Infrastructure Innovation for Biological Research

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The Infrastructure Innovation for Biological Research (IIBR) solicitation supports new and innovative research in biological informatics, instrumentation and associated methods, as well as multidisciplinary approaches to these broad themes that address needs in basic biological research. These awards support pioneering approaches that develop de novo infrastructure, significantly redesign existing infrastructure, or apply existing infrastructure in novel ways. Activities must demonstrate the potential to advance or transform research in biology as supported by the Directorate for Biological Sciences at the National Science Foundation ( http://nsf.gov/bio ). The “Rules of Life” is one of the NSF’s ten big ideas for future investment. Understanding these basic “Rules” and how they operate across scales of time, space, and complexity to determine how genes function and interact with the environment will enable us to predict the phenotype, structure, function, and behavior of organisms. Providing scientists with the instrumentation and resources necessary to make these discoveries requires investments in new instrumentation capabilities and extending access to existing instrumentation and experimental facilities.