Author Archives: emily

Defense Health Program Department of Defense Spinal Cord Injury Research Program Anticipated Funding Opportunities for Fiscal Year 2020 (FY20)

Posted on by

The FY20 Defense Appropriations Act provides $40 million (M) to the Department of Defense Spinal Cord Injury Research Program (SCIRP) to support innovative, high-impact spinal cord injury (SCI) research1.  As directed by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, the Defense Health Agency J9, Research and Development Directorate manages the Defense Health Program (DHP) Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) appropriation.  The managing agent for the anticipated Program Announcements/Funding Opportunities is the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) at the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC).

The SCIRP is providing the information in this pre-announcement to allow investigators time to plan and develop ideas for submission to the anticipated FY20 funding opportunity. This pre-announcement should not be construed as an obligation by the Government. The FY20 SCIRP Program Announcements and General Application Instructions for the following award mechanisms will be posted on the Grants.gov website. Pre-application and application deadlines will be available when the Program Announcements are released. 

Applications submitted to the FY20 SCIRP must address one or more of the following focus areas:

  • Preserving and protecting spinal cord tissue at time of injury for improved neurologic outcomes
  • Identifying and validating biomarkers for diagnosis, prognosis, and for evaluation of treatment efficacies (Transnational Research Award and Investigator-Initiated Research Award only)
  • Bowel, genitourinary, cardiopulmonary dysfunction, and neuropathic pain
  • Psychosocial issues relevant to people with SCI, their families, and/or their care partners
  • Rehabilitation and regeneration—maximizing the function of the residual neural circuitry, including harnessing neuroplasticity and recovery to improve function after SCI

https://cdmrp.army.mil/pubs/press/2020/20scirppreann

A pre-application is required and must be submitted through the electronic Biomedical Research Application Portal (eBRAP) at https://eBRAP.org prior to the pre-application deadline.  All applications must conform to the final Program Announcements and General Application Instructions that will be available for electronic downloading from the Grants.gov website.  The application package containing the required forms for each award mechanism will also be found on Grants.gov.  A listing of all CDMRP and other USAMRDC extramural funding opportunities can be obtained on the Grants.gov website by performing a basic search using CFDA Number 12.420. 

Submission deadlines are not available until the Program Announcements are released.  For email notification when Program Announcements are released, subscribe to program-specific news and updates under “Email Subscriptions” on the eBRAP homepage at https://eBRAP.org.  For more information about the SCIRP or other CDMRP-administered programs, please visit the CDMRP website (https://cdmrp.army.mil).

HRSA Opioid-Impacted Family Support Program

Posted on by

Proposal due date: April 13, 2020

Purpose of the Program:

The purpose of this program is to support training programs that enhance and expand paraprofessionals knowledge, skills and expertise, and to increase the number of peer support specialists and other behavioral health-related paraprofessionals who work on integrated, interprofessional teams in providing services to children whose parents are impacted by opioid use disorders (OUD) and other substance use disorders (SUD), and their family members who are in guardianship roles. Additionally, a special focus is on demonstrating knowledge and understanding of the specific concerns for children, adolescents and transitional aged youth in high need and high demand areas2 who are at risk for mental health disorders and SUDs.

Program Objectives are to:

  • Enhance and expand, didactic educational support and experiential field training opportunities for OIFSP paraprofessional trainees that target children, adolescents and transitional age youth whose parents are impacted by OUD and other SUDs, and their family members who are in guardianship roles. These two components (didactic and experiential field training) comprise Level I training and are further explained in the Background section.
  • Develop, or establish a partnership with, registered apprenticeship programs to provide in-service training that places paraprofessional trainees in behavioral health-related positions addressing OUD and other SUDs. The apprenticeship program constitutes Level II training and is also further explained in the Background section.
  • Reduce financial barriers by providing financial support to trainees in the form of tuition/fees, supplies, and stipend support.
  • Create additional training positions beyond current program capacity to increase the number of paraprofessionals trained by a minimum of 10 percent in year one and maintain that level each year of the 4-year project period, with a focus on working with families who are impacted by OUD and other SUDs.

Additional information including the Notice of Funding Opportunity can be found on the HRSA site.

National Institute of Justice Graduate Research Fellowship 2020 Solicitation Webinar

Posted on by

This webinar will provide information about the National Institute of Justice’s Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF) program to potential applicants.

Previously, NIJ offered two separate funding opportunities: GRF-Social and Behavioral Science (SBS) and GRF-STEM. Beginning this year, NIJ invites applications from Ph.D. students in ALL science and engineering fields under a single solicitation.

The presenters will discuss eligibility, application requirements, and answer frequently asked questions. A live Q&A session will conclude the webinar.

The webinar will occur on Tuesday, February 4, 2020 from 1:00-2:00 pm EST.

Learn more about the GRF program and download the solicitation PDF.

You can register for the webinar here.

NineSigma – Transforming the Future of Self-Care Challenge

Posted on by


GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Consumer Healthcare is on a mission to “Transform the Future of Self-Care” to enable consumers to do more, feel better and live longer.  We are actively seeking to establish strategic partnerships with start-ups and entrepreneurs who are equally passionate about delivering against this mission.  The way consumers treat, diagnose and engage with their health is dramatically shifting and we want to partner with breakthrough thinkers so that we can jointly improve lives. 

To drive this mission to enhance our current key, over-the-counter and consumer product brands, we are currently seeking new opportunities in the following three Challenge Topics:  Digital Health, At-Home Diagnostics, and Formulation Technologies.

Click links below to view detailed descriptions about each topic:

There is a maximum of US$50,000 available for cash prizes.  The Competition will award up to five (5) US$10,000 prizes to the winners across the three Topics.  The Challenge sponsor may also explore funding or other support of an Entry for further development and/or commercialization.

Submission Deadline: January 31, 2020 by 5:00 PM EST

Additional information can be found on the NineSigma web page.

Army Research Lab – Scalable, Adaptive, and Resilient Autonomy (SARA) Funding Opportunity

Posted on by

Key Dates:

  • Opportunity Webinar – January 24, 2020
  • Deadline for Questions on Funding Opportunity – January 31, 2020
  • Proposals due for Cycle 1 – February 14, 2020

Program Description

Future Army forces will need to conduct cross-domain maneuver (CDM) and at times, operate semi-independently, disbursed, and while communications and infrastructure such as Global Positioning System (GPS) are disrupted or denied. Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) will play a key role in expanding the operational reach, situational awareness, and effectiveness of maneuver forces in CDM. The Combat Capabilities Development Command (CCDC) Army Research Laboratory (ARL) is focused on developing fundamental understanding and informing the art-of-the-possible for warfighter concepts through research to greatly improve air and ground based autonomous vehicle perception, learning, reasoning, communication, navigation, and physical capabilities to augment and increase the freedom of maneuver in complex and contested environments. The Scalable, Adaptive, and Resilient Autonomy (SARA) program is focused on developing and experimentally accelerating emerging research in autonomous mobility and maneuverability, scalable heterogeneous and collaborative behaviors, and human agent teaming to realize adaptive and resilient Intelligent Systems that can reason about the environment, work in distributed and collaborative heterogeneous teams, and make optempo decisions to enable Autonomous Maneuver in complex and contested environments. In order to achieve this vision, advancements are needed in following:

  • Novel methods for all-terrain ground and aerial maneuver to interact with and move through complex environments.
  • Methods for scalable and heterogeneous collaborative behaviors in support of collaborative air and ground manned-unmanned teaming operations.
  • Techniques for improved perception, decision-making, and adaptive behaviors for fully autonomous maneuver in contested environments.
  • Methods, metrics, and tools to facilitate, simulate, and enable testing and evaluation of emerging approaches for intelligent and autonomous systems under Army relevant constraints and environments.
  • Experimental testbeds to develop and refine knowledge products to inform and transition technology to Army stakeholders.

Additional information, including the solicitation, can be found on the SARA webpage or on grants.gov.