Notice Number: NOT-DA-09-003

Key Dates
Release Date: November 4, 2008

Issued by
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), (http://www.nida.nih.gov)

Components of Participating Organizations
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), (http://www.nigms.nih.gov)
National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), (http://www.nccam.nih.gov)
National Institute on Aging (NIA), (http://www.nia.nih.gov)
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) (http://www.nimh.nih.gov)

This Notice announces the participation of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in PA-09-002, “Short Courses on Mathematical, Statistical, and Computational Tools for Studying Biological Systems (R25)” (http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-09-002.html).  Through our participation, the NIDA plans to support applications that address short courses and workshops on topics relevant to NIDA (http://www.nida.nih.gov/about/organization/Organization.html). 
Special emphasis will be given to applications that foster the interaction of computational scientists, informaticians, statisticians, and ontological engineers directly with investigators in substance abuse research to advance understanding, application, and development of tools, knowledge environments, and analytical methods to the complex, integrative approaches needed to improve understanding of substance abuse across multiple biological scales based on data from a variety of experimental modalities.    Areas for short course and workshop development that are of particular interest to the NIDA may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Approaches for discovering, collecting, organizing, analyzing, and modeling data related to molecular, cellular and circuit behavior in reward valuations and decision processes associated with substance abuse.
• Topics concerning all aspects of discovering, managing, processing, and evaluating data for identifying genes, and their affiliated regulation, functions and networks related to biological processes, vulnerabilities, and variabilities associated with substance abuse.
• Strategies for elucidating the short and long-terms effects of drugs of abuse on adaptive brain mechanisms.
• Content related to quantitative molecular pharmacology, and lipid and metabolic informatics, associated with understanding mechanisms of action of drugs of abuse and identifying and assessing potential therapeutic strategies.
• Approaches for using existing data obtained or derived from various resources (such as genomic/proteomic databases, animal repositories, brain banks that include confirmed drug use information for HIV-infected individuals, or pre-established clinical/basic research networks) to address interactions between drug abuse and HIV infection.

All other aspects of this FOA remain unchanged.

Inquiries

Scientific/research questions about this Notice should be directed to:

Karen Skinner, Ph.D.
Division of Basic Neuroscience and Behavioral Research
National Institute on Drug Abuse
6001 Executive Boulevard, Room 4243, MSC 9555
Bethesda, MD 20892-9555
Telephone: (301) 435-0886
Fax: (301) 594-6043
Email: kskinner@mail.nih.gov

Grants Management questions should be directed to:

Diana Haikalis
Grants Management Specialist
Grants Management Branch
National Institute on Drug Abuse/NIH/DHHS
6101 Executive Boulevard, Suite 270 MSC 8403
Bethesda MD  20892-8403
Telephone: (301) 443-6710
FAX : (301) 594-6847
E-mail: dhaikali@nida.nih.gov