Call 5. Data-driven life science (DDLS) on COVID-19
Call closed, deadline January 15, 2021
SciLifeLab has served as a national hub to coordinate availability and distribution of data from the Swedish research community on COVID-19. In addition, SciLifeLab will be coordinating a 12 year-long KAW-funded recruitment, education, training and research program on data-driven life science (DDLS) research, where one area concerns infection biology and epidemiology.
We have asked for suggestions (letter of intent) for data-driven approaches to promote content creation for the national COVID-19 data portal as well as for data-driven efforts to intervene in the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal is therefore both to support the creation of databases and data driven capabilities to understand the pandemic.
Eventually, the selected letters of intents might end up as funded projects, supported within Data Centre´s mission to manage the Covid-19 data portal.

What could be applied for?
The type of projects that will be considered include for example:
- Development of critical databases and data support for COVID-19, including deployment of existing resources and services and their user support, to create high-quality services with a strong user community.
- Capabilities to integrate and mine existing large-scale COVID-19 datasets to derive insights on etiology, epidemiology, pathogenesis, or progression of the disease, or the creation of new databases with added value through curation and data mining.
- Development of data-driven approaches for making data better available in real-time, for example to understand the dynamics of disease progression or predict the spread of infection in society at the local, national or international level.
These efforts should happen such that they can be deployed and made available nationally, in collaboration with the SciLifeLab Data Centre, and with commitment to support users for at least two years. We expect data, resources and code to be made available openly and accordance with the FAIR principles through the national COVID-19 data portal. In particular, we are interested in data resources or services that are in production or in an advanced development stage, that can through additional support be strengthened to reach a wider user community.
The proposed letter of intent should describe the setup of a capability during 2021-2022.
Who could apply?
All PIs or teams of PIs at Swedish universities or other stakeholders.
The proposers were asked to consult the SciLifeLab Data Centre to seek for information on how to make the solution compatible with the National COVID-19 portal and with the SciLifeLab/DDLS infrastructure and environment.
How much could be applied for?
Tentative budget of 0.5-1 MSEK per proposal for the period of 2021-2022. Additional benefits, capabilities, IT support and visibility will be provided from the incorporation of the proposed solution within the national COVID-19 portal and/or as part of DDLS data services.
This is a letter of intent only and following steps will be discussed with the team operating the COVID-19 portal, and with the SciLifeLab Data Centre. Decisions on using DDLS funding for this effort depend on the steering group of the DDLS program, followed by funding decisions by the SciLifeLab Board.
Financial information
Financial details will be provided later.
Evaluation process and timeline
Application deadline: January 15, 2021
Pre-screening of letters of intent by the SciLifeLab Management Group and Data Centre.
The use of DDLS resources will be discussed and decided with the DDLS steering group.
Beyond this, external peer review will be relied upon.
Communication with applicants during and after the letter of intent application period.
Please note that selected proposals may be asked to provide a detailed plan and/or to participate in further discussions. Related research programs may be combined.
We may ask the applicants (on a case by-case basis) to join or harmonize their proposals.
Funding decision by SciLifeLab Board: Spring 2021