NSF and NIH Release Second Solicitation on Smart Health and Biomedical Research in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Data Science
The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have released a second solicitation on “Smart Health and Biomedical Research in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Data Science” through the Smart and Connected Health (SCH) program. The SCH program supports innovative, high-risk, high-reward research to promote disruptive transformations in biomedical and public health research, drawing from coordinated, convergent, and interdisciplinary approaches from “multiple domains of computer and information science, engineering, mathematical sciences and the biomedical, social, behavioral, and economic sciences.”
Projects funded through this solicitation must make fundamental contributions to two or more of these disciplines to improve understanding of human biological, biomedical, public health and/or health related processes and to address a key health problem. Projects should advance understanding of how “computing, engineering and mathematics, combined with advances in behavioral and social science research, would support transformations in health, medicine and/or healthcare and improve the quality of life.”
Proposal may address a wide range of research areas including computational science, algorithmic, cyber-physical systems (CPS) integration, imaging, robotics, and systemic level health disparities and health equity issues in biomedical and public health data science research. Additionally, proposals can address challenges related to the large amounts of multi-level and multi-scale data generated by biomedical and behavioral research. The solicitation states that “traditional disease-centric medical, clinical, pharmacological, biological or physiological studies and evaluations are outside the scope of this solicitation.” This SCH solicitation includes participation from the NSF Directorates for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), Engineering (ENG), Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS), and Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) as well as 23 NIH Institutes and Centers as listed in the solicitation.
Projects addressing these multidisciplinary challenges require fundamental research and development of new tools, workflows, and methods. Some of the themes relevant to this solicitation are outlined below (not that this list is not exhaustive):
- Fairness and Trustworthiness – advancing fairness and trustworthiness in modeling in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), developing a deeper understanding of causality in AI/ML models;
- Transformative Analytics in Biomedical and Behavioral Research – development in new areas such as AI/ML, natural language technologies (NLT), and quantum information science (QIS) to address important biomedical and behavioral problems;
- Next Generation Multimodal and Reconfigurable Sensing Systems – to develop new multimodal and sensing systems/platforms and analytics to generate predictive and personalized models of health;
- Cyber-Physical Systems – enabling the creation of closed-loop or human-the-loop CPS systems to assess, treat, and reduce adverse health events of behaviors;
- Robotics –development of novel robotics to support automation to enhance health and research that considers inextricably interwoven questions of intelligence, computation, and embodiment;
- Biomedical Image Interpretation – to determine how characteristics of human pattern recognition, visual search, perceptual learning, and attentional biases can inform or improve image interpretation, and;
- Unpacking Health Disparities and Health Equity – develop holistic, data driven AI/ML or mathematical models to address the structural and/or social determinants of health and new interdisciplinary computational and engineering approaches and models to better understand culture, context and person-centered solutions with diverse communities.
Research teams are required to include members with appropriate and demonstrable expertise in the major areas involved in the work. Projects are expected to include students and postdocs, and all projects are required to have a collaboration plan. Proposals will be reviewed under the standard NSF criteria of Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts. For proposals selected for funding by participating NIH Institutes and Centers, investigators will be required to resubmit to NIH’s Center for Scientific Review following resubmission procedures provided by NIH.
Due Dates: Proposals must be submitted by November 9, 2023. Subsequent due dates for this solicitation are October 3, 2024, and October 3, 2025.
Award Information: The estimated number of awards are 10 to 16 per year with a total anticipated funding amount of $15 million to $20 million. Individual projects will be funded for up to four years for a total of $1.2 million ($300,000 per year).
Eligibility: Institutions of higher education and non-profit, non-academic organizations are eligible to apply. Investigators may serve as Principal Investigator, co-Principal Investigator, Project Director, Senior Personnel or Consultant on no more than two proposals submitted in response to this solicitation.
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