Ben Barres Early Career Acceleration Awards (Cycles 1-2)

Overview

The CZI Neurodegeneration Challenge Network was launched in 2018 with two broad goals: (1) to make fundamental advances in our understanding of the biology of neurodegeneration by bringing new talent/people and ideas into the field, and (2) to establish a learning model for how interdisciplinary collaboration and open science can be used to drive scientific progress in a specific field

We launched Cycle 1 of the Neurodegeneration Challenge Network (NDCN) Ben Barres Early Career Acceleration Awards (ECA) program in 2018 and awarded 17 grants to early career investigators new to neurodegeneration research to enable them to apply innovative approaches to further our understanding of the fundamental biology of neurodegenerative disorders. To learn more about grantees funded under Cycle 1 of the NDCN Early Career Acceleration Awards program, visit the NDCN website.

We are now pleased to invite applications for a new Request for Applications (RFA) that supports Cycle 2 of the CZI Neurodegeneration Challenge Network Ben Barres Early Career Acceleration Awards program. Grants will be $300,000 total costs per year for four years ($1,200,000 total costs) to support early career academic investigators, thinking creatively about new approaches to neurodegenerative diseases.

With the view that a general understanding of cellular and circuit mechanisms of healthy brain function will be a critical foundation for understanding and ultimately solving neurodegenerative disease, this RFA will also be open to proposals addressing general challenges in neuroscience, particularly in areas where there is a strong case for relevance to neurodegenerative disease. We seek to empower early career investigators to pursue bold ideas and to take risks within a supportive and collaborative environment. Awardees will benefit from mentorship support, as well as professional development, training and networking opportunities, and practical career guidance to help them navigate this early stage of their careers.

CZI Neurodegeneration Challenge Network

The Neurodegeneration Challenge Network model is built on the vision that progress in solving neurodegenerative diseases will come from bringing new people into the neurodegeneration field from diverse disciplines and expertise; building interdisciplinary collaborations; empowering the broader scientific community with robust tools and platform, and creating a culture of open science. Scientifically, we aspire to motivate the collective field to shift the approach to neurodegenerative diseases to a framework, where these diseases—currently addressed largely as distinct diseases and problems—are considered more holistically as a class of disorders with common features, mechanisms, and solutions.

Over the last 5 years, the CZI Neurodegeneration Challenge Network has developed into a dynamic network of 108 investigators and over 500 students, postdocs, and staff scientists. Investigators funded through this RFA are expected to actively participate in the network through open and frequent sharing of science with the network. Investigators will be expected to participate actively in collaborations and communications across the Network, participate in working groups and webinars as appropriate, and attend the NDCN Annual Meeting.

The NDCN Ben Barres Early Career Acceleration Awards (Cycle 2)

Overview

Grants awarded through this RFA are intended to provide funding for early career investigators conducting bold, innovative, and rigorous research related to the biological mechanisms underpinning neurodegenerative disorders. With the view that a general understanding of cellular and circuit mechanisms of healthy brain function will be a critical foundation for understanding and ultimately solving neurodegenerative disease, this RFA will also be open to proposals addressing general challenges in neuroscience, particularly in areas where there is a strong case for relevance to neurodegenerative disease.

Our aim for the Neurodegeneration Challenge Network is to bring together outstanding, innovative, forward-thinking scientists from different disciplines and ask them to think differently about how to work together to solve neurodegeneration. We encourage applications from investigators who are tackling underexplored topics as well as those addressing more well-developed mechanisms where there remain significant gaps in understanding. We are especially interested in investigators who are exploring cellular or circuit mechanisms that are broadly relevant and address these mechanisms in the context of an integrated view of human disease biology.

An important goal of the Challenge Network is the development and validation of tools and resources that will be useful and impactful for the broader research community. We strongly encourage applications from scientists with ideas for new tools, resources, and approaches (experimental and analytical) that can be deployed to address critical challenges in the field.

The application for the CZI Early Career Acceleration Award is a two-step application process, initiated with a Letter of Intent (LOI). Letters of Intent are due April 20, 2023. Letters of Intent will be evaluated, and finalists proceeding to the next stage of review will be notified by May 9, 2023. Invited full proposals are due June 13, 2023. Finalists will participate in virtual interviews August 15-17, 2023.

Scientific Scope

This is explicitly not a translational or clinical development RFA and rather is focused on foundational and mechanistic studies. Nevertheless, successful projects should be grounded in human biology and disease pathology, with the aim that these efforts will ultimately provide new avenues and rigorous foundations for future translational and clinical development work.

Examples of potential areas within the scope of this RFA include, but are not limited to:

• Understanding common disease mechanisms that cut across diseases and that may point to common avenues for intervention.
• Development of well-validated and reliable cellular platforms (iPSCs, organoids, tissue-based, and advanced organ-chip systems) and tools (probes and indicators) for studying biological mechanisms in human cells.
• Development of new functional genomics approaches that can be used to build on genetic/genomic data in neurodegeneration to test specific mechanistic hypotheses.
• Understanding cellular changes that lead to phenotypic alterations in cell-to-cell communication, circuit function, and/or behavioral outcomes.
• Cellular and systems level approaches to studying neural plasticity and resilience, especially in the context of neurodegenerative diseases.
• Testing causal hypotheses for how core cellular mechanisms such as metabolic regulation, proteostasis, RNA processing, and protein trafficking contribute to brain function and neurodegenerative diseases.
• Defining the contribution of non-neuronal influences on neurodegeneration, including potential influences of the innate and adaptive immune systems, vasculature, and the gut and microbiome.
• Computational approaches to data analysis relevant to neurodegenerative disease, that have broad benefits to the research community.

Building Tools to Support the Neuroscience Research Community

As part of the collective work of the Challenge Network, CZI will ask investigators to contribute to the development, validation, and dissemination of robust, reliable, and scalable experimental and analytical tools for the broader neuroscience and neurodegeneration community. CZI will provide infrastructure support for such community tool development and dissemination efforts.

Examples of the types of tools and resources that the Challenge Network might develop and disseminate include but are not limited to:

• Scalable tools for cellular analysis, including genomic, proteomic, and imaging methods, optimized for human cells and relevant to neurodegeneration (for instance, targeted probes and label-free methods for cellular imaging of neurons and non-neuronal cells; robust affinity reagents for proteomics; genome editing and single-cell genomic approaches).
• Well-validated, robust, shared animal models that more accurately model human disease biology.
• Unique human tissue resources and associated protocols for their handling and best use.
• Rigorous benchmark datasets for the field, for instance, well-validated longitudinal studies of disease progression that will inform more mechanistic approaches.
• Development and application of computational and machine learning approaches and tools to address neurodegeneration biology, which might include genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, systems biology, imaging, and/or integration of data across experimental models and scales.

Collaboration and Open Science

The CZI Neurodegeneration Challenge Network is an approach to address the scientific challenges of neurodegenerative diseases and an experiment in collaborative science. As part of the selection process, we will look for investigators who will enthusiastically contribute to and benefit from a highly collaborative, dynamic, and interdisciplinary approach.

• Investigators in the Challenge Network will have the opportunity to learn from, collaborate with, and interact with the community of investigators and groups within the Network, as well as with Chan Zuckerberg Initiative scientists and software engineers. Investigators and members of their labs will participate in regular investigator meetings, meetings for students, postdocs, and staff, as well as mentorship and training opportunities.
• CZI’s mission is at the interface of technology and science. Working in collaboration with, and guided by, Challenge Network investigators, we aim to develop technology-based tools and approaches to support and accelerate the broader field of neurodegeneration.
• CZI supports open science values and principles. To accelerate scientific discovery and collaboration as well as rapid dissemination, CZI supports a consent, sharing, and publication policy for open and rapid dissemination of research results and a policy for software development that maximizes accessibility, reuse, and shared development.

Investigators new to the field of neurodegeneration with backgrounds in basic science fields such as neuroscience, cell biology, computational biology, or immunology are encouraged to apply. Experience in disciplines outside of biomedicine that would bring new technology, resources, or intellectual frameworks to the field are strongly encouraged.

• All applicants must hold a PhD, MD, or equivalent degree and have a faculty position or equivalent independent investigator status at a college, university, medical school or other research facility.
• Applicants should have been in their first independent position for a minimum of two years and less than six years as of the due date for the Letter of Intent application. Independence in an academic setting is typically demonstrated by a full-time faculty appointment, a tenure-track position, allocated space, a start-up package, and institutional commitment as defined or verified in a letter from a department chair or equivalent. Independence may be defined differently in different types of organizations. Note: an upload of the letter or proof of independence is not required at the time of application. CZI will make exceptions to these criteria in cases of institutionally approved career breaks, e.g. family or medical leave, etc. (if this applies to you, please contact sciencegrants@chanzuckerberg.com).
• Applications may be submitted by domestic and foreign non-profit organizations; public and private institutions, such as colleges, universities, hospitals, laboratories, units of state and local governments; and eligible agencies of the federal government. For-profit organizations are not eligible. All grants will be awarded to institutions, not individuals.
• There may be more than one application from each institution.
• Current NDCN grantees are not eligible for this RFA.
• NDCN investigators no longer funded by CZI are eligible to apply.
• Applicants who are invited to submit a full application will not be eligible to apply for funding via the forthcoming NDCN RFA (Collaborative Pairs), which is scheduled to open in the spring of 2023. We have staggered the notification on the Ben Barres ECA RFA LOI stage with the application deadline for Collaborative Pairs Pilot Projects LOI to accommodate this.
• Applicants with experience in disciplines outside of biomedicine that would bring new technology, resources, or intellectual frameworks to the field are strongly encouraged.
• Meta employees, including employees of any subsidiary Meta entities, as well as employees of Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, LLC, are not permitted to apply.
• CZI reserves the sole right to decide if an applicant and applicant organization meet the eligibility requirements.
• CZI reserves the right to request budget changes prior to award. We welcome applications from any country, provided the proposed work is compliant with the United States Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) sanctions program. Prior to award, all grant applications will be reviewed for compliance with the United States Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) sanctions program, the United States Department of Commerce’s export administration regulations, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), any other applicable U.S. laws and regulations, and any corresponding laws and regulations in the country where the applicant is based. All grant agreements will require the grantee to comply with these laws and regulations. For additional information, please refer to: the U.S. Treasury Department’s resources, the International Trade Administration’s website on US Export Controls, and the Department of Justice’s website on the FCPA.
• While applicants from all countries are welcome to apply, because of required ongoing compliance with U.S. sanctions and export controls, an applicant’s funding eligibility may need to be reassessed if the applicable laws and regulations change at any time. As a result, even if an applicant is eligible to receive funding at the time the application is reviewed, the applicant’s status may change later in the process or during the course of the grant term.

CZI suggests that you consult your home institution to determine eligibility to apply for this grant and your institutional policy on indirect costs. For questions about eligibility for this award or the application process, please contact us in advance of the proposal deadline at sciencegrants@chanzuckerberg.com. Deadline extensions will not be granted.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative uses SurveyMonkey Apply (SMApply) as its grants management portal. All applications must be submitted through this portal (https://apply.chanzuckerberg.com). SMApply is configured to work best using the Google Chrome browser. It is recommended that you familiarize yourself with this portal well in advance of any deadlines. Deadline extensions will not be granted.

Application specifics:

• Eligibility: Please refer to the Eligibility section.
• Award Period: The award period is four years in duration with an expected start date of December 1, 2023.
• Budget: $300,000 USD total costs per year (inclusive of up to 15% indirect costs) for 4 years for a total of $1,200,000 USD total costs.
• Institutional sign-off is required at the time of the LOI submission.

The Letter of Intent (LOI) consists of the following sections (called tasks in the grants portal): Applicant Details, Equal Opportunity & Diversity, Organization Details, Biosketch, Program Details, Research Statement.

• Applicant Details: Complete all fields in this task; all fields are required.
  • Name and email (auto-filled): to edit your name or email, click on your name in the upper right corner, then click My Account in the dropdown menu.
  • Degree(s).
  • Organization, Title/Position, Department or equivalent.
  • Appointment start date as an independent investigator: enter in the format MM/DD/YYYY; if the exact day of the month is unknown, enter the first day of the month.
  • ORCID iD: Enter in format XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX. ORCID iDs are unique, digital identifiers that distinguish individual scientists and unambiguously connect their contributions to science over time and across changes of name, location, and institutional affiliation. ORCID iDs will be used to streamline reporting in our applications and grant reports to reduce the burden on grantees. For more information, please visit https://orcid.org/register. (Please contact us at sciencegrants@chanzuckerberg.com if you wish to opt out.)
• Equal Opportunity & Diversity: CZI Science supports the science and technology that will make it possible to cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by the end of this century. Different communities are affected by or experience disease in different ways. Moreover, due to systemic barriers, the scientific enterprise itself is not a place where all voices and talents thrive. We believe the strongest scientific teams — encompassing ourselves, our grantees, and our partners — incorporate a wide range of backgrounds, lived experiences, and perspectives that guide them to the most important unsolved problems. To enable our work, we incorporate diverse perspectives into our strategy and processes, and we also seek to empower community partners to engage in science. We request demographic information associated with applications submitted to CZI in response to our open calls. This information helps us learn from the RFA process, as well as improve our strategies to help ensure members of underrepresented or marginalized groups in science are aware of and able to apply to CZI opportunities. Please note that answering the questions below is voluntary and receiving funding is not contingent on providing this information. Demographic information provided may be used in our grant-making process, but will not be used as the sole or determinative factor in our grant funding decisions. We may also publish aggregated data in various public forums, such as a website or blog. All responses will be shared only with limited personnel and service providers, who will use that information only for the purposes described in this paragraph. If you have any additional questions about why we ask this, what we do with the data, or to share suggestions for improvement, please reach out to sciencegrants@chanzuckerberg.com. The information below may be entered for the applicant. The categories listed below may not capture all possible identities; in the event that the categories do not accurately reflect your identities, please use the space provided to self describe.
  • What is your race/ethnicity? (optional)
  • What is the year of your last academic degree? (optional)
  • What is your gender? (optional)
  • Are you transgender? (optional)
  • Are you a member of the LGBTQ community? (optional)
  • Do you have one or more disabilities? Please specify (optional)
• Organization Details: Complete all fields in this task; all fields are required.
  • Organization name/Address/City/State/Country/Website.
  • Type of organization: Academic, Other Nonprofit, Government, or Other.
  • Tax ID: Enter your organization’s Employer Identification Number (EIN), as assigned by the Internal Revenue Service in the 9-digit format (XX-XXXXXXX; 10 characters total). Foreign organizations or others who do not have an EIN should enter 44-4444444.
  • Organizational/Administrative Contact: List the name and contact information for the administrative contact to discuss additional information needed, if selected for award.
    • First name, Last name, Title/Position, Email.
  • Signing Official: List the name and contact information for the person authorized to sign on behalf of the applicant organization.
    • First name, Last name, Title/Position, Email.
  • Press Contact / Public Relations Official: List the name and contact information for the person to discuss press releases and media.
    • First name, Last name, Title/Position, Email.
  • Institutional Approval Form: Upload as a single PDF. This form should be reviewed and signed by a person authorized to sign on behalf of your institution agreeing to the stated institutional and investigator requirements and commitments on data, resource sharing, and publication policies, as well as endorsing/verifying your application materials and confirming their ability to receive funding for the proposal. In the event of an award, all funds will be awarded to the Coordinating PI institution as the prime institution, and the Coordinating PI institution will be responsible for ensuring compliance of all of the terms, including compliance of all partners/subcontract institutions. These policies are non-negotiable so this form should only be signed if the organization is able to comply with the terms as stated. While CZI does not require sign-off by all of your partner institutions, please refer to what your institution requires. Note: digital signatures are permitted as long as the document is not encrypted or password-protected.
• Biosketch: Upload the applicant’s biosketch in PDF format. Maximum of five pages; NIH format or similar.
• Program Details: Complete all fields in this task; all fields are required. The program should outline the questions you wish to address and the technologies you will apply to your neurodegeneration research for the next 4 years.
  • Program Title: (maximum of 60 characters, including spaces) If you need to edit your project title, navigate to your application summary page, click on the three dots to the right of the application title (next to the Preview link) and select Rename from the dropdown menu.
  • Program Purpose: (maximum of 200 characters, including spaces) Summarize your research program; limited to one sentence. Please use a third-person voice.
    • Example: To leverage a CRISPR-based functional genomics platform in human iPSC-derived neurons and glia to elucidate cell-type selective and non-cell autonomous mechanisms of neurodegeneration.
  • Statement on Diversity and Equity: (maximum of 150 words) Describe how your proposal and team seek to promote diversity and equity in this project. Examples can include your approach to diversity/equity on your team; diversity in the context of your scientific approach, for instance, engagement with diverse cohorts/populations; or a focus on diseases that are prevalent or overrepresented among underserved global populations.
• Research Statement: Upload a narrative statement of your research program in a single PDF; font must be 11 point or larger, and margins must be at least one-half inch (top, bottom, left, and right) for all pages. Include the following sections:
  • Statement Body: (maximum of 500 words) Address the following points:
    • The question(s) your proposed program is aiming to address and why this an important gap in the field.
    • A high-level summary of your research plan for addressing these challenges, highlighting in particular how your work stands out from other efforts in the field.
    • How you and your lab are poised to advance this work, including you and your lab’s expertise and scientific accomplishments to date and any innovative technologies and/or computational approaches you will bring to the field.
    • How will the Ben Barres ECA award advance your goals for your research program and career.
  • References​ Cited in your proposal (no word/page limit). Provide PubMed links where applicable; preprints are acceptable and should include the link to the preprint.
  • Explanatory Figure (optional): An explanatory figure of your research program may be included with an accompanying figure legend. If you choose to include an explanatory figure, the figure and figure legend must fit on one page. Figure legends do not count toward the word count.

Applicants will be notified by email if they have been invited to submit a full application by May 9, 2023.

The Full Application consists of the following additional sections (called tasks in the grants portal): Biosketch, Program Details, Program Proposal, Professional References, Budget Description.

• Biosketch: Upload the applicant’s biosketch in PDF format. Maximum of five pages; NIH format or similar. Applicants may upload the same biosketch provided for the LOI or an updated version.
• Program Details: Complete all fields in this task; all fields are required.
  • Program Title: (maximum of 60 characters, including spaces) Auto filled from LOI information. This is not an editable section.
  • Program Purpose: (maximum of 200 characters including spaces) Auto filled from LOI information. This is not an editable section.
  • Abstract/Program Summary: (maximum of 250 words) Describe your program. Please use a third-person voice (example).
• Program Proposal: Upload your program proposal as a single PDF; font must be 11 point or larger, and margins must be at least one-half inch (top, bottom, left, and right) for all pages. Include the following sections:
  • Proposal Body: (maximum of 2000 words) Summary of the program, which should include four parts:
    • I. Scientific goals: Define the scientific question or problem that you aim to explore. The relevance of this research to understanding neurodegenerative disease, as well as the ways in which you will contribute to and benefit from the Challenge Network.
    • II. Deliverables and timeline: In bulleted format describe the deliverables and timeline for deliverables.
    • III. Research Outline: Describe the research proposed and address any risk you see in accomplishing your goals.
    • IV. Tools & Resources: Provide a summary of the tools, technology, and other resources that your team may bring to the project, aims to develop as a part of the project, and/or hopes to gain from collaborations in the Challenge Network. This list should highlight resources you can share with other projects and those that you feel you would benefit from having access to.
  • References​ Cited in your proposal (no word/page limit). Provide PubMed links where applicable; preprints are acceptable and should include the link to the preprint.
  • Figures (optional): Limited to one page, inclusive of legends. Figure legends do not count toward the word count.
• Professional References​: Provide names with title, organization affiliation, relationship to you and contact information (email, phone) for three professional references. References will not need to provide letters at the time of submission. References may be contacted by CZI directly for applicants who proceed to the second round of evaluation.
• Budget Description: (one page maximum) Upload in PDF format; font must be 11 point or larger and margins must be at least one-half inch (top, bottom, left, and right) for all pages (letter size required). Provide a high-level budget description in narrative or tabular form, outlining costs for personnel, supplies, equipment, travel, subcontracts, other and indirect costs.
  • The Ben Barres Early Career Acceleration Award grantee will receive $300,000 USD total costs per year, for 4 years, ($1,200,000 USD total costs).
  • Indirect costs are limited to up to 15 percent of direct costs. Indirect costs may not be assessed on capital equipment or subcontracts, but subcontractors may include up to 15% indirect costs of their direct costs.
  • Budget should be requested in U.S. dollars.
  • International grantees must use all grant funds exclusively for activities conducted outside the United States of America. Travel expenses to the United States (including round-trip tickets) should not be covered from the requested grant funds. Any attendance at CZI meetings in the U.S. will be covered by CZI outside of requested grant funds.

The formatting and component requirements, including word and page limits indicated above, will be enforced by the review team. Any submitted materials that exceed the word and page limits or do not follow the requirements will not be considered during the application review process.

The selection process for the CZI NDCN Ben Barres Early Career Acceleration Award is a three step process including a letter of intent, invited full application from a group of applicants selected from the LOI process, and a panel interview. CZI will evaluate all applications for scientific merit and will seek independent expert review of applications. Final decisions will be made by CZI staff in consultation with our scientific advisors. Up to 10 awards will be made based on scientific merit. CZI does not provide feedback on decisions for unfunded proposals.

The selection of awardees will be based on:

• The scientific quality, creativity, and rigor of the proposed work. We are looking for innovative, bold, potentially transformative proposals;
• Demonstration that the proposal addresses a critical question or bottleneck for neurodegenerative disease biology and that if successful, the outcomes of the work will have an impact on understanding disease in humans;
• Professional recommendations;
• The potential of the work to open up new research directions and/or bring new approaches to critical problems across the neurodegeneration field;
• The potential of the Early Career Acceleration grantee and their lab to contribute to the collaborative, open science goals of the Neurodegeneration Challenge Network.

• Funds from this award are intended to support research activities. Grants are made to organizations to support the work of the named Principal Investigator, and reasonable flexibility on how these funds are utilized is allowed, provided that funds are used to support research activities related to the project.
• For awarded projects, financial statements and progress reports will be due at the conclusion of each grant year, and occasionally more frequently. Specific deliverable requirements will be outlined in the award notification. Grantees of funded projects will be required to participate in regular meetings, including annual scientist meetings (which may be in person or virtual). Travel support for these meetings will be provided by CZI separately from the requested grant funds.
• Grantees may obtain funds for their research from other funding sources, provided that there is no conflict with meeting the terms of the CZI award.
• Unused research funds may be carried over to the following year, and requests for no-cost extensions will be considered at the end of the overall project period and upon receipt of an annual report.
• Indirect costs cannot exceed 15 percent of direct costs. Indirect costs may not be assessed on capital equipment or subcontracts, but subcontractors may include up to 15 percent indirect costs of their direct costs.
• International grantees must use all grant funds exclusively for activities conducted outside the United States of America. Travel expenses to the United States must not be covered from the requested grant funds.
• Ethical conduct: CZI advocates the highest standards for the ethical conduct of research. In addition to requirements of their own countries, grantees must adopt procedures for the use of animals in research and for the ethical treatment of human subjects and tissue donors, including obtaining their or their appropriate proxy’s written informed consent. CZI regards the policies of the National Institutes of Health as a strong model for such procedures.
• Data, publication, and dissemination policies:​ To accelerate scientific discovery and collaboration, CZI supports a consent, sharing, and publication policy for open and rapid dissemination of proposal results, including methods, data, and reagents, and a policy for software development that maximizes accessibility, reuse, and shared development. Under rare circumstances, exceptions to the above may be considered where there are specific situations that make meeting these goals impossible or counterproductive to the project.
  • Software code: CZI requires sharing of software code developed by its grantees generally to be made publicly available on GitHub (or a similar public service). All new code must be released under a permissive open source license (MIT, BSD 2-Clause, BSD 3-Clause, or Apache v2.0). All pre-existing and derivative code must be licensed under the most permissive license possible, given the licensing terms of the pre-existing code. All analysis packages must be released through the appropriate language-specific package manager (e.g., PyPi for Python, Bioconductor and CRAN for R) with documentation, example data, and interactive demos (e.g., Jupyter notebooks), and the use of Docker or similar container technologies to ensure portability and reproducibility. Software code supported by CZI should be archived for long-term digital preservation and citability, when applicable.
  • Content and data sharing: ​CZI is committed to developing and using platforms that disseminate data openly and freely. Any datasets either curated or generated through the proposal should be made publicly available and easily accessible through an appropriate data repository, when applicable, under an Open Definition conformant license. Ideally data sets would not include personally identifiable information, but if they do, consent to sharing the data should be obtained. Metadata, documentation, and intended use cases, as appropriate should be made available under an Open Definition conformant license, preferably CC0 or CC BY/CC BY SA for content that requires explicit attribution.
  • Publications:​ To encourage rapid dissemination of results, any publications related to this funded work must be submitted to a preprint server (such as bioRxiv, medRxiv, arXiv, or any appropriate preprint repository), at or before the first submission to a journal. Experimental protocols must be made publicly available through a protocol sharing service, such as protocols.io. Scientific publications, preprints, and presentations that result from this award should acknowledge support from this funding.
  • Reagent sharing: Resources and reagents developed with this funding support must be available for rapid dissemination to the community, where possible in an accessible community repository, such as Addgene (for plasmids/DNA reagents/viruses) and Jackson Labs (for model systems lines), etc. This requirement applies to cell lines, transgenic organisms, plasmids/clones, antibodies, and other reagents.
  • Consent: All human tissues must be adequately and fully consented to permit full sharing of the resulting data and any resulting tools, in accordance with laws and regulatory requirements, or other requirements. Any desired exceptions to this policy must be identified at the time of application, and such requests may affect the application’s chance of success. We are aware that there may be circumstances where broad consent may be challenging, and in some cases consent may be subject to revocation; we encourage investigators to discuss these cases with CZI scientific staff. As a reference, the Human Cell Atlas (HCA) community has developed ethics guidelines and a tool kit with template consent forms.
  • Intellectual property rights: CZI does not require assignment of ownership to any data, published results, or any other intellectual property that results from the work funded by these grants, but will have the same rights generally granted to others in the permissive licenses described above. CZI supports and promotes policies that enable results and technologies to have the broadest reach and impact. To this end, all newly developed software should be made available through permissive open source licenses as described more fully above. Other technology and intellectual property rights (such as patents) should be made freely available for all academic and non-commercial use, and where intellectual property rights are commercialized, they should generally be subject to non-exclusive commercial licenses that enable broad availability and dissemination.
• Applications selected through this process will either be funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Foundation (CZIF) or recommended for funding through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Donor-Advised Fund (CZI DAF) at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF)

All submitted applications will be kept confidential, except (1) as necessary for our evaluation or to comply with any applicable laws; and (2) to the extent that the application is made public or available to others without a duty of confidentiality through no fault of CZI. Notwithstanding, successfully funded proposals may be made publicly available and/or shared with other grantees or collaborators. Unfunded proposals will remain confidential as provided herein; however, information, including brief summaries of the proposed projects, project metrics, and the types of organizations that have applied for funding, may be made publicly available in aggregate form. Application materials will not be returned to applicants.