This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) supports projects relevant to the NIGMS mission or those of other NIH institutes or Centers (ICs) participating in the FOA that focus solely on the development of technologies with the potential to enable acquisition of biomedical knowledge. Projects should be justified in terms of technical innovation and utility of such technical innovation for impacting future biomedical research. Outcomes or products of the proposed project should significantly advance the current state of the art and be sufficiently characterized for application in addressing a broad range of biomedical research questions. These outcomes may include, but are not limited to:
- laboratory instruments and other devices,
- algorithms and software,
- chemical reagents and processes,
- biological molecules or systems that have been modified by human intervention to become research tools.
The goal of this FOA is to support the development of technologies with demonstrated proof-of-concept that have remaining significant technical challenges to full implementation and broad utility. As such, applications should not propose to test specific biological questions. Applications proposing to test specific biological questions are not responsive to this FOA and will be administratively withdrawn without review. Applications with a focus on optimization, hardening, or obvious extrapolations of established technology will be a lower priority for funding.