Discovery Frontiers Call for Proposals: Advancing Big Data Science in Genomics Research
For your application to be eligible, the applicant and co-applicants must meet NSERC, Genome Canada and CIHR eligibility criteria and be at an institution eligible to receive NSERC, Genome Canada, and CIHR funds. Applicants applying for infrastructure funding must be affiliated with an institution that is eligible to receive CFI funds. Applicants are reminded that the CFI provides research infrastructure funds to institutions, not individual researchers or teams of researchers. Applicants applying for infrastructure funding must therefore contact the CFI liaison officer at their institution prior to drafting Letters of Intent.
In addition to meeting the funders’ general eligibility criteria, proposals must demonstrate that the project responds to the objectives of the Discovery Frontiers initiative.
Discovery Frontiers (DF) grants support a limited number of large international activities, opportunities or projects that are of high priority in the context of advanced research in Canada. These will be led by teams of world-class Canadian researchers and will generate substantial benefits for Canada.
This initiative aims to bring together groups of researchers in new ways to address a major research challenge. The teams will incorporate new and emerging ideas and will combine their complementary expertise to conduct transformative, paradigm-changing research.
Massive amounts of data are being generated by genomics1 research across all life science sectors. The lack of efficient tools and methodologies available to effectively mine, rapidly access and efficiently analyse vast quantities of genomic information and integrate it with other data sets is a major challenge for the research community.
To address this global research challenge, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Genome Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) will partner on this 2013 DF call for proposals, which will focus on advancing big data science in genomics research. This initiative will support the development of tools and methodologies to integrate currently available complex data sets in the fields of ‘omics sciences with each other, as well as with phenotypic data and data from other related fields of biological sciences. This DF call for proposals will build on past and ongoing investments in this area, the most recent being the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Request for Applications launched in June 2012 by Genome Canada and CIHR.
Objective
The objective of this 2013 DF call is to support the establishment of a major initiative with strong international linkages. The initiative will develop tools and methodologies for integrating various types of ‘omics data (e.g., genomics, proteomics, metabolomics) with: 1) each other; 2) phenotypic data collected from different organisms of study; or 3) data sets originating from diverse scientific disciplines/fields, including but not limited to imaging, ontology/semantics, biophysics, environmental science and evolution.
As appropriate for the proposed research, this initiative will bring together experts from a wide range of disciplines, including computer science, engineering, mathematics, machine learning, statistics, genomics and the relevant scientific disciplines being studied.
Together, they will focus on exploring and developing diverse computational and mathematical approaches and techniques, including, but not limited to, creating new algorithms, information systems, Web technologies, artificial intelligence, software engineering, data mining, image processing, modeling and simulation. Clear linkages to the international community must be demonstrated through, for example, the participation of international scientists in the initiative, in international collaborations or in relevant international initiatives.
Approaches used will emphasize bold initiatives and interdisciplinary thinking, with potential for major breakthroughs and impact across a range of scientific disciplines.