Limited Competition 4DN Data Coordination and Integration Center (U01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) | RFA RM 20 008

Opportunity Information: Apply for RFA RM 20 008

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a limited competition funding opportunity titled "Limited Competition 4DN Data Coordination and Integration Center (U01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)" under funding opportunity number RFA-RM-20-008. This is a discretionary health-related award made through a cooperative agreement mechanism (U01), meaning NIH staff are expected to have substantial programmatic involvement during the project rather than acting only as a passive funder. As the title indicates, clinical trials are not allowed under this award. The opportunity was created on December 20, 2019, with an original closing date of March 17, 2020, and it falls under CFDA 93.310.

The competition is limited because the FOA specifically invites an application only from the currently funded NIH Common Fund-supported Four-Dimensional Nucleome (4DN) Data Coordination and Integration Center (DCIC). The purpose is to support Phase 2 of the broader 4DN program, which focuses on understanding how the genome is organized in three dimensions over time (the "fourth dimension") and how that organization relates to genome function. In practical terms, this FOA is about sustaining and expanding the central infrastructure that makes the program's data usable, comparable, and broadly accessible to the research community.

The DCIC is expected to carry two major categories of responsibility. The first is Data Standards, Storage, Analysis, and Dissemination. Under this area, the DCIC serves as the main hub for collecting, storing, curating, and sharing everything produced by 4DN investigators, including primary and processed data, associated metadata, analysis and visualization tools, computational models, and navigable reference maps. A key part of this role is ensuring that data coming from different labs, methods, and experimental systems can be integrated and compared, which requires rigorous curation practices and consistent data and metadata standards.

The second responsibility area is Consortium Interactions and Outreach. Beyond operating as a repository, the DCIC is expected to function as an active coordinating center for the 4DN consortium, supporting communication, alignment of practices, and shared approaches to data generation and analysis. Outreach is also a core expectation: the DCIC should help drive broader use of 4DN resources by both experts and non-experts. This typically implies documentation, training materials, user support, workshops or webinars, and other activities that lower the barrier to finding, understanding, and reusing 4DN datasets and tools.

The FOA emphasizes the DCIC's leadership role in developing and implementing data and metadata standards and in putting processing pipelines and analysis/visualization tools into practice. In other words, the center is not only expected to store files, but also to help define what "good" standardized 4DN data looks like, provide consistent pipelines that improve reproducibility, and offer tools that make the data easier to explore and interpret. The end result NIH is aiming for is a well-integrated, high-quality, publicly useful ecosystem of datasets and computational resources that can power discovery well beyond the original 4DN consortium.

Eligibility is restricted and includes public and state-controlled institutions of higher education, but the limited competition language makes clear that the intended applicant is the currently funded 4DN DCIC. Foreign institutions (non-U.S. entities) are not eligible to apply, and non-domestic components of U.S. organizations are also not eligible to apply. However, foreign components, as defined by the NIH Grants Policy Statement, are allowed, which generally means certain aspects of a project may involve foreign work or collaborations when justified and permitted under NIH policy, even though the applicant organization itself must be eligible and domestically based.

• The National Institutes of Health in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Limited Competition 4DN Data Coordination and Integration Center (U01 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): 93.310.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2019-12-20.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2020-03-17. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Eligible applicants include: Public and State controlled institutions of higher education.

Apply for RFA RM 20 008

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