The purpose of the announcement is to invite applications from applicants who have an interest in performing high impact, cutting-edge scientific and computing activities necessary to establish an NIH Data Commons. The goal of the NIH Data Commons is to accelerate new biomedical discoveries by providing a cloud-based platform where investigators can store, share, access, and compute on digital objects (data, software, etc.) generated from biomedical research and perform novel scientific research including hypothesis generation, discovery, and validation. Applicants are encouraged to develop innovative approaches to one or more key computational, data, analytical and scientific capabilities of the Data Commons. These key capabilities are described in detail in the announcement.

Awards under Research Opportunity Announcement RM-17-026 will made using Other Transactions (OTs), which are not grants, cooperative agreements, or contracts. It is essential applicants carefully follow the instructions in the announcement as they likely will be different from what they are used to seeing.

Letters of Intent (LOIs) are required, and are due June 30, 2017 (5:00 PM United States Eastern Time).  LOIs will be used to select individuals or groups who will be invited to submit an application by July 12. Only those who are invited may apply. Applications submitted without an invitation from the NIH will be returned and not reviewed. NIH expects to make several OT awards under this announcement. The planned budget for this announcement is $21 million over a 4-year period.

Inquiries about RM-17-026 should be directed to: commonspilot@od.nih.gov.