This opportunity targets three topic areas of high need for researchers working with biomedical Big Data:

Data privacy is one of the fundamental challenges of our age. To take full advantage of the power of big data to drive biomedical discovery, researchers must work with data from disparate sources and with differing privacy policies and protections. How do we integrate biomedical data while preserving privacy? Innovation in data privacy methods is essential.

Data repurposing is indispensable to the future of biomedical science. This area includes both the re-use of biomedical data that was collected for another purpose and the application of non-biomedical data types to solve biomedical questions. Both economical and innovative, data repurposing opens new lines of research, but presents significant challenges in suitable integration and analysis of combined datasets. New methods and tools are needed to allow widespread application of data repurposing practices.

Applying metadata is necessary to permit the re-use of biomedical data. Software for metadata application and data annotation relieves researchers from some of the labor-intensive and confusing requirement for data sharing. By enabling researchers to more readily submit datasets to common resources and repositories, methods and tools for applying metadata support data interoperability.

The receipt deadline for applications is October 6, 2015, with an optional letter of intent due September 6, 2015.

BD2K is a trans-NIH initiative that aims to support advances in data science, other quantitative sciences, policy, and training that are needed for the effective use of big data in biomedical research. Interested applicants are encouraged to join the BD2K listserv to receive the most up-to-date information about BD2K events and funding opportunities.

For more information, please see the BD2K website.