If you’re interested in developing scientifically sound and sustainable software tools, NIH has a new funding opportunity that could help support your work.

NCI (along with other NIH offices, institutes, and centers) has issued a notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) designed to support NIH’s mission to establish a modern ecosystem, fully integrated with biomedical, clinical, behavioral, social, and health-related data.

As examples, you could propose projects that might:

• add application programming interfaces and services to software.
• refactor existing software to incorporate standard interfaces and data formats, replacing custom code with standard, hardened libraries.
• refactor software so it’s portable and scalable in cloud or hybrid environments.
• produce efficient code, such as by reducing coupling and complex shared state, so code can operate via diverse data sources and with other services.
• adopt standard input/output data formats to facilitate workflow and maximize the use of open data formats.
• implement standard logging models to take advantage of parallel processing or graphics processing units.
• enhance source code, documentation, version management, and tools to support open-source development.
• develop standard build-and-packaging tools to help applications function properly, with easy updating and maintenance.
• format packages for easier sharing using common package-management tools.
• enhance standard unit-and-functional testing support and sample data sets for testing patches and upgrades.

Keep in mind, this NOFO will support you in designing robust, re-usable scientific software and tools. However, data generation and analysis tools are outside the scope of this funding opportunity.