Funder: National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Due Dates: February 27, 2025 (Letter of Intent) | March 27, 2025 (Application)
Funding Amounts: Up to $750,000 direct costs per year | Project period up to 5 years | Total $4 million anticipated across 5-6 awards
Summary: Supports development and evaluation of multimodal AI models integrated with knowledge graphs to improve HIV diagnosis, prevention, and treatment.
Key Information: Clinical trial optional; multidisciplinary, human-centered AI approaches required; strong emphasis on data privacy, transparency, and stakeholder engagement.
This funding opportunity from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), specifically the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), aims to leverage cutting-edge multimodal artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to accelerate HIV clinical care. The initiative focuses on developing, adapting, and evaluating advanced multimodal AI models that integrate multiple data types (e.g., text, images, audio) from diverse sources (e.g., medical records, wearable devices, patient surveys) to improve HIV diagnosis, prevention, and treatment.
A key innovation encouraged by this program is the creation and integration of HIV-specific knowledge graphs to enhance the interpretability and explainability of AI model outputs. These knowledge graphs represent complex relationships among HIV symptoms, treatments, social determinants of health, and other relevant factors, enabling more precise and transparent AI-driven clinical decision support.
The program emphasizes a human-centered AI approach, requiring meaningful engagement with community members, patients, clinicians, and other stakeholders to ensure ethical, fair, and unbiased AI systems. Applications must address data privacy, security, transparency, and consent, and incorporate best practices for AI model development and deployment.
NIDA encourages applications that address HIV in the context of substance use disorders, including integrating substance use data into knowledge graphs and developing predictive models to improve clinical outcomes for people who use drugs.
Clinical trials are optional but, if proposed, must comply with NIMH's experimental therapeutics approach, including specifying intervention targets and mechanisms.
No late applications will be accepted. Applicants are encouraged to submit early to allow time for corrections.
Budgets must reflect actual project needs.
Foreign organizations and non-domestic components of U.S. organizations are not eligible, but foreign components are allowed.
Any individual with the necessary skills and resources may apply. Multiple PD/PI applications are allowed.
Applicants must complete and maintain active registrations in:
Applications must be submitted electronically via Grants.gov and tracked in eRA Commons. All application instructions in the NIH Research (R) Application Guide (Forms Version H) must be followed, including:
Page limits and formatting requirements must be strictly followed. No proprietary or personal identifiable information should be included.
Applications will be evaluated on:
Additional considerations include protection of human subjects, vertebrate animal use, biohazards, budget justification, and resource sharing.
| Role | Name | Phone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scientific/Research Contact | Lori A.J. Scott-Sheldon, Ph.D. | 301-792-2309 | lori.scott-sheldon@nih.gov |
| Scientific/Research Contact | Tamara Haegerich, Ph.D. | 301-443-1185 | Tamara.Haegerich@nih.gov |
| Peer Review Contact | Nicholas Gaiano, Ph.D. | 301-827-3420 | nick.gaiano@nih.gov |
| Grants Management Contact (NIMH) | Rita Sisco | 301-443-2805 | siscor@mail.nih.gov |
| Grants Management Contact (NIDA) | Pamela G Fleming | 301-480-1159 | pfleming@mail.nih.gov |
| Application Submission Help | eRA Service Desk | 301-402-7469 or 866-504-9552 (Toll Free) | https://www.era.nih.gov/need-help |
| Grants.gov Support | Grants.gov Contact Center | 800-518-4726 | support@grants.gov |