The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has scheduled two meetings in early May to facilitate strategic planning for its Common Fund, seeking to gather input from the research community that will help inform potential new program ideas. Among the broad themes around which the NIH wishes to center discussion at these “forward focus workshops”: computational and informatics challenges.

The Common Fund supports (after the jump):

“goal-driven, research networks in which investigators work in a coordinated and synergistic way to generate data, solve technological problems, and/or otherwise create resources and tools that will be stimulatory to the broader research community.”

For instance, the NIH Director’s New Innovator Awards, which in previous years have gone to computer scientists working in areas of instrumentation and engineering as well as quantitative and computational biology, are supported through the NIH Common Fund.

The first focus workshop will take place in Chicago on May 1st; the second will be held in San Francisco on May 3rd. Prospective participants must submit short applications (focus, second) — specifying name, contact information, and a short explanation of interest — by April 13.

(Contributed by Erwin Gianchandani, CCC Director)