Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases | 24 592

Opportunity Information: Apply for 24 592

The Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases (EEID) grant opportunity is a multi-agency research program led through the National Science Foundation that funds ambitious, interdisciplinary projects aimed at explaining and predicting how infectious diseases emerge, re-emerge, and spread. At its core, EEID is focused on building and testing a quantitative understanding of pathogen transmission dynamics. That means proposals are expected to center on mathematical, computational, or other rigorous quantitative models that can be confronted with data, used to uncover general principles, and improved through iterative testing. The program is looking for work that moves beyond descriptive case studies and instead produces insights that travel across systems, helping the research community better anticipate when, where, and why disease risk changes.

Projects supported by EEID can address a wide range of disease systems and host organisms. Research may focus on humans, non-human animals, plants, or multi-host systems, and it may span terrestrial, freshwater, and marine environments. The solicitation explicitly includes zoonotic diseases, environmentally borne pathogens, vector-borne diseases, enteric infections, and respiratory pathogens. The scale can range from a single pathogen in a defined setting to broader, integrated environmental or socio-ecological systems, as long as the unifying thread is a strong transmission-dynamics framework grounded in quantitative or computational analysis.

A defining feature of EEID is its emphasis on the drivers of transmission that come from multiple layers of biology and society. Competitive proposals often link ecological and evolutionary processes, such as how climate variability alters vector abundance, how land use change reshapes host communities, how reservoir population genetics affects spillover risk, or how pathogen evolution feeds back into epidemic trajectories. The program also explicitly invites attention to organismal traits and processes, including physiology and behavior of hosts, vectors, and pathogens, when those traits matter for contact rates, susceptibility, infectiousness, or pathogen persistence. Importantly, EEID also recognizes that disease transmission is shaped by people and institutions, encouraging work that incorporates cultural, social, behavioral, and economic dimensions when they are relevant to exposure patterns, intervention uptake, mobility, and risk management.

EEID is designed for broad, team-based efforts that integrate expertise across disciplines rather than staying within a single field. Investigators are encouraged to assemble multidisciplinary teams tailored to the disease system and modeling approach, which could include combinations of ecologists, epidemiologists, evolutionary biologists, mathematical and computational modelers, genomics and bioinformatics researchers, social scientists and economists, anthropologists, oceanographers, entomologists, immunologists, microbiologists, veterinarians, and other relevant specialists. The goal is integration: bringing different types of data, theory, and methods together to improve predictive capacity and to inform more effective disease control strategies.

The program places particular emphasis on real-world relevance in settings where the burden and consequences of infectious diseases are especially high. Proposals that study diseases of public health concern to Low- or Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) are strongly encouraged, as are projects targeting infectious disease problems in agricultural systems, including plant and animal health. This reflects a broader objective of strengthening the scientific basis for prevention and response in contexts where emerging infections, climate sensitivity, food security, and limited resources can intersect.

Eligibility is limited to specific applicant types. Proposals may be submitted by U.S.-based non-profit, non-academic organizations directly associated with education or research (such as independent museums, observatories, research labs, and professional societies), by other federal agencies and Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (with the expectation that applicants contact the appropriate program before submitting), by accredited U.S. Institutions of Higher Education (including two- and four-year institutions and community colleges) submitting on behalf of faculty, and by federally recognized Tribal Nations. If a proposal includes funding for an international branch campus of a U.S. institution (including through subawards or consultants), the proposal must clearly explain why work at that branch campus benefits the project and why those activities cannot be carried out at the U.S. campus.

From the funding record provided, the opportunity is a discretionary grant in the science and technology/research and development category (Funding Opportunity Number 24-592), with an award ceiling of $3,000,000. The original closing date listed is 2024-11-20, and the opportunity was created on 2024-07-30. The associated CFDA numbers include 10.310, 47.050, 47.074, 47.075, 93.859, and 93.989, reflecting the multi-agency nature of the program and its intersection with several federal research portfolios.

• The National Science Foundation in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 10.310, 47.050, 47.074, 47.075, 93.859, 93.989.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2024-07-30.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2024-11-20. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $3,000,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: Others.

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