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Proposals to FAPESP Research Program on eScience and Data Science: Digital Human Health

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Summary:	This call will accept proposals in eScience and Data Science in Digital Health (collaborative research conducted jointly by researchers in Computer and Life Sciences, restricted to issues associated with human health);
Closing date for proposals submissions:	February 10th, 2020
Successful proposals notified:	June, 2020
Support Opportunities:	Regular Research Grant, Thematic Project Grant and Young Investigator Grant. Proposals for these support opportunities must be submitted in English; PIPE – phase I or II - Proposals for PIPE may be written in English or Portuguese
Submission of proposals:	Proposals must be submitted using the SAGe System
Funds available for this call for proposals:	The total amount of resources available for this call for proposals is up to R$ 6 million (six million Reais) considering all support opportunities.
Eligibility:	According to each support opportunity, as described in the item 3.
Contact:	Dr. Simone Godoi – eScience@fapesp.br

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1. Introduction

1.1 The São Paulo Research Foundation, FAPESP, launches this call for proposals and invites researchers, associated to higher education and research institutions in the State of São Paulo, or associated to small businesses established in the State of São Paulo, to submit proposals in the conditions described herein.

1.2 The main goal of the FAPESP Research Program on eScience and Data Science is to encourage bold, novel, and unconventional approaches to world-class multidisciplinary research involving joint collaboration of computer scientists and researchers in other fields.

2. Research Topics

2.1 Research proposals must involve any kind of collaborative research conducted jointly by researchers in Computer and the Life Sciences, and be restricted to problems related to human health.

2.2 This call accepts proposals that fall into this category, including, but not restricted to, the following topics:

a. Artificial Intelligence applied to big data in human health;

b. Data Science for Human Health;

c. Precision medicine

d. Computational vision and augmented reality in human health;

e. Decision support systems in medicine;

f. Health informatics;

g. Robotics in human health;

h. Telemedicine and eHealth;

i. Design and development of sensors for human health applications;

j. Data security, privacy, reliability and visualization for human health;

k. Bioinformatics, human and medical genetics;

l. New digital interfaces for human health information systems, for instance using touch or voice commands;

m. Brain-computer interfaces;

n. Management, administration and ministration of drugs;

o. Integration and interoperability of data and systems in human health distributed environments;

p. Human factor engineering, usability and ergonomy of devices and computational systems in medicine and health;

q. Patient monitoring systems.

3. Support Opportunities: duration, eligibility and eligible costs

3.1 The FAPESP support opportunities selected for this call are:

I) Thematic Projects : Project duration is fixed in 60 months. Specific information for this opportunity, including eligibility requirements and eligible costs, are available at www.fapesp.br/en/13. Exceptionalities for this call:

a. The proposal may also include requests for Masters (MS) and/or Doctorate (DR) scholarships. Please note that the duration of any fellowship cannot exceed the duration of the grant and that the advisor must be the PI or a co-PI;

b. For projects demanding TT fellowships (level 3 or above), the host institution has to guarantee an equivalent counterpart of Information Technology (IT) personnel to match the fellowships – e.g., junior or senior systems analysts who will be involved with the project in software design, development and documentation.

II) Regular Projects: Project duration may be up to 36 months. Specific information for this modality, including eligibility requirements and eligible costs, are available at https://fapesp.br./137. Exceptionalities for this call:

a. The proposal may include requests for Scientific Initiation (SI), Masters (MS) and Post-Doctoral (PD) fellowships. Please note that the duration of any fellowship cannot exceed the duration of the grant and the supervisor/advisor must be the PI of the grant.

b. For projects demanding TT fellowships (level 3 or above), the host institution has to guarantee an equivalent counterpart of Information Technology (IT) personnel to match the fellowships – e.g., junior or senior systems analysts who will be involved with the project in software design, development and documentation.

c. The total budget requested (including Reserva Técnica and possible scholarships), should be up to R$ 100.000,00 (one hundred thousand Reais) per year for proposals with duration of 36 months. For proposals with lowest duration, the maximum requested value must be proportionally smaller.

III) Young Investigator Grant : Project duration is fixed in 60 months. Specific information for this modality, including eligibility requirements and eligible costs, are available at en/6251

IV) Innovative Research in Small Business Program (PIPE): For this call, the research proposals (phase I or phase II) should clearly demonstrate the evidence of innovation involving joint collaboration of experts in Computer and in any field of Life Sciences with scope limited to Human Health. More information, including eligibility requirements and eligible costs are available at www.fapesp.br/pipe.

4. Proposal characteristics: how to prepare and submit a proposal

4.1 Preparing a proposal

4.1.1. Each proposal should be composed of a Research Project and all the documents and forms required in the SAGe system for the selected oppportunity;

4.1.2. Guidelines for submitting a proposal of Thematic Project Grant, Regular Research Grant and Young Investigator Grant are described in Appendix I of this call. The research project, for these three support opportunities, must be written in English, since non-Portuguese speaking reviewers may be invited. When preparing the proposal, please use the headings indicated in Appendix I as section headings.

4.2 Submitting a proposal

4.2.1 Proposals must be submitted to FAPESP in the SAGe system (www.fapesp.br/sage).

4.2.2. No proposal will be accepted after the closing date for submissions, nor will any addendum or explanation be accepted, except those explicitly and formally requested by FAPESP.

5. Timeline

Call for proposals announced	October 22nd, 2019
Closing date for Submission of Proposals	February 10th, 2020
Successful proposals notified	June 2020

6. Funding principles for this call for proposals

6.1 The total amount of resources available for this call for proposals is up to R$ 6 million (six million Reais) (approximately equivalent to up to USD 1.5 million) considering all support opportunities. FAPESP reserves the right to propose funding levels lower than those requested for the received proposals.

7. Intellectual property

7.1 FAPESP´s Intellectual Property policy is available at: www.fapesp.br/pi

8. Communication of results

8.1 Final results will be announced at the FAPESP website (www.fapesp.br) and by means of a communication to the proponents.

9. Publications resulting from the funded projects

9.1 Publications resulting from the funded projects must obey FAPESP’s Open Access Policy at https://fapesp.br./12632

10. Questions regarding this call for proposals

Please send all queries about this call for research proposals to:

Email: eScience@fapesp.br

Dr Simone Godoi – Science Program Coordinator – Health Sciences

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Appendix I

Specific information for Thematic Project Grants, Young Investigator Grants and Regular Research Grants

1. Characteristics of the research proposals

Given the particularities of eScience, all fundable projects should clearly present the following:

a. Engagement of both computer scientists and scientists from the Life Sciences: at least one collaborator from Computer Science (CS) and one from the Life Sciences.

b. Evidence of research in CS: eScience is concerned with joint exploration of how advances in Computer Science research can help face core science and technology challenges in other fields. Therefore, projects must have a solid core of CS research.

c. Evidence of benefits to research in the target domain (Life Sciences, for human health): projects must clearly indicate expected scientific results in the target domain.

d. Evidence of offering training in eScience and Data Science practices: given the lack of qualified labor to meet the specific demands of multidisciplinary projects, proposals are encouraged to show how they will offer training that combines computing practices with those of the target domain.

e. Data management plan (www.fapesp.br/gestaodedados): a major characteristic of eScience projects is their dependency on data management practices, and the need of making results public, to allow reuse and collaboration with other groups. Therefore, all projects submitted in this call (except for projects submitted to the PIPE modality) should provide indication of how they intend to manage the data produced during the project (where the term “data” is taken on the large, and includes files, algorithms, software, samples, models, curriculum material and others).

2. To write a proposal, please follow the guidelines below

a. Items 1 through 9 should necessarily be part of the Research Project along with usual suggested sections for each grant modality. These nine items must be written in English.

b. The Data Management Plan (gestaodedados) is a compulsory requirement for the submission, and is considered as part of the project.

c. This call establishes the limit of twenty (20) pages for Regular Research Grants and Young Investigator Grants, or thirty (30) pages for Thematic Project Grants, with 1.5 spacing and font equivalent to Times New Roman or Arial 12. These page limits include relevant publications, Figures and Tables as necessary and references.

d. Please use section titles as listed in items from 1 through 10 of the following table:

Item	Section Title	Description
1	Title Page	- Title, names of Principal Investigator, Co-Principal Investigators, their host institutions, start and end dates.
	Table of Contents	- Table of Contents referring to the page number of each section.
	Abstract	- In English only. 20 lines maximum.
2	Statement of scientific problem(s) to be tackled by the proposed project, clearly including contributions to eScience and Data Science in Digital Health	- Description of the eScience scientific challenges and their relevance. - Significance and relevance for the FAPESP eScience Program. This section should clearly include a description of the contribution to both Computer Science and to the Life Sciences as regards human health. - Summary of preliminary results, if any.
3	Specific aims and Expected Results	- List of the Proposal’s aims, with a short description of each one. - Description of the knowledge that will be created and how it will be disseminated to the community. - Description of the expected impacts of the results in science, education, industry, society, environment etc.
4	Means and methods	- Description of the methods and means to overcome the challenges of the project. - Relevant references regarding these challenges and the methods and means proposed.
5	Timetable	- Estimate of Project completion. - List of the milestones used to assess the progress of the project and its completion.
6	Data management plan	- For Thematic Project Grants, Regular Research Grants and Young Investigators Grants, the Data Management Plan is a compulsory document to be attached as annex to the proposal, and does not need to be part of the main text. This attached document must be in English. - Instructions on how to prepare a Data Management Plan appear at www.fapesp.br/gestaodedados
7	Dissemination and evaluation	- Description of the evaluation of the results and their proposed dissemination to the pertinent community. In particular, consider policies to share data and software produced by the project. - Dissemination should include established academic channels, such as papers in high-impact international conferences and refereed journals. All selected projects should moreover result in a detailed Web presence. Additional channels for community development include regional workshops, graduate seminars, open source software projects, and curriculum components such as courses or courseware - eScience projects also value the construction of reference databases and open source software for the scientific community. - Evidence of offering training in eScience practices.
8	Additional Funds and Resources	- Description of additional funds requested and already available from other sources (e.g. from the host institution or other agencies). Resources may be assets, goods, services, infrastructure, and equipment, among others.
9	References	- References cited in the preceding items.
10	Provision of human resources by host institution	- For Thematic Project and Regular Research Grants demanding TT Fellowships above level 3, the host institution(s) should provide written guarantee of equivalent funding of Information Technology personnel to match the fellowships – e.g., junior or senior systems analysts that will work for the project in software design, development and documentation ATTENTION: item 10 is not included in the page limitation, and does not need to be written in English.

3. Benefits and commitments specific to the eScience program

a. The eScience Program will have periodic workshops with mandatory attendance for all the PI's involved with the program and, in some cases, their collaborators and students. These workshops will be a special opportunity to update all involved on the research conducted in the field and to have access to new data and information before publishing.

b. Proposals must clearly state which efforts will be made for the results of selected projects (including intellectual property of these results) to be made publicly available, paying special attention to FAPESP’s Open Access Policy (https://fapesp.br./12632). Following FAPESP’s Code of Good Scientific Practice www.fapesp.br/boaspraticas/FAPESP-Code_of_Good_Scientific_Practice_2014.pdf, and Data Management Plan policies www.fapesp.br/gestaodedados, results should be made publicly available – these considerations also apply to software, documentation, technical reports, databases, datasets, workflows, etc. generated by the project.

4. Review process

Project evaluation and monitoring will follow FAPESP mechanisms and workflows. Evaluation of all projects will consider evidence of CS research and actual impact on the target domain’s research. Some specific issues apply to the eScience FAPESP program:

a. The adequacy of the requested fellowships as related to the proposal’s goals and the qualification of the proposing research team is a primary review consideration. The Program encourages proposals that include the participation of Post-Doctorate level researchers.

b. Collaboration via co-supervision: proposals that consider fellowships with co-supervision of computer scientists and scientists from another domain are encouraged. In this case, the fellowship plan must indicate the co-supervision.

c. Collaborations in the State of São Paulo: the program encourages the creation of networks for collaboration and student interchange. Researchers should look for collaborations with centers in the State with incipient research background, such as recently established departments. This is considered a means to foster new strong research groups.

d. International collaborations: the program encourages projects that foster international collaboration with groups of excellence working in the field. Indication of such collaborations will be a positive element in proposal evaluation.

e. Involvement of industry and research centers: the program encourages the collaboration with research centers and industries. This is desirable from two points of view – additional funding, and increasing the impact of the results.

Appendix II: Instructions for SAGe System (Guidelines for proposals submission on SAGe)

1. The Principal Investigator must be registered in the SAGe system:

(i) Researchers who do not have a SAGe registration should initially do so by accessing the SAGe page at www.fapesp.br/sage, clicking on “Sem cadastro?” and fill in the requested data. It is not enough to just register as a user, it is necessary to complete the cadastral data;

(ii) Researchers from the State of São Paulo, already registered, must log into SAGe with the usual identification and password to access the system homepage.

2. The proposal must be submitted by the Principal Investigator from SP. On the home page, select from the menu options “Acesso rápido – Atividades do Pesquisador”, the link “Nova Proposta Inicial”.

3. In the Current Calls section, select one funding modality (eScience - Jovem Pesquisador / Chamada de Propostas (2019), eScience - PIPE - Fase 1 / Chamada de Propostas (2019),eScience - PIPE - Fase 2 Direta / Chamada de Propostas (2019), eScience - PIPE - Fase 2 Indireta / Chamada de Propostas (2019), eScience - Projeto de Pesquisa - Regular / Chamada de Propostas (2019) , eScience - Projeto de Pesquisa - Temático / Chamada de Propostas (2019)).

4. The system will display the menu "Incluir proposta" on the following page to confirm the selected Call. Click the “Incluir” button to start preparing your proposal. Include the requested data in all the tabs, including the list of documents to be attached.

5. All items marked with “*” are compulsory. You must submit the project after filling the form. Saving a project’s data does not mean it has been submitted.

6. If you have any doubts, you can use the Manuals link on the SAGe home page and, in the Manuals page, search for explanations in the “Manuais de Apoio aos Pesquisadores”. IMPORTANT: It is strongly recommended to periodically check the pending proposals using the “Validar” option. This can be performed repeatedly while the proposal is constructed, allowing the necessary arrangements for submission to be made in time. When selecting the option “Validar”, the SAGe system will present the impediments pending to submit the proposal considering the items that were already inserted. In case of doubts about the use of the SAGE system, in addition to the Manuals, FAPESP also provides assistance at the Information Sector (11 3838-4000).

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