Hello everyone welcome to the webinar about
the Ideas Lab Use-Inspired Acceleration of Protein Design the solicitation is
called also USPRD. I'm Waleed Nasser I'm a program director at the Directorate for
Technology Innovation and Partnerships uh I'm joined by my colleagues SJ Jayaweera
and Dr. David Tennenhouse as well as Dr. David Darwin in the background
as well so I'm going to start the webinar so um let me start with the agenda uh I'm
going to briefly talk about the directorate for Te
chnology Innovation and Partnerships it's a new
directorate at NSF then I'm going to go into the science behind the use inspired acceleration of
protein design focusing on the small binders and then enzymes and then I'm going to walk you
through the ideas lab process starting with a preliminary proposal ideas lab workshop and
then briefly about the full proposal that you shouldn't be worried about at the moment and if
we have more time uh we'll go to the questions and answers so in 2022 in
the chips and science Act
Congress authorized the establishment of of uh nsf's New Technology Innovation and Partnerships
directorate and within that chips and science Act Congress uh named 10 key technology Focus area uh
from Advanced Computing to advanced communication in fact my colleague SJ has a solicitation
about that currently and you can find it at NSF it's called breaking law and of course and
you know one of the things that we're going to focus on today is biotechnology specifical
ly
synthetic biology Congress named five societal National and strategic challenges as well
including National Security manufacturing uh industrial product manufacturing and Industrial
productivity Workforce Development climate change and environmental sustainability and equal
access to education opportunity or other services tip is a unique directorate it
overarches all scientific disciplines and it and it integrates with nsf's existing directors to
accelerate use inspired and translation
al research and development to advance us competitiveness in
key technology areas and tip Mission states that tip harnesses the nation's vast and diverse talent
pool to advance critical and emerging Technologies address pressing societal and economical chall
challenges and accelerate the translation of research results from Lab to Market and Society
tip improve us competitiveness growing the US economy and training a diverse Workforce
for future High wage jobs so tip uh Fosters Partnerships
with government industry nonprofit
civil society and communities of practice tip will bridge the gap between public and private
funds the programs help move uh discoveries out from the lab into uh use uh typically uh NSF
funding primar goes to foundational research as you can see here on the left and tip helps
uh by funding use inspired research prototype development a product scale up and would get
research consumers into Technologies and into practices so this is a summary slide it has a
ll
the information that you need to know about this solicitation so USPRD seeks to advance protein
design and its applications focusing in two areas or two tracks use driven applications
for small binders and the design and use of enzymes and families of enzymes I just want
to uh bring everybody's attention that the focus on news Inspire that the focus of this
one is on use inspired translational research with applications Beyond human Therapeutics
and these are just examples it can be mor
e than that examples are Advanced Materials bio
manufacturing Agriculture and food security environmental remediation sustainability and
climate related challenges uh this solicitation has a unique process called the ideas lab only
teams and groups formed during the special ideas lab Workshop will be eligible submit full proposal
and to be invited to the workshop there is only two-page preliminary proposal with other documents
that I will go into later so preliminary proposal to practice uh
to participate in the ideas
lab are due April 23rd please not that this is a very important date April 23rd where you
apologies for that April 23rd is where you uh it's a due date for uh the preliminary proposal
and the ideas lab Workshop which is an inperson Workshop is going to be held on June 10 to 14
2024 in the vicinity of Alexandria, Virginia. So let me step back a little bit and and tell you
why what we want or what we hope to accomplish well it's an exciting time to be in the prote
in
design field as we made significant advances in predicting the 3D structure and designing
specific small proteins you know we using macromolecular modeling training data AIML and
high throughput characterization so but protein designers and two developer developers at the
moment need to be colocalized and it's limited to a small number of research facilities so
what we hope through this solicitation that three years from now uh we will uh we will
create a thriving ecosystem for everybod
y to join in and co-localization is no longer needed
we uh would encourage we want to encourage large number of use inspired protein designers to
participate in that and start producing use inspired application we hope for robust and
independently supported protein design and characterization tools and then uh to be widely
used by small companies large companies startups Academia and others and of course F and focus on
training new translational talent but in order to do so we need a little
bit focus on the
two solicitation and focus our attention so the first Focus will be uh on uh small binders
so great progress had been made in the design and structure prediction of small proteins
and we want to leverage that knowledge to advance applications in the molecular recognition
space to enable biosensors so Advanced frustation research in BIO instrumentation space and these
are just examples of what we can do with it it it relates as as I mentioned we're going to focus on
applic
ations so we want to focus on applications related to the environment agriculture etc
examples are to detect environmental toxin or the monitor Soul Health we can also Advance
bio sensors that play a role in manufacturing as an example it helps uh quantifying and and and
identifying intermediates and process optimization in cell-free or cell-based systems as well as we
can generate libraries of small protein binders uh these uh this these libraries should be readily
available for wide range
of use with also specific note that it should have specific applications
to it we need to demonstrate that there is a specific applications to those small barriers the
second topic is Cargo delivery system so there is great progress already made in human Therapeutics
using this cargo delivery system namely in cancer research and cancer Therapeutics we want to
take that and expand it and have applications to agriculture the environment climate resilience
and other topics examples we can tar
get specific organel in plants or we can target specific
organisms in aquatic ecosystem whether to enhance certain processes or inhibit the production of
unwanted materials note that in each section A and B it must include used driven application
as you notice this solicitation mostly focus on application the other topic we want to focus
on is enzymes and families of enzymes we want to extend the range of accurate prediction we
have now for small binders to enable the design of enzymes it c
ould be significant optimization
it has to be significant optimization of natural enzymes or the noo design enzymes uh we we
consider approaches that can be generalized to families of enzymes for example if you want
to work on the stability and and longevity of a certain enzyme we want you to focus on
generalizing that to the whole family of that enzyme family example of differentiated
enzyme capabilities that we can focus on and again these are just examples there are more
ways to contrib
ute to this solicitation is novel enzy from Agriculture and or industrial
benefits degradation of environmental biomass biocontaminants sequestration of biomolecules
to promote sustainability and production of new materials of course we're going to want to
focus also on optimize stability and activity for bio-manufacturing to help the US bio economy
again all these categories must include Ed driven application that's the main overriding uh uh
approach that we want to have to this process so
let me guide you through the process so this is
the science we want to focus on and as you noticed we focused on two topics small binders and enzymes
but we kept the the the scientific scope quite broad there's a lot of application we can use
with the small vit enzymes because we want you to to uh to discuss the details and crystallize the
the project you during the process of the ideas lab so how does the ideas lab work the ideas lab
starts with a preliminary proposal it's a two-page prop
osal to participate in the ideas lab and after
preliminary proposal review we're going to invite 30 to 40 participants with diverse expertise and
once in the ideas lab Workshop just you know we we know a lot of you folks you have great ideas and
and great applications we we want you to come in brainstorm ideas we want you to form teams for
broader impact and then you can sit together and outline project plans and then after the at
the end of the workshop uh a subset maybe all of the propose
d pictures during the project will be
invited to submit full proposals and then full proposal will be from selected teams the submit
proposal will will go through review and and uh and eventually getting awarded so through this
process I'm going to focus on three main topics it's the preliminary proposal the ideas lab
workshop and at the end I'm just going to touch a little bit about full proposal because full
proposal is it's not something we need to worry about it right now it's something
that we have
time for after the conclusion of the Ideas Lab and as and as I said all those that participate in the
ideas lab will then uh be eligible to submit full proposals so let's start with the ideas
lab preliminary proposal it's required via research.gov again it must come from one
individual and although that individual is associated with an organization but it's
an individual that's going to submit the preliminary proposal and that individual should be
available to attend the work
shop and please follow the preliminary proposal guidelines uh specified
in the solicitation briefly it's a two-page limit there are other required documents details are
in the solicitation and I will touch upon that at the end of this webinar and uh uh and it's
very important that your organization that you represent must be registered with sam.gov in order
to be you know to in order to be able to register to research.gov this can take weeks please start
early deadline for the preliminary p
roposal is April 23rd again I will touch upon those
requirements at the end of this webinar so who should apply we want to bring experts from from
different backgrounds from different expertise so startups you know folks that work in startups
small companies big companies Academia nonprofit you are more than welcome to apply and maybe join
us because we want to make a broader impact by bringing different entities together so they
can work as a team and then be more productive and have more
ambitious goals that is attainable
as well uh individuals with expert and it can be multiple expertise from a range of disciplines we
definitely want application specific expertise if you have that enologists bioengineers molecular
biologists physicists mathematician chemist computer scientist technoeconomic analysist
and and more uh and we do welcome uh anyone any stage uh uh so and we do we do welcome
participant at any stage of their career as well so again the ideas lab preliminary prop
osal
selection and guidelines again invitations to the workshop again 30 to 40 individuals will
be invited to the workshop and those in those invitation will be based on information submitted
in the preliminary proposal submission will should confirm your availability to attend the in-person
workshop that will be held on June 10 to 14 202 4 in the vicinity of Alexandria Virginia it's the
DC area so the solicitation has all the details for the guidelines that you need to know about the
prel
iminary proposal and we specify that in page one uh about 200 words for each below a brief
summary of your professional background your expertise and interests and suggested approach or
contribution towards USPRD and then on the second page we would like you to answer four specific
questions that will help NSF evaluate your suitability to the ideas lab environment each
each specific question should be no more than 150 words again just two page preliminary
proposal to be invited to the ideas
lab Workshop so let's talk a little bit about the
ideas lab Workshop itself so 30 to 40 people that are invited uh will be will engage in an
intensive workshop for exchanging ideas forming collaborations and crystallizing project plans the
in-person workshop will be preceded by one maybe two teleconference meeting just to coordinate
before we have the in-person meeting that happens in June 10 to 14 2024 so we ask all the
invitees to to come with open mind and definitely open for new collab
orations we want to we want
the individuals to collaborate together for the broader impact so please come in with your great
ideas with your great application approaches and let's have a great discussion so we can push the
envelope and protein design and Advance it create that ecosystem that we want everybody to benefit
from in three years or so so the workshop will be coordinated by professional facilitators and
main experts also called mentors and and some of the elements of this process
first we bring your
ideas I know you have great ideas so get a lot of ideas on the table uh related to applications
and Technologies for small binders and enzymes we're going to combine those ideas into Innovative
potential projects and then Dynamic team formation will happen so we can imagine that teams will
form reform two small teams can join together or maybe one big team can split there's a lot of
dynamics that happens again bring your ideas your your your collaborative uh uh attitude
and come to
the lab and let's exchange those ideas and and the team will Forge consensus on target applications
and metrics for Success again all the details will be discussed at the ideas lab just come with the
ideas come with the big ideas and let's work to together to push this uh topic even further and uh
it'll be actually a realtime peer review to revise and Define proposal Solutions so let's talk about
uh what kind of outcomes you expect as I mentioned during the early stage of the wo
rkshop teams will
form and start developing project outlines and towards the end of the 5day workshop each team
will have a will pitch his plan or their plan selected pictures will be invited to submit full
proposal according to NSR guidelines attendees of the workshop will also Force consensus I mean
that's why we're having this discussion we need to form consensus on certain projects so
that that relate to the challenges and target applications uh I mean we want the team to form
from mul
tiple disciplines so they can aim for for uh an ambitious but attainable goals we we
want you to aim high so we can get goals that that's going to benefit the us bioeconomy but
again it has to be attainable has to be within reason and then the the in the workshop itself
we're going to also uh Define the metrics through which the progress towards these goals will be
measured so all the great ideas everything will be crystallized during that one week Workshop
it's going to be exciting we're g
oing to have time to relax but we're going to have a lot
of time to discuss something s and then push the envelope on protein design to to build that
ecosystem so everybody can benefit from it in the future and in and during the workshop there
there are specific components we're asking uh the folks to focus on and and and should be
outlined in the projects uh most importantly use driving activities that design novel proteins
that demonstrate their applications you you heard the overarching
approaches applications
applications applications uh there are uh plays for infrastructure component such as software
tools data sets and characterization Services that's probably more related to the protein
design we want those infrastructure component and the software maybe to address the dynamic
nature of proteins and and build new and push the envelope of what we can do with small
binders to enzymes and maybe other proteins as well but again for this one the focus is
on enzymes but in
either case each proposal should include an application and if you have
an infrastructure component we're going to ask that you'll have a designer facing component
to allow third parties to benefit and enjoy that software or that infrastructure that
you're building in a way it will Bridge the infrastructure with Ed driven activities as I
mentioned we focus so much on the ecosystem we want to have an ecosystem for everybody to
benefit so such as standards road maps and coordinating activitie
s so everybody can
pitch in with their ideas and enjoy the fruit of this solicitation and we want to
also train the next translational Talent so Workforce component also is an important part of
this again these things that will be discussed and uh uh crystallized during the five-day
Workshop that will happen between June 10 to 14 so I'm going to focus Less on the full
proposal again you we need to get folks first in the ideas lab and those that are
in the ideas lab will be eligible to subm
it a full proposal but for a full proposal
you have time so post Workshop teams will have time to work on the full proposal and they
can recruit additional members so if you have a collaborator you want to include him in the full
proposal he can serve as a senior or key member uh the full proposal of course should conform
will conform to the project outline developed at the workshop uh ideas lab for proposal must
identify outcomes and deliverables again we're focusing on application and how
how what metrics
uh will uh define success and the full proposal must follow NSF proposal and award policies
and procedure guideline uh there are will be supplementary documents a management plan and
intellectual property management plan uh that again should be included in the full proposal but
as I mentioned we have time for that we just want to focus now on the preliminary proposal bring you
into the ideas lab and start exchanging ideas and brainstorming and the full Proposal review
wil
l evaluate proposal using the national science board approved Merit review criteria
the intellectual Merit and broader impact but there are solicitation specific review criteria
so the reviewers will look if successful how significantly will the proposed work Advanced
translation of the key technology of protein design into applications important to the US
bioeconomy and then to what degree does the proposal contribute to achieving the specific
goal said during the ideas lab workshops again
we're going to brainstorm these ideas and the
full proposal should reflect that including the specific sub goals I just elaborated on just
a minute ago about the use driven activities the infrastructure designer facing component and
ecosystem and Workforce components and then does the proposed project have the appropriate mix of
stakeholders we want Academia industry nonprofit to come together for broader impact and we want
to have the right mix to attain the use inspired objectives of thi
s solicitation and of course
uh all the them should be congruent with the with what was determined in the ideas lab and if
there's any significant changes please contact me uh for for questions but again I don't want you
to worry about the full proposals we just want to focus on the preliminary proposals and attending
the ideas lab process so these are the important dates so the preliminary proposal due date is
April 23 2024 the ideas lab inperson Workshop is in June 10 to 14 2024 and the v
icinity of uh
Alexandria Virginia again fil proposals we still have time for that it's going to be August 30th
we're hoping to fund up to eight Awards up to 3.75 million per year a type of award is going to be
a standard Grant and qual agreement let's worry about that later just bring your ideas bring
your application and and and come to this uh ideas lab and uh before I open uh the webinar
for questions I want to emphasize important registrations at sam.gov and research.gov
so institution
s submitting proposals even individuals representing sub institution that's
going to submit proposals to this solation must have an active UEI I unique entity identifier
through sam.gov this is a prerequisite for submitting a proposal on research.gov sam.gov
registration can take several weeks so please start early Sam registration must be renewed
annually so if you've recently uh applied for a grant at NSF you're you're in good shape
but if you haven't make sure that you have an active Sam
account and so you can uh continue
with this research.gov which is an online Grant Management for the NSF Community register your
organization and establish established roles each organization must have someone registered as a pi
and then authorized organizational representative uh registration process time takes up to 48
Hours again start early to get to that phase uh there are other documents that we would
require beside the two-page uh preliminary proposal these are the biographical ske
tch and
the current and pending support uh this should be uh submitted through using science CV it's
the science experts Network curriculum V uh this is the this is the link to the website
we have frequently asked questions using sign s CV uh in in this link both links are found in
the solicitation so please this takes time start early so I hope so this is the first
slide I started with I hope it's more clear to people there so this includes as I
mentioned everything you need to know about
the use inspired acceleration of protein design
so we we want to advance protein design and its application focusing on small binders use driven
application of small binders and the design and use of enzymes again the focus uh is on on use inp
translational research with applications Beyond human Therapeutics as an example these are fields
that just an example it can be more than that Advanced Materials bio- manufacturing Agriculture
and food security uh environmental remediation sustainab
ility and climate related changes uh as
as you have noticed and if you've been following this webinar only teams or groups formed during
a special ideas lab Workshop will be eligible to submit proposals to be invited to that Workshop
there's a two-page preliminary proposal but as I mentioned there's other required documents just to
emphasize that preliminary proposal to participate are do April 23 2024 but it can take more than
that for the registration so please start early and whoever uh
applies for the preliminary
proposal should be available to attend the in person uh Workshop that should that takes
place uh on June 10 to 14 2024 in the DC area
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