• RESOURCES

Funding Opportunities


To post a funding opportunity, please send the announcement in a Word or .pdf file to [email protected].

NOT-DC-24-025: Development of Imaging Techniques for High Resolution and Functional Scanning of In Vivo Human Sensory and Communication Systems

NIDCD would like to share a new funding opportunity for the purpose of improving existing, and discovering new, imaging techniques in terms of resolution and functional capabilities to provide accurate and timely diagnoses for humans in the clinic.

There are limited technologies currently available to visualize chemosensory structures in a clinical setting for diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring of olfactory and taste disorders. Such disorders can arise due to many factors including aging, injury, viral infection, inflammation, or environmental insult. One challenge with commonly used endoscopy is that the olfactory epithelium is generally indistinguishable from the respiratory mucosa. Advances in noninvasive imaging tools and technologies, such as fluorescent imaging, specialized endoscopes, and dyes, and technologies are needed to visualize chemosensory targets, and to monitor specific chemosensory cell types and/or their activity in real-time. The list below include representative, but not exhaustive, examples of topics that could be considered responsive to this NOSI:

  • Identify enzymes and substrates that can be used to monitor specific cell types and/or their activity in real time.
  • Development or adaptions of new technologies or devices to visualize at the cellular or structural resolution chemosensory targets in humans or in animals if readily applicable to humans.
  • Development of electrophysiological approaches (e.g., miniaturized surface arrays) to diagnose and monitor human or animal chemosensory targets (i.e., nerves and organs).

NOT-DC-24-024: Training and Career Development in Dissemination and Implementation Science for Research in Communication Disorders

NIDCD would like to share a new funding opportunity related training in dissemination and implementation (D&I) science. D&I is intended to close the gap between research and practice by providing frameworks and tools to understand why evidence-based practices aren’t being used in real world settings and to support people and places in adopting, implementing, and sustaining evidence-based practices.

The purpose of the funding opportunity is both (1) to encourage those with expertise in NIDCD mission areas to pursue research and training in D&I science, and (2) to encourage those with D&I expertise to pursue research and training in the NIDCD mission areas of hearing, balance, taste, smell, voice, speech, and language.

Applications for this initiative must use one of the training and career development funding opportunities listed in the notice with options available across all career stages, including predoctoral students (e.g., F30, F31, FM1), post-doctoral fellows (e.g., F32, K99/R00, K01), new and junior investigators (e.g., K01, K08, K23, K25), and established investigators (e.g., K18, K24). Likewise, there are institutional funding opportunities aimed at establishing mentoring networks (e.g., R25), providing research experiences (e.g., R25), and enhancing predoctoral and postdoctoral research training (e.g., T32, T35) for D&I research in NIDCD mission areas.

MIT Grand Challenge

MIT's Center for Biomedical Innovation and the Coca-Cola Company are pleased to announce that the second Request for Proposals (RFP) for the Alternatives to Sugar Grand Challenge is now open. For more details about the program and an upcoming March workshop, click HERE. We encourage eligible research collaborations to apply (Proposal deadline: May 29, 2024).

The Grand Challenge is searching for projects in science & engineering that could advance the scientific understanding of sweet taste, that could uncover novel ways for improving sweet taste quality, and that could create game-changing sweetening solutions. These solutions could include novel, natural sweeteners, unique combinations of ingredients, or completely new ways to deliver sugar-like taste, perhaps even without the need for added sweetening ingredients.

Previously funded projects focus on decoding the human sweet taste receptor led by MIT Prof. Barbara Imperiali from Biology and enhancing understanding about how saliva and mucins in the mouth influence sweet taste led by MIT Prof. Gareth McKinley from Mechanical Engineering. The project led by Prof. Imperiali is an international collaboration including Prof. Masha Niv at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Prof. Sotirios Kampranis at the University of Copenhagen.

Grand Challenge proposals are expected to fall into four areas, but additional innovative areas will be considered:

  • Advancing the science of taste and aroma and filling in key knowledge gaps in the biology and neuroscience of sweet taste perception and sweet taste quality, such as identifying the physiological mechanisms that distinguish sugar from other sweeteners.
  • Tools and assay technologies to screen sweetness beyond current technologies (especially HTP methods for assessing the quality of sweetness rather than just sweet intensity)>/li>
  • Advanced chemical approaches for studying, creating, or delivering superior sweet taste quality (e.g., novel research methods, molecular tools for probing the biological mechanisms, combinatorial chemistry (peptides, glycans, etc.), or delivery systems).
  • Machine learning and AI for the analysis of complex data sets related to taste perception and for revealing hidden correlations around taste interactions.
NIH Research Education Program (R25)
The NIH Research Education Program (R25) supports research education activities in the mission areas of the NIH. The overarching goal of this NIDCD R25 program is to support educational activities that help recruit individuals with specific specialty or disciplinary backgrounds to research careers in biomedical, behavioral and clinical sciences.

To accomplish the stated over-arching goal, this FOA will support creative educational activities with a primary focus on Research Experiences. In particular, this FOA seeks applications from institutional programs that can provide outstanding educational activities to medical students and resident-investigators in otolaryngology and foster their ability to transition to individual career development research awards. The program will support institutions to create a pathway in otolaryngology research careers through structured programs for medical students and resident-investigators with defined program milestones. Program participants are expected to continue in the next appropriate step to prepare for a research career, which may include an appointment to an institutional training grant or career development award, fellowship, or individual career development award.

Click Here for more information.
W.M. Keck Foundation Research Program Opportunity
The W.M. Keck Research Program seeks to benefit humanity by supporting projects in two specific areas (1) medical research and (2) science and engineering, that are distinctive and novel in their approach, question the prevailing paradigm, or have the potential to break open new territory in their field. Past grants have been awarded to major universities, independent research institutions, and medical schools to support pioneering biological and physical science research and engineering, including the development of promising new technologies, instrumentation or methodologies. Historically, grants range from $500,000 to $5 million and are typically $2million or less. Funding is awarded to universities and institutions nationwide for projects in research that:
  • Focus on basic science early in the process
  • Focus on important and emerging areas of research
  • Have the potential to develop breakthrough technologies, instrumentation or methodologies
  • Are innovative, distinctive and interdisciplinary
  • Demonstrate a high level of risk due to unconventional approaches, or by challenging the prevailing paradigm
  • Have the potential for transformative impact, such as the founding of a new field of research, the enabling of observations not previously possible, or the altered perception of a previously intractable problem
Click Here for more information.

Much of the research done by AChemS members is funded by the following agencies:

www.nidcd.nih.gov
www.nih.gov
www.nia.nih.gov

Specific program announcements and requests for proposals can be found at the following sites:

www.nidcd.nih.gov/funding/opps/index.asp
 

RESOURCES



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