Next Generation Networks for Neuroscience | 19 563

Opportunity Information: Apply for 19 563

The National Science Foundation (NSF) funding opportunity titled "Next Generation Networks for Neuroscience" (NeuroNex, Funding Opportunity Number 19-563) was designed to tackle one of neuroscience's central long-term challenges: explaining how cognition and behavior arise from coordinated electrical and chemical activity across brain circuits. While many studies have linked specific neural components to particular behaviors or cognitive processes, this solicitation emphasizes that a truly comprehensive picture of healthy brain function is still missing. In particular, it highlights the need to uncover general principles that connect brain structure to dynamic activity, explain how brains operate in real-world environmental contexts, and clarify how neural systems remain functional and adaptable over time.

A key idea in this program is that solving these problems requires research that spans levels of biological organization (from molecules and cells to circuits and systems), multiple spatial and temporal scales, and different species. NSF frames this as a fundamentally international and transdisciplinary task, where progress depends not only on combining existing discipline-specific approaches, but also on pushing beyond them to develop new concepts, theories, and methods. The solicitation positions these advances as unlikely to come from isolated labs working independently, and instead argues for coordinated efforts that can align tools, datasets, and experimental strategies across borders and fields.

The core objective of this phase of the NeuroNex Program is the establishment of distributed international research networks that build on major global investments in neurotechnology. Rather than funding a single research center in one location, NSF sought to seed networks of excellence that are explicitly collaborative and geographically distributed. These networks were intended to create strong working links among institutions worldwide and, importantly, to connect and coordinate with multiple newly launched international brain initiatives. The expectation is that networking at this scale would expand what is experimentally and analytically feasible, enabling neuroscience research efforts that are larger, more integrated, and more ambitious than typical single-investigator or small-team projects.

In practical terms, the solicitation aimed to support collaborative networks made up of roughly 15 to 20 investigators per network. Each network was expected to include international teams with deep disciplinary diversity, bringing together experimentalists, theorists, and developers of research resources. "Research resources" is framed broadly and includes technology development as well as cyberinfrastructure, reflecting the program's focus on the data-intensive nature of modern neuroscience. By combining experimental work with theory and computation, and by including people building platforms for data handling and analysis, NSF envisioned networks capable of coordinated experimentation, shared standards, and joint discovery pipelines.

The program also sits within NSF's broader multi-year "Understanding the Brain" effort, and it is explicitly tied to national and international momentum around advanced neurotechnologies, including NSF's participation in the U.S. BRAIN Initiative. Another major theme is the recognition that modern neuroscience produces enormous datasets and that the field needs better ways to collect, standardize, manage, and analyze those data. This need is presented as not only a community priority but also something acknowledged at the federal level, including in the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act (AICA) of 2017. In that sense, NeuroNex is framed as both a scientific program and an infrastructure-building program, aimed at making large-scale, data-rich neuroscience more coherent and interoperable across groups.

Administrative details in the source indicate this was an NSF discretionary grant opportunity in the Science and Technology and other Research and Development category, with CFDA numbers 47.074 and 47.079. Eligibility was listed as unrestricted (open to any type of entity), subject to any additional eligibility clarifications in the full solicitation text. The opportunity was created March 5, 2019, with an original closing date of December 13, 2019, and NSF anticipated making about five awards. The award ceiling is listed as 0 in the provided data, which typically signals that an explicit cap was not specified in that particular field and that applicants would need to rely on the full program solicitation for budget expectations and constraints.

Overall, this opportunity was built around the idea that the next major leaps in understanding the brain will come from coordinated, cross-disciplinary, international networks that can align neurotechnology, theory, experimentation, and cyberinfrastructure around shared foundational questions. NSF's intended outcome was a connected portfolio of integrative projects that leverage existing investments worldwide, create durable collaborations among research communities, and open up new ways to study the brain "in action and in context" at a scale that individual projects cannot reach.

• The National Science Foundation in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Next Generation Networks for Neuroscience" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 47.074, 47.079.
• This funding opportunity was created on Mar 05, 2019.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Dec 13, 2019. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 5 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility.

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