Strategic Areas of Focus

Seven strategic areas of focus have been identified by the task force, which dovetail into three themes. These areas were chosen with the overarching aims of bridging disciplines, fostering creative discovery through collaborative interactions, and maintaining national research competitiveness in the natural sciences. All themes complement and represent major themes in the NIH "Roadmap", a major extramural initiative at NIH whose goal is to increase funding support for translational research applications of basic sciences.

Systems Biology

Chemical biology and bioorganic chemistry — Investigators expert in chemical synthesis, who design new types of molecules with biological activity or utility in biological systems, for example, chemical compounds that are useful as drugs or diagnostic technologies for diseases.

Theoretical biology and biological supercomputing — Researchers who carry out biophysical theory and mathematical modeling, computer science, de novo structural modeling, bioinformatics database and computational algorithm development.

Systems biology and genomewide profiling — Increasingly, bioscience research is becoming integrated with new technologies of large scale genomics and proteomics profiling of complex biological systems, driven by national and international genome sequencing efforts.

Cellular Imaging

Single cell imaging — Investigators using cutting edge methods in microscopy and fluorescence imaging are able to understand cell architecture at a new level, and to design novel genetic and chemical biosensors which readout spatial organization of protein activity and function within single cells.

Biophotonics — Investigators who develop new methods in laser optics and use them to probe biological systems in innovative ways. New imaging technologies are progressing quickly and will have a wide impact on diagnostics and therapeutics by enabling biophysical measurements to be performed inside of living cells, and/or new techniques that enable dynamics of proteins to be probed on the microsecond to millisecond time scale.

Biomedical Engineering

Tissue engineering — New technologies for cell and tissue engineering and delivery to patients will promote the utility and potential of stem cells in regenerative medicine.

Bioanalytical sciences and instrumentation — Investigators who fabricate new devices with the goals of enabling high sensitivity measurements of biomolecule abundance or behavior. This impacts microfluidics, nanotechnology, and medical diagnostics, exemplified by lab on a chip instrumentation and recording devices.