Request for Proposals

The Center for Nutrition, Learning, and Memory (CNLM), established in a partnership between Abbott and the University of Illinois, requests proposals in a Grand Challenge research competition for interdisciplinary, team-based scientific research on the impact of nutrition on learning and memory in the human brain.

Overview of Funding through the Grand Challenge

The Grand Challenge will be an annual competition, for each of the next 5 years, seeking to fund research on nutrition and cognition involving one or more of the following approaches:

• Translational/clinical research: demonstrations of nutritional enhancement of learning and memory
• Basic research: illuminating the mechanisms underlying nutritional enhancement (including animal, human and computational models)
• Assessment platforms and testing pipelines: developing sensitive and reliable tests of enhancement of learning and memory, at any level (behavioral, brain systems, molecular, etc.)

Primary Investigators (PI’s) for all research must be UIUC faculty, but research teams may include researchers from other University of Illinois campuses or faculty from other research institutions that expand the scope and skill sets of teams. For those who wish to be involved in the Grand Challenge competition, but are not members of the Urbana campus of the University of Illinois, the CNLM’s Directors and Executive Committee can help facilitate partnerships with UIUC researchers.

There are two categories of grants, both of which may have proposed grant terms of one to three years, and both of which are to involve interdisciplinary teams conducting the proposed work:

• Up to $200K (direct and indirect costs) per year, intended for more modest and/or preliminary projects
• Up to $1M (direct and indirect costs) per year for more ambitious and integrative projects

Submissions will be evaluated and approved by the CNLM’s Directors and Executive Committee. The total number and distribution of awards will be driven by the amount and quality of the grant proposals received each year.

Program Vision and Priority Areas

The mission of the Center, and of the Grand Challenge, is to conduct pioneering research on the impact of nutrition on human brain and cognition. Our vision is to identify and capitalize on the potential beneficial effects of nutritional compounds for enhancing, maintaining, and/or restoring fundamental aspects of learning, memory, and cognition. In doing so, we will create a world-class community of scholars at the University of Illinois dedicated to advancing the boundaries of science at the intersection of neuroscience and nutritional science. This vision includes both basic science and its translation to addressing human needs by creating the building blocks leading to new nutritional products or ingredients with real-world benefits.

Funded research will employ an interdisciplinary, team-based science approach, and will develop and/or utilize new tools, methods, and assessment platforms.

Tools and assessment platforms can include, but are not limited to:

• Human cognition: measurement of fundamental cognitive processes
• Human brain function: advanced imaging of structure, function and connectivity of critical brain systems and networks
• Animal models: measuring learning- and memory-related performance, and associated brain activity and plasticity, in selected animal models
• Genomics and systems biology: identifying biomarkers of enhancement of learning and memory and their mapping to genomic profiles
• Computing and bioinformatics: data integration, interrogation, mining and modeling of intervention effects across biological levels and types of outcome measures

We strongly encourage the use of opportunistic research strategies, for example by:

• Targeting special populations, such as during specific life stages or in response to specific health challenges, life events, or life choices
• Synergistically combining nutritional intervention with other interventions

Submission & Review Process

The proposal submission and review process will occur in two stages, involving pre-proposals and full proposals.

Pre-proposals: