Collision Incubator

August 4, 2021 - 1-2pm


SPARC Collision Incubator

Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention Phase I: Development Grants (PIPP Phase I)

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) new Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention (PIPP) initiative has released a Phase I: Development Grants RFP. The PIPP initiative focuses on fundamental research and capabilities needed to tackle grand challenges in infectious disease pandemics through prediction and prevention. NSF anticipates releasing a Phase II Center Grants solicitation around 2023. Submission or award of a Development Grant is not required to participate in the anticipated PIPP Phase II Center Grants competition.


The PIPP Phase I initiative intends to support planning activities encompassing

  • Articulation of a grand challenge centered around a critical and broad question in pandemic predictive intelligence

  • Proposals of novel conceptual research and technology developments that aim to advance state-of-the-art forecasting, real-time monitoring, mitigation, and prevention of the spread of pathogens

  • Multidisciplinary team formation


Successful Phase I proposals must identify an innovative interdisciplinary grand challenge that engages integrated computational, biological, engineering, and social/behavioral approaches to formulate and solve critical problems relating to predictive intelligence for pandemic prevention. PIs of Phase I Development Grants are strongly encouraged to develop research and technical approaches that start to address critical aspects of the identified grand challenge.


NSF’s PIPP activities place great emphasis on high-risk/high-payoff convergent research that has the potential for large societal impact. To that end, prospective principal investigators (PIs) must develop teams and proposals that work across scientific, disciplinary, geographic, and organizational divides, push conceptual boundaries, and build new theoretical framings of the understanding of pandemic predictive intelligence.


Potential multidisciplinary research areas include, but are not limited to,

  • pre-emergence studies that predict rare events in multiscale, complex, dynamical systems

  • technology innovation in sensing and data collection for predictive intelligence

  • exploring the interdependence of biological and behavioral mechanisms across scales from the molecular to the global

  • the relationship between human behavior and disease development and transmission


The overall goal of the PIPP initiative is to transform society’s ability to forecast the likelihood of pandemic-scale events, detect outbreaks early, and respond quickly, thereby limiting transmission before an epidemic, let alone a pandemic, can occur.


In this collision we will be discussing these upcoming funding opportunities with an aim to identify potential areas and teams where UMN could prepare to submit proposals.


RFP Link: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2021/nsf21590/nsf21590.htm

RFP Deadline: October 1, 2021

Event Details

Wedneday, August 4

1-2pm CDT

Event Recording and Slides

SPARC Collision - PIPP Phase I: Development Grants - August 2021


Future SPARC Events

The Strategic Partnerships and Research Collaborative plans to host several Collision events like this over the next several months.

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Contact SPARC at sparc@umn.edu if you have any questions.