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Sept 2016

• Update: FY17 4DN Opportunity Pool Initiative: Transformative Collaborative Project Award (TCPA) (9/21/2016).

July 2016

• Announcement: FY17 4DN Opportunity Pool Initiative: Transformative Collaborative Project Award (TCPA). This document is discussed on 4DN steering committee meeting on July 19, 2016.

Previous discussion (2015 - 2016)

The 4DN opportunity funds are set up to support new initiatives decided by the NIH Program Staff and the 4DN steering committee. Funding is expected to be available starting the end of 2016. This is a discussion board for ideas of future projects to be considered for opportunity funding.

1. A shared cell repository, proposed by Clodagh O'shea and cell line working group.

2. An international conference on ENCODE and 4DN, proposed by education and outreach working group.

The following suggestions arose though discussions in the NIH 4DN Working Group

• Consortium activities to support tool development or activities that would benefit many within 4DN and help us achieve common goals:
  • Already in discussion with 4DN Steering Committee: funds to develop cell banks for at “reference” cell lines to be processed and distributed by a commercial repository.
  • Other needs that may arise: equipment or reagents that can benefit more than one team; researcher mobility; inter-project collaborations; etc.

• Meeting support in addition to the annual 4DN meeting:
  • US scientific meeting co-organized with and co-funded by the “Epigenomics” Roadmap Program
  • International meeting, possibly involving other organized groups or consortia in Europe and/or Asia
  • Workshop focused on junior investigators within the Consortium

• Collaborative projects and new awards to support new scientific projects that are limited in scope but could complement ongoing research activities. Format for competition could include:
  • Open-ended competition for collaborative projects, with the goal of complementing existing 4DN projects: the scientific scope would not be pre-determined by the initiative language, but some programmatic constraints would apply (for example: the new project will have to be a collaboration between different teams within 4DN, or between a 4DN team and an investigator outside of 4DN).
  • Targeted competition: the initiative would focus on areas of need or scientific/technology gaps as proposed by NIH and/or 4DN investigators.
  • Training awards: to facilitate the training of investigators in emerging technologies, and possibly interactions between existing 4DN teams with complementary expertise (exchange of postdocs and graduate students, etc.).