With this Dear Colleague Letter the Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO) announces plans for modifying one of the competitive areas in the Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology (PRFB) Program solicitation. This would be a replacement for Competitive Area 2: Integrative Research Investigating the Rules of Life Governing Interactions Between Genomes, Environment and Phenotypes.

The National Labs Entrepreneurship Academy is an intensive four-day commercialization program that gives researchers the tools to transfer their research and technologies out of the lab. Attendees hear lectures from experts in the technology development space and participate in hands-on exercises to craft and pitch their own commercialization ideas.

NSF invites proposals that address understanding how multiple modifications of single or multiple, functionally-related RNAs and/or proteins influence the properties, interactions, and/or regulation of these macromolecules, and ultimately their role in cellular and organismal phenotype.

This Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) describes this unique partnership with NIBIB/BETA and is aligned with and conforms with the NSF INTERN opportunity described in the Dear Colleague Letter: Non-Academic Research Internships for Graduate Students (INTERN) Supplemental Funding Opportunity. This DCL is referred to as the NSF - NIBIB/BETA INTERN DCL.

The intent of the program is discovery of principles of infectious disease (re)emergence and transmission and testing mathematical or computational models that elucidate infectious disease systems.