Modeling Immunity for Biodefense (U19) | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The Modeling Immunity for Biodefense (U19) grant opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number RFA-AI-14-028) is a National Institutes of Health (NIH) cooperative agreement designed to build a coordinated network of research teams that develop and test computational models of immune responses to infectious diseases, explicitly excluding HIV/AIDS. The program focuses on immunity in two broad contexts: immune responses that occur during or after an infection, and immune responses measured before and after vaccination. What makes this opportunity distinctive is that it is not looking for modeling work in isolation. Instead, it emphasizes an iterative loop where computational modeling informs immunological experiments, and experimental results then feed back into the models to improve their accuracy, robustness, and usefulness.

At its core, the FOA is aiming to push the field toward a more predictive and mechanistic understanding of how complex immune processes unfold in real biological settings relevant to biodefense. Applicants are expected to go beyond descriptive analyses and instead develop, refine, and validate models that can help explain immune mechanisms and potentially anticipate outcomes such as protection, susceptibility, or immune dynamics over time. The intent is that these models become practical tools for studying infectious disease immunity and vaccination responses, not just academic demonstrations. Because the award mechanism is a cooperative agreement (U19), NIH typically expects substantial involvement in program coordination, collaboration across groups, and shared objectives that align with the networked nature of the initiative.

A major secondary goal is broad community impact through openness and reuse. The FOA specifically calls for computational models and the data generated under the program to be made readily available to other researchers for further refinement or direct application in biological experimentation. In other words, the expectation is that funded teams will produce resources the wider community can pick up and build upon, accelerating progress beyond the funded consortium itself. To reinforce this community-building aspect, the program also supports pilot projects as well as workshops and symposia, which are meant to encourage adoption of computational immunity approaches, cross-pollination between modelers and experimental immunologists, and the spread of best practices.

From an administrative and funding standpoint, this was a discretionary NIH funding opportunity in the health research category, tied to CFDA numbers 93.855 (Allergy and Infectious Diseases Research) and 93.856 (Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Research). The FOA listed an estimated total funding amount of $6,000,000 with an award ceiling of $1,000,000, and it did not require cost sharing or matching. The posting date and creation date were both March 21, 2014, with an original and current closing date of July 18, 2014, and an archive date of August 18, 2014. While those dates indicate the specific announcement is historical, the structure and aims are representative of NIH efforts to integrate computational and experimental immunology in areas relevant to biodefense and emerging infectious diseases.

Eligibility was broad and included many types of domestic organizations and institutions. Eligible applicants included public and state-controlled institutions of higher education, private institutions of higher education, nonprofits (including both 501(c)(3) and certain non-501(c)(3) entities), for-profit organizations (including small businesses and other for-profits), and various levels of government such as state, county, city or township governments, special district governments, and independent school districts. Tribal governments and tribal organizations were included, both federally recognized and other-than-federally recognized entities, along with tribally controlled colleges and universities. The FOA also highlighted eligibility for organizations such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-serving institutions, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian-serving institutions, AANAPISIs, and faith-based or community-based organizations, among others. Importantly, foreign components were allowed as defined in the NIH Grants Policy Statement, which signaled openness to international collaboration when it meaningfully contributed to the project goals.

In practical terms, a strong application under this FOA would be expected to propose a coherent, multi-project program that connects computational modeling tightly with experimental validation. It would likely include plans for data stewardship and model dissemination so that outputs are usable by others, not locked behind proprietary workflows. It would also fit naturally into the network concept by showing how the team would collaborate, share resources, and contribute to collective progress in modeling immunity for infectious disease and biodefense-relevant questions.

For full details, NIH referenced the official announcement page at: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-AI-14-028.html, and provided NIH Office of Extramural Research (OER) webmaster contacts for access or linking issues (FBOWebmaster@OD.NIH.GOV).

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