Modern mental health-related research can require expensive instruments that are often hard to obtain through traditional funding mechanisms. The goal of the NIMH Instrumentation Program is to make such instruments available to either individual laboratories or core facilities that conduct mental health-related research. These instruments can be commercial instruments or collections of components that others have already described how to assemble into a working instrument. Upgrades of existing instruments can also be requested. Investigators can propose instruments that will be used by their laboratory or by a collection of investigators. Investigators who are proposing to provide the instrument only to members of their laboratory must state why the instrument cannot be shared. In either case, investigators are strongly encouraged to house the requested instrument in a core facility or other shared facility to ensure that the new instrument remains functional and available to the research community over its useful lifetime.
Research Objectives
Types of instruments that might be appropriate for the NIMH Instrumentation Program include light microscopes, electron microscopes, spectrophotometers, and biomedical imagers. This list is representative and not exhaustive. Foreign-made instruments are allowed. A single application cannot request multiple unrelated instruments. In such cases, multiple applications can be submitted. The goal of this FOA is to provide instruments to collect data rather than components for further instrument/technology development. Instrument development applications should be submitted to other FOAs on which NIMH participates or to appropriate BRAIN Initiative FOAs.
Awards:
Applications will be accepted with an award budget between $200,000 and $600,000. There is no maximum limit on the cost of the instrument, but the maximum award is $600,000. S10 awards are only for the cost of the instrument, so indirect costs cannot be requested.
Letter of Intent:
September 7, 2022
Full Proposal Submission Deadline:
October 07, 2022
Contacts:
Yvonne Bennett, Ph.D., National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Telephone: 301-222-7094
Email: yvonne.bennett@nih.gov
