Notice Number: NOT-EB-07-002
(This Notice has been replaced by NOT-EB-07-006)

Key Dates
Release Date: Dec 22, 2006

Issued by
National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (http://www.nibib.nih.gov)

The NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research (http://neuroscienceblueprint.nih.gov/) is a framework to enhance cooperative activities among the NIH Office of the Director and 15 NIH Institutes and Centers that support research on the nervous system. By pooling resources and expertise, the Blueprint takes advantage of economies of scale, confronts challenges too large for any single Institute or Center, and develops research tools and infrastructure that serve the entire neuroscience community.

The Neuroscience Blueprint Institutes and Centers have supported the development of sophisticated, high-quality neuroimaging informatics tools and resources. Examples of such tools include image segmentation, image registration, image processing pipelines, statistical analysis packages, spatial alignment and normalization algorithms, and data format translators. Resources include well-characterized test datasets, data formats, and databases, among others. These neuroimaging informatics tools and resources need to be adoptable by the extended neuroimaging research community. This requires, for example, that neuroimaging informatics tools and resources be well characterized and documented. Developers of these tools do not typically have resources available to characterize the tools for general use, to provide a standard user interface, or to provide quality documentation regarding their tools. They do not have time to perform distribution and subsequent troubleshooting when and if these tools are broadly shared. These problems are exacerbated by the isolation of the interested parties from each other.

NIH has established an independent Neuroimaging Informatics Tools and Resources Clearinghouse (NITRC) for facilitating the dissemination and use of existing neuroimaging informatics tools and resources. The Clearinghouse will create and operate a web site that will:

Provide the neuroimaging informatics tools and resources (or links to them) and information about those neuroimaging informatics tools and resources to the neuroimaging research community at large
Provide ongoing opportunities for public comment regarding particular neuroimaging informatics tools and resources in order to guide their development and enhance their use by the neuroimaging research community at large

In conjunction with the development of the NITRC, supplemental funding is provided by the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research for modifying, documenting, and otherwise making more adoptable, interoperable, and usable existing neuroimaging informatics tools and resources. Current NIH grantees can request a $50,000 (direct cost) administrative supplement to support work for the purpose(s) stated above. The eligible parent grant mechanisms include R01, R33, R37, P01, P20, P30, P41, P50, P60, U01, U41, and U54. The parent grant should have at least two years remaining at application to be eligible. In parallel with this NIH notice, a NIH funding opportunity announcement RFA-EB-07-002 is issued to provide funding for the above stated purposes for applicants not eligible for administrative revisions. This announcement fully details the purpose and requirements of the overall supplemental funding policy.

Multiple administrative supplement applications may be submitted to supplement a single parent grant, as long as the objectives of the supplements are distinct. For example, one supplement may seek funds to enhance the graphical user interface for an existing neuroimaging informatics tool, while a second application to supplement the same parent grant may request funds to document the code and create a developers manual. The maximum for each supplement is limited to $50k in direct costs per year. No more than two supplement applications will be accepted per parent grant.

Eligible applicants requesting administrative supplemental funding are required to provide a clear rationale for their requests as well as their plans to meet all requirements outlined in the NIH announcement RFA-EB-07-002.

Inquiries
For further information, contact:

Yantian Zhang, Ph.D.
Program Director
Division of Applied Science and Technology
National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering
Democracy II, Suite 200
6707 Democracy Blvd
Bethesda, MD 20892
Telephone: (301) 402-1373
Fax: (301) 480-1614
Email: yantian.zhang@nih.gov