The purpose of this engineering-oriented notice of funding opportunity announcement (NOFO) is to encourage submissions of exploratory/developmental Bioengineering Research Grant (EBRG) applications to demonstrate feasibility and potential utility of new capabilities or improvements in quality, speed, efficacy, operability, costs, and/or accessibility of solutions to problems in basic biomedical, pre-clinical, or clinical research, clinical care delivery, or accessibility. The overall goals of this NOFO are to identify cancer risks and risk reduction strategies, to identify factors that cause cancer in humans, and to discover and develop mechanisms for cancer prevention and preventive interventions in humans. 

This NOFO seeks to encourage quantitative and physical scientists to work with biomedical researchers to catalyze the use of bioengineering approaches for their potential to open new areas of biomedical investigation.

Although engineering applications submitted to the EBRG and other related announcements are often perceived as risky, experience shows that engineering training to anticipate errors, analyze what can go wrong, and to use both established and new principles to fix these issues do serve to manage most risks. The EBRG, more so than related bioengineering announcements for mid-level and final developmental and translational stages, does have the risks of feasibility tests, early development, and gathering of preliminary data.

Applications Not Responsive to this NOFO

Applications that do not seek to demonstrate feasibility and/or potential utility of new capabilities or improvements for solution of problems in basic biomedical, pre-clinical or clinical research, clinical care delivery or accessibility may be considered nonresponsive to this funding opportunity announcement, for example:

• Pursuit of a biological or clinical hypothesis where no technology development is proposed
• Using existing technologies that do not need modifications or adaptations to answer a biomedical question
• Traditional biological hypothesis-driven research using unmodified existing technologies