Investigator Initiated Innovation in Computational Genomics and Data Science (R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) | PAR 25 228

Opportunity Information: Apply for PAR 25 228

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding opportunity titled "Investigator Initiated Innovation in Computational Genomics and Data Science (R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)" (Funding Opportunity Number PAR-25-228) supports investigator-driven research that advances computational methods for genomics and genomic data analysis. The core intent is to fund work in computational genomics, data science, statistics, and bioinformatics that strengthens either basic genomic science, clinical genomic science, or both, as long as the resulting approaches are broadly useful for understanding human health and disease. The emphasis is on foundational, enabling innovations: projects are expected to produce general-purpose methods, algorithms, analytical frameworks, or software resources that can be applied across many diseases, traits, and biological systems rather than being narrowly tailored to a single condition or a single dataset.

This FOA is designed to cover a spectrum of development stages that matter to the genomics community. It encourages fundamental research into new analytical methodologies and computational approaches, including early-stage creation of tools and software where feasibility and innovation are central. It also explicitly welcomes refinement, maturation, and "hardening" of software and computational tools that already show high value, meaning improvements that make tools more robust, scalable, reliable, usable, and easier to adopt by the broader biomedical genomics community. In practical terms, that can include work such as improving performance on large-scale genomic datasets, strengthening statistical validity and reproducibility, expanding interoperability with common data formats and platforms, improving documentation and testing, and addressing real-world deployment issues that often prevent promising research code from becoming a widely used community resource.

A key requirement running through the announcement is scalability. All applications are expected to explain how the proposed methods and tools will scale as genomic datasets continue to grow in size and complexity. That typically means addressing computational efficiency, memory and storage needs, parallelization or distributed computing strategies, and the ability to handle increasingly diverse data types and multi-modal data (for example, integrating sequence variation, gene expression, epigenomic measures, single-cell data, imaging-derived phenotypes, and clinical or electronic health record features). The FOA is oriented toward solutions that remain effective as data move from thousands to hundreds of thousands to millions of samples, or from simple study designs to more complex population structures and longitudinal settings.

The award mechanism is an NIH R01 research project grant, and the opportunity is explicitly labeled "Clinical Trial Not Allowed," signaling that the funded work should not be structured as a clinical trial. The activity categories listed for this announcement fall under Education and Health, and the CFDA numbers associated with the opportunity are 93.172 and 93.879. The listing does not specify an award ceiling or the expected number of awards, which usually means applicants should look to standard NIH R01 budgeting norms and the details in the full FOA for any institute- or program-specific constraints.

Eligibility is broad and includes many organization types across the public, private, nonprofit, and tribal sectors. Eligible applicants include state, county, and city or township governments; special district governments; independent school districts; public and state-controlled institutions of higher education; private institutions of higher education; nonprofit organizations (both with and without 501(c)(3) status, as long as they are not institutions of higher education in those categories); for-profit organizations other than small businesses; and small businesses. The FOA also highlights additional eligible applicant categories such as Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions; Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISI); Hispanic-serving Institutions; Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs); Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs); Native American tribal governments (federally recognized) as well as Indian/Native American Tribal Governments other than federally recognized; eligible federal agencies; faith-based or community-based organizations; regional organizations; U.S. territories or possessions; and non-domestic (non-U.S.) entities, meaning foreign organizations can apply as well.

Administratively, the opportunity is categorized as discretionary and uses a grant funding instrument. The NIH is the sponsoring agency. The opportunity record indicates a creation date of November 18, 2024, and an original closing date of September 7, 2027, which suggests a multi-year window with multiple receipt dates typical of NIH announcements. Overall, this FOA is best suited for researchers proposing widely applicable computational and statistical advances in genomics, especially those that deliver reusable methods or durable software that the broader community can adopt, and that are designed from the start to handle the scale and complexity of modern and future genomic datasets.

• The National Institutes of Health in the education, health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Investigator Initiated Innovation in Computational Genomics and Data Science (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): 93.172, 93.879.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2024-11-18.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2027-09-07.
• 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.

Apply for PAR 25 228

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