Imaging Scientists Cycles 1-2

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) seeks to support the work of up to 15 Imaging Scientists who will work at the interface of biology, microscopy hardware, and imaging software at imaging core facilities across the world. “Imaging Scientists” might be engineers, physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, or biologists who have focused on technology development in either light or electron microscopy, medical imaging, or data analysis fields. The primary goal of the program is to increase interactions between biologists and technology experts. The Imaging Scientists will have expertise in imaging hardware or software. A successful “Imaging Program” will employ an Imaging Scientist who: a) works collaboratively with experimental biologists on projects at the imaging core; b) participates in courses that disseminate advanced microscopy methods and analysis; c) trains students and postdocs in imaging technology; d) participates in a network of CZI Imaging Scientists to identify needs and drive advances in the imaging field; e) attends twice-yearly CZI scientific workshops and meetings in imaging and adjacent biomedical areas. Each grant will fund salary and fringe benefits for an Imaging Scientist at the imaging core, a modest travel and teaching budget, plus 15% indirect costs. The award period is three years plus an additional two years, awarded as a separate grant, if the Imaging Program passes a review at year three.

• 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 government; and eligible agencies of the federal government.
• An imaging core may submit only one application, but different imaging cores from a single institution may submit separate applications.
• The person submitting the application on behalf of the imaging core should be the Imaging Scientist.
• The Imaging Program’s Scientist must be currently employed at the institution submitting the application. The Imaging Scientist’s Biosketch and Personal Statement must be provided in the application.
• Imaging cores should serve a broad community of scientists at their institutions, not just a small number of labs.
• Imaging Scientists should have expertise with either hardware or software. We welcome applications from both medical and basic science imaging cores.
• CZI encourages applications from underrepresented minorities, women, and early career scientists.
• Facebook employees, including employees of any subsidiary Facebook entities, are not permitted to apply.
• CZI reserves the sole right to decide if an applicant and applicant organization meet the eligibility requirements.

CZI requires institutional sign-off at this stage of the application process and 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. 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.

The application consists of the following sections (called tasks in the grants portal): Imaging Scientist/Applicant Details (Part 1 and 2); Organization Details; Proposal Details; Imaging Core Details; and Project Proposal.

• Imaging Scientist/Applicant Details Part 1: Complete all fields in this task; all fields are required. The information entered should be for the Imaging Scientist.
  • Name and email (auto-filled): to edit your name or email, please do so in your account information by clicking your name in the upper right corner and clicking My Account in the dropdown menu.
  • Organization, Title/Position, Department or equivalent, Degrees.
• Imaging Scientist/Applicant Details Part 2: Complete all required fields in this task. The information entered should be for the Imaging Scientist. Please note demographic information will not be used as a basis for review.
  • ORCID iD (required): 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).
  • Highest degree (required) and year granted (optional).
  • Additional degrees and year granted (up to three) (optional).
  • Gender (optional).
  • Race/Ethnicity (optional).
  • Short narrative biography of the Imaging Scientist/Applicant (maximum of 100 words) (required).
• Organization Details: Complete all fields in this task; all fields are required. The information entered should be for the organization of the Imaging Scientist/Applicant.
  • Organization name/Street address/City/State/Country
  • Type of organization (drop down menu: academic/non-profit, industry/company, government, 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.
    1. First name, Last name, Title/Position, Email.
  • Signing Official: List the name and contact information for the person authorized to sign on behalf of your organization.
    1. 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.
    1. First name, Last name, Title/Position, Email.
  • Institutional Approval Form: Upload as a single PDF. This form (version: Inst_Sign_off_form_Imaging_Sci_June_2020) should be printed, reviewed, and signed by a person authorized to sign on behalf of your organization, 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. This field is not designed to support encrypted documents or digital signatures; please sign, scan, and upload this form as a PDF.
• Proposal Details: Complete all fields in this task; all fields are required.
  • Proposal Title (auto-filled): Proposal title is limited to 75 characters, including spaces. If you need to edit your proposal 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.
  • Imaging Core Details: Name of Imaging Core; Imaging Core website (if no imaging core website, please use university or organization website); Name of Director (of the Imaging Core); Name of Dean/Chair who oversees the Imaging Core.
  • Budget Requested: Should match budget total in proposal and include no more than 15% of direct costs for indirect costs; the maximum allowed, including indirect costs, is $250K total costs per year for five years or a total of $1.25M total costs. Note: Restrictions may apply to international grantees using grant funds to travel to the U.S., but CZI will be in contact with successful applicants to discuss options.
• Imaging Core Details: Complete all fields in this task; all fields are required. For the tabular questions, you may need to use the scroll bar at the bottom of the table to scroll right to view and to complete all fields. Alternatively, you can tab to move through and complete the fields. To add another row in a table, click the box at the end of the row. 
  • Core Type:
    • Select one: Service Provider, Research Center, Both, Other (please specify).
    • Does your core facility primarily concern (check all that apply): A) Optical microscopy; B) Electron microscopy; C) Medical imaging; D) Other (please specify)?
  • Core Users: Indicate the number of users for each category: 1) number of labs using the core, 2) number of individual core users, 3) number of active individual users (who have used the facility for 20 hours or more over the last year).
  • Major Imaging Machines: Enter the following (for up to 25). 1) Modality, 2) Vendor, 3) Quantity, 4) Relative usage: “a few hours per week”, “a few hours per day”, “many hours per day”, “nonstop”. Enter N/A in all fields, if not applicable.
  • Major Tissue Preparation Equipment: Enter the following (for up to 25): 1) Modality, 2) Vendor, 3) Quantity, 4) Relative usage: “a few hours per week”, “a few hours per day”, “many hours per day”, “nonstop”. Enter N/A in all fields, if not applicable.
  • Personnel: List all Imaging Core personnel (up to 25): 1) Name, 2) Position, 3) Full-time or part-time.
  • Physical Space: Enter the square footage of the Imaging Core for the following: 1) Total space; 2) Office space.
  • Overall Imaging Core Budget: Enter the following for the overall Imaging Core budget: 1) total budget expenses for the previous fiscal year (in USD); 2) the percent for personnel; 3) the percent for equipment maintenance.
  • Financial Support: Please enter N/A if any of the following funding categories do not apply.
    • Active Grant Support: Enter (up to 15): 1) Funding agency, 2) Grant number, 3) Funding start date (format as mm/dd/yy), 4) Funding end date (format as mm/dd/yy), 5) Funding for current year (in USD), 6) Total funding (in USD).
    • Pending Grant Support: Enter (up to 15): 1) Funding agency, 2) Funding start date (format as mm/dd/yy), 3) Funding end date (format as mm/dd/yy), 4) Funding for first year (in USD), 5) Total funding (in USD).
    • Institutional Support: Enter (up to 15): 1) Source, 2) Funding start date (format as mm/dd/yy), 3) Funding end date (format as mm/dd/yy), 4) Funding for current year (in USD).
    • Other: Enter (up to 15): 1) Source, 2) Funding start date (format as mm/dd/yy), 3) Funding end date (format as mm/dd/yy), 4) Funding for current year (in USD).
    • Recharge/Users Fees: Enter the amount collected in 2019 (in USD).
• Project Proposal: Upload a single file formatted as a PDF.
  • Format:
    • Start with a Table of Contents as listed below and place bookmarks that lead from the Table to each of the nine sections.
    • Number the pages.
    • No less than single-spacing between lines.
    • Font must be 11 points or larger.
    • Margins must be at least one-half inch (top, bottom, left, and right) for all pages.

      Section 9 must be prepared by the Dean or Chair responsible for the Imaging Core. Other sections are prepared by the Imaging Scientist/Applicant.

      Table of Contents:

      1. COVER PAGE
      2. PERSONAL STATEMENT OF THE IMAGING SCIENTIST
      3. VALUE OF THE POSITION
      4. BIOSKETCH OF THE IMAGING SCIENTIST CANDIDATE
      5. BIOSKETCH OF THE CORE DIRECTOR (OR EQUIVALENT)
      6. DESCRIPTION OF SOFTWARE AND DATA HANDLING
      7. ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF THE IMAGING CORE
      8. BUDGET
      9. LETTER FROM THE DEAN OR CHAIR

       

      1. COVER PAGE (limit 1 page). On separate lines, A through G, please provide:
         1. Title of Program
         2. University or Institute name AND Tax ID number
         3. Grant Amount Requested
         4. Proposed Start Date
         5. Name of Imaging Scientist AND email address
         6. Name of Imaging Core Director
         7. Name of Dean or Chair that oversees the Imaging Core
      2. PERSONAL STATEMENT OF THE IMAGING SCIENTIST CANDIDATE (limit 2 pages). Concisely describe in four labeled sections:
         1. Your expertise and relevant experience,
         2. Your vision of how and what to teach biologists about modern imaging,
         3. Your vision about the needs for image analysis and compute infrastructure in the next 10 years, and
         4. Your vision for a single technical advance that would dramatically drive the imaging field forward.

         To guide you in this statement, note that CZI seeks to support experts in either imaging hardware or software who will: a) work one-on-one with experimental biologists; b) lead discussion with the institutional IT team about data handling; c) participate in courses that disseminate advanced microscopy methods and analysis; d) train students and postdocs in imaging technology; and e) form a network to discuss advances and needs of the imaging field. Imaging Scientists will be expected to have expertise in either hardware or software, collaborate broadly with biologists at the home institution and interface with the local IT team, teach in at least one practical course that is advertised and open to scientists outside the home institution, and learn and evaluate new analysis software and teach it to inexperienced users.

      3. VALUE OF THE POSITION (limit 0.5 page). Describe the role the Imaging Scientist will play at the imaging core.
      4. BIOSKETCH OF THE IMAGING SCIENTIST CANDIDATE (limit 5 pages). Use NIH format or equivalent.
         1. Describe education
         2. Describe employment history
         3. Identify up to five of your most significant contributions and describe the significance of each in no more than three sentences. Contributions might include publications (with direct object identifier, doi), preprints (with URL), shared datasets (with doi), software (with doi or other reference), courses taught, patents, or other evidence of contribution
         4. List selected authored publications
         5. List selected publications that acknowledge your contributions
      5. BIOSKETCH OF THE CORE DIRECTOR (OR EQUIVALENT) (limit 5 pages). Please fill out this section if the Imaging Core Director is different from the applying Imaging Scientist. Use NIH format or equivalent to describe education, employment history, and evidence of scientific productivity as described above.
      6. DESCRIPTION OF SOFTWARE AND DATA HANDLING (limit 1 page).
         1. List the heavily used acquisition and analysis software utilized in your core.
         2. Describe analysis, compute, and data handling infrastructure.
      7. ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND DESCRIPTION OF THE IMAGING CORE (limit 5 pages).
         1. Is your core a services provider, a research center, or both? If it is a service provider, what services are offered? If both, what is the relative fraction of energy spent on each, and do you see that distribution as ideal?
         2. Describe the user base for the previous two years (number of users, not their names).
         3. List selected papers, patents, or software code that have arisen from the facility for up to the previous five years, providing links where possible. List both the contributions authored by imaging core staff and the contributions that acknowledge contributions from the imaging core; please separate these into two lists.
         4. Does your core encourage users to cite/acknowledge the core in publications that used the core’s resources? If yes, how often do you believe that happens?
      8. BUDGET (limit 1 page). The maximum total budget (including indirect costs) is $250,000 per year, with an initial three-year period followed by a potential two-year renewal. Please submit a budget for five years. No more than $200,000 can apply to the salary and fringe benefits of the Imaging Scientist, no more than $20,000 to teaching and travel expenses, and no more than 15% overhead to the institution. If $200K is insufficient for the salary and benefits of the candidate, state the proposed salary and explain what will be the source of additional funds. Funding from recharge or fee-for-service will not be accepted as the source of additional salary support. Note: Restrictions may apply to international grantees using grant funds to travel to the U.S., but CZI will be in contact with successful applicants to discuss options.
      9. LETTER FROM THE DEAN OR CHAIR (limit 2 pages). CZI seeks to fund Imaging Scientists at salaries similar to those of the institution’s faculty that have similar seniority. Separately label five paragraphs that describe:
         1. The starting salary levels for Assistant, Associate, and Full Professors, or the equivalent positions, at your institution.
         2. Justification of the level in which the applicant would fit.
         3. Your vision for imaging at your institution.
         4. How this imaging core is supported.
         5. A plan to sustain support of the candidate beyond the five years of CZI funding.
         6. Please sign and date.

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.

QUESTIONS?

For administrative and programmatic inquiries pertaining to this RFA, please contact sciencegrants@chanzuckerberg.com. For technical assistance with SMApply, please contact support@smapply.io or while logged into SMApply, click on the information ”i” link in the upper right corner and submit a help request ticket.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s core values center around people, technology, collaboration, and open science. We adhere to those values in both proposal selection and evaluation of progress. Applications will be reviewed by independent experts, and CZI will use these data to select the grantee institutions. CZI will not provide feedback to unfunded proposals. CZI reserves the right to not recommend the funding of any application.

• Funds from this award are solely intended to pay salary costs of an Imaging Scientist and a modest travel and teaching budget at the grantee institution. Imaging cores will be asked to provide summary budgets at the time of award and during annual reporting. Note: Restrictions may apply to international grantees using grant funds to travel to the U.S., but CZI will be in contact with successful applicants to discuss options.
• For awarded projects, financial statements and progress reports will be due at the conclusion of each grant year. Specific deliverable requirements will be outlined in the award notification. Imaging Scientists of funded projects will be required to participate in regular meetings, including annual scientist meetings. 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.
• Ethical conduct: CZI advocates the highest standards for the ethical conduct of research. In addition to requirements of their own countries, grantees should adopt procedures for the use of animals in research and for the ethical treatment of human subjects and tissue donors, including obtaining their 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. As part of the Project Goals, the Imaging Scientist is expected to perform services on behalf of a number of investigators both at the Grantee institution and outside the Grantee institution. For the avoidance of doubt, the requirements in this section apply to independent research programs of the Imaging Scientist and/or to intellectual property and publications for which the Imaging Scientist is an author or inventor as a result of CZI funding.
  • 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 should 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, arXiv, or any appropriate preprint repository), at or before the first submission to a journal. Experimental protocols should be made publicly available through a protocol sharing service, such as protocols.io. CZI requests that scientific publications, preprints, and presentations that result from this award acknowledge support from this funding.
  • Reagent sharing: Resources and reagents developed with this funding support should 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 should be adequately and fully consented to permit full sharing of the resulting data and any resulting tools, in accordance with laws and regulatory 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.
  • 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.

• Indirect costs cannot exceed 15% of direct costs and must be included within the annual budget total. Indirect costs may not be assessed on capital equipment or subcontracts, but subcontractors may include up to 15% indirect costs of their direct costs.
• International grantees must use all grant funds exclusively for activities conducted outside the United States of America. Note: Restrictions may apply to international grantees using grant funds to travel to the U.S., but CZI will be in contact with successful applicants to discuss options.
• 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 (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 who have applied for funding, may be made publicly available in aggregate form. Application materials will not be returned to applicants.