjunction with the FDA in 1976 to create an annual ongoing dialogue between regulatory agencies and the pharmaceutical industry on important issues in drug compliance and quality. Attendees will leave the conference with valuable information and ideas that will facilitate the production of safe, high quality drugs for consumers.

HSRC Seminar Series – March 17

Join Health Science Research Center via Zoom from 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM to learn more about “Using Evaluative Frameworks to Assess Implementation Outcomes: Lessons in School Mental Health for Students with Autism" with Assistant Professor Katherine Pickard, MD.

Team Science Skill Workshop Managing, Leveraging, and Mitigating Conflict – March 19

Join Georgia CTSA for an interactive workshop via Zoom from 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM. As conflict is more or less universal and largely inevitable, being able to manage conflict productively is a key skillset when engaged in work that involves interacting with others. After brief round-table of introductions on backgrounds and goals for the workshop, we will review the results of the Conflict Management Styles feedback report, as well as the group’s composite results. A free evidence-based personalized conflict styles report will be available to each attendee after taking the 5-minute assessment at ITPmetrics.com. Discussions will be facilitated on how different conflict styles may be more appropriate in given scenarios, and how to align the right style as the situation calls for it.

HIV & Aging: Mitochondria to the Metropolis - Population Determinants of Health – April 14 -16

This multidisciplinary conference will provide a venue for all attendees to build scientific partnership and contribute useful knowledge to the quality of care and life of persons aging with HIV.

7th Annual Health Services Research Day – May 5 (Abstracts Due: March 8)

Health Services Research Day is going virtual! Join us for this symposium and networking opportunity where researchers across Georgia will learn about ongoing quality, effectiveness, and value-based research activities. Oral and poster presentations will be selected from submitted abstracts.

Southeastern Pediatric Research Conference – June 11 (Abstracts Due: March 1)