BRAIN Initiative: Integration and Analysis of BRAIN Initiative Data (R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) | RFA MH 21 135

Opportunity Information: Apply for RFA MH 21 135

The NIH funding opportunity "BRAIN Initiative: Integration and Analysis of BRAIN Initiative Data (R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)" (Funding Opportunity Number RFA-MH-21-135) is a discretionary grant program that supports research and development focused on making BRAIN Initiative data easier to use, interpret, and connect across studies. It is a reissue of an earlier solicitation (RFA-MH-19-147) and is centered on creating software tools that help researchers visualize, integrate, and analyze complex neuroscience datasets generated through BRAIN Initiative-supported experiments. A key point is that this R01 specifically does not allow clinical trials, so proposals should be focused on tool-building, computational methods, and informatics work rather than testing clinical interventions in human participants.

This opportunity fits into a broader, coordinated set of BRAIN Initiative informatics efforts aimed at building the practical infrastructure the neuroscience community needs to manage and learn from rapidly expanding datasets. In addition to this FOA, NIH describes companion programs that cover other essential pieces of the ecosystem: one focused on developing data standards needed to describe novel and evolving experiment types used in BRAIN research (RFA-MH-19-146), and another aimed at building the data infrastructures or platforms that will store and serve data contributed by multiple experimental groups (RFA-MH-19-145). Together, these efforts are meant to move beyond simply generating data and toward ensuring the data can be described consistently, housed reliably, and analyzed effectively by the broader community.

A central theme of the announcement is that NIH is not trying to build one massive, universal neuroscience informatics system all at once. Instead, the strategy is to create infrastructure that is immediately useful within specific sub-domains of experimental neuroscience, essentially building the ecosystem one experimental area at a time. The rationale is practical: domain-specific tools and platforms can be designed around the workflows, data types, and analysis needs of particular research communities, making them more likely to be adopted and used right away. At the same time, applicants are encouraged to design with the future in mind. Even if a given project is initially scoped to a particular sub-domain, NIH signals that as understanding of the brain improves, it may become possible and desirable to build linkages among these domain-focused systems. In other words, projects should avoid painting themselves into a corner and should consider interoperability, extensibility, and pathways to eventual cross-domain integration.

The eligible applicant pool is broad and includes many types of U.S. organizations and governments, such as state, county, city or township governments; special district governments; and independent school districts. Institutions of higher education are eligible across categories (public/state controlled and private). Tribal entities are included, both federally recognized Native American tribal governments and other Native American tribal organizations, and the FOA also highlights additional eligible groups such as Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs). Nonprofit organizations are eligible whether or not they have 501(c)(3) status, and for-profit organizations (other than small businesses) as well as small businesses may apply. Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities are included as eligible applicants. The announcement also explicitly calls out a range of community- and mission-driven institutions and organizations as eligible, including Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions, Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISISs), Hispanic-serving Institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), faith-based or community-based organizations, regional organizations, U.S. territories or possessions, eligible federal government agencies, and even non-U.S. entities (foreign organizations), reflecting an intent to broaden participation and enable contributions from diverse parts of the research and stakeholder landscape.

From an administrative standpoint, the sponsoring agency is the National Institutes of Health, the funding instrument is a grant, and the activity areas are listed under education, health, income security, and social services. The FOA references multiple CFDA numbers (93.173, 93.213, 93.242, 93.273, 93.279, 93.286, 93.853, 93.865, 93.866, 93.867), indicating alignment with several NIH programs and institutes/centers that may be involved in supporting BRAIN-related work. The opportunity was created on 2021-03-10, with an original closing date of 2022-03-23. The summary text provided does not specify an award ceiling or expected number of awards, so prospective applicants would typically confirm budget limits, project period expectations, and review considerations in the full FOA text.

In practical terms, a competitive proposal under this FOA would generally be expected to deliver robust, well-documented software that helps the community work with BRAIN datasets more effectively, especially by improving visualization and analysis capabilities and by supporting integration across datasets within a given experimental sub-domain. Because NIH emphasizes building for the future while delivering near-term utility, strong applications would usually pay attention to issues like usability for experimentalists, data and metadata handling, compatibility with emerging standards, scalable computing approaches, and the ability to interface with relevant data repositories or platforms. The overall goal is to ensure that the massive and diverse data being produced by BRAIN Initiative research can be turned into accessible, interpretable, and reusable scientific knowledge through high-quality, community-oriented informatics tools.

• The National Institutes of Health in the education, health, income security and social services sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "BRAIN Initiative: Integration and Analysis of BRAIN Initiative Data (R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.173, 93.213, 93.242, 93.273, 93.279, 93.286, 93.853, 93.865, 93.866, 93.867.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2021-03-10.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2022-03-23. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Independent school districts, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, For-profit organizations other than small businesses, Small businesses, Others.

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