RFA-NS-27-015: BRAIN Initiative Connectivity Across Scales (BRAIN CONNECTS): Specialized Projects for Scalable Technologies (U01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
NIH’s BRAIN Initiative NOFO supports U01 cooperative agreement projects that build scalable technologies for brain-wide connectivity mapping, with an estimated $10M commitment in the first year and approximately 3–6 awards expected.
RFA-NS-27-015: BRAIN Initiative Connectivity Across Scales (BRAIN CONNECTS): Specialized Projects for Scalable Technologies (U01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) BRAIN Initiative is accepting new applications for specialized projects that develop technologies for mapping brain connectivity at a scale useful to the wider neuroscience community. RFA-NS-27-015 supports U01 cooperative agreements rather than ordinary independent research grants. The work may address any part of the production and analysis pipeline: data collection, reconstruction, analysis, integration, dissemination, or interpretation of brain connectivity and related data.
The announcement is part of the BRAIN Initiative Connectivity Across Scales, or BRAIN CONNECTS, program. The program is intended to build the technical capacity needed to generate wiring diagrams that span entire brains and multiple scales. The focus is on human, non-human primate, and mouse brains. Other species may be used when the choice is well justified and the work tests or validates an approach that can generalize across species.
The first receipt date, July 9, 2026, has passed. The next announced application due date is February 8, 2027, at 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization. A further receipt date is October 4, 2027, and the NOFO expires October 5, 2027. This page therefore remains a live listing for the February 2027 window, not an archive entry for the July 2026 round.
Key details at a glance
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Funding opportunity number | RFA-NS-27-015 |
| Funding mechanism | U01 Research Project – Cooperative Agreement |
| Clinical trial status | Not allowed; non-clinical-trial human-subject activities may be proposed |
| Application type | New only |
| Program | BRAIN Initiative Connectivity Across Scales (BRAIN CONNECTS) |
| Posted date | May 28, 2026 |
| Open date | June 9, 2026 |
| Next application due date | February 8, 2027, by 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization |
| Additional application due date | October 4, 2027 |
| Estimated first-year commitment | $10 million |
| Expected awards | Approximately 3–6 |
| Maximum project period | 3 years |
| Expiration | October 5, 2027 |
| Primary NIH institute | National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) |
What the NOFO is designed to fund
This is a technology-development opportunity for projects that can become components of a scalable brain-connectivity pipeline. The official announcement does not restrict applicants to one specific instrument or computational method. Instead, it asks whether the proposed development can make brain-wide wiring diagrams faster, more precise, and more cost-effective to generate and interpret.
Possible areas include tissue processing and sample handling, data acquisition, reconstruction, image alignment, segmentation, annotation, error correction, computational analysis, integration with the broader neuroscience data environment, dissemination, and interpretation. A proposal can concentrate on one bottleneck or connect several linked capabilities, but the technical work must remain tied to the goal of scalable connectivity mapping.
For mouse work, the announcement expects technologies to demonstrate feasibility for local and long-range cell-to-cell connectivity at the level of synaptic connections. For human and non-human primate work, the relevant target is region-to-region connectivity at the level of axonal projections. Projects using another species need a clear scientific reason and a validation plan showing how the result can generalize across species.
The expected result is not merely a prototype that works on a convenient small sample. The announcement asks applicants to develop or optimize approaches that could support brain-wide mapping in a subsequent five-year follow-on period, if not sooner. That makes scale, throughput, fidelity, reproducibility, and cost important parts of the technical case.
Who may apply
The eligible-organization list is broad. It includes public and state-controlled institutions of higher education, private institutions of higher education, nonprofits with or without 501(c)(3) status, small businesses, other for-profit organizations, and state, county, city, or township governments. The announcement also allows foreign organizations and non-domestic components of U.S. organizations to apply.
There is an important restriction for international teams: foreign components, as defined in the NIH Grants Policy Statement, are not allowed. A prospective applicant should therefore distinguish between an eligible foreign organization or non-domestic component and a prohibited foreign component before building the collaboration structure. The institutional grants office should confirm the intended arrangement against the current NIH policy definitions.
Only new applications are allowed for this NOFO. The official announcement does not list renewal, resubmission, or revision applications as permitted types. That is a material correction to older or copied descriptions of this BRAIN CONNECTS opportunity that may refer to the broader NIH application vocabulary.
Clinical trials are not allowed. The announcement does note that an application may include activities involving human subjects when those activities are not deemed clinical trials. Applicants should classify any human-subject work carefully and use the NIH definitions and application instructions rather than treating every human-subject study as automatically eligible or automatically excluded.
Funding and award structure
NIH intends to commit an estimated $10 million in the first year for this funding announcement and expects to make approximately 3–6 awards. The announcement does not impose a fixed award ceiling. Application budgets are not limited to a stated cap, but they must reflect the actual needs of the proposed project.
The maximum project period is 3 years. A credible budget should therefore show how personnel, equipment, data generation, compute, storage, validation, collaboration, and dissemination support measurable progress within that period. The first-year program figure is a total commitment estimate, not a promise that each award will receive a particular share. Applicants should not turn it into a presumed per-award amount.
The U01 mechanism is a cooperative agreement. NIH expects substantial scientific or programmatic involvement after award, so applicants should plan for coordination with NIH staff and with other BRAIN CONNECTS projects. This is not a hands-off award in which a team operates without interaction after the notice of award.
What a strong project should explain
A responsive application should start with a specific connectivity bottleneck. It should identify what currently prevents a method from working at the required volume, resolution, speed, reliability, or cost, then define the technical change the project will make. The proposal should state how performance will be measured and what evidence will show that the approach is ready to scale.
The application should also distinguish a research risk from an engineering gap. BRAIN CONNECTS can support new and potentially risky approaches, but risk is easier to evaluate when the team defines staged milestones, fallback methods, validation datasets, and decision points. A proposal that names a large ambition without explaining how the first working version will be tested is difficult to assess.
Interoperability matters because awards under this announcement will join the BRAIN CONNECTS Network. Applicants should explain data formats, metadata, quality controls, annotation conventions, interfaces, and documentation in terms that another project could use. The dissemination plan should cover code or tools where appropriate, benchmark data or validation results, limitations, and the conditions under which another laboratory can reproduce the reported result.
The proposal should address the relevant biology as well as the technology. For mouse projects, that means making the synaptic-connection target concrete. For human or non-human primate projects, it means explaining how the method establishes region-to-region connectivity at the axonal-projection level. If another species is included, the application should state why it is needed and how the validation supports a method that can generalize.
Application process
Applications must be submitted electronically. Paper applications are not a route for this NOFO. Before drafting the final package, an applicant should:
- Read the full RFA-NS-27-015 announcement and the NIH Research (R) Instructions in the How to Apply – Application Guide.
- Confirm that the organization and any proposed international participation match the eligibility rules, including the prohibition on foreign components.
- Confirm that the application is being prepared as a new U01 application and that the proposed work does not include a clinical trial.
- Set up the institutional submission path and required registrations early enough to resolve validation errors before the due date.
- Build the research strategy, budget, milestones, data-management approach, and dissemination plan around the three-year project period.
- Seek a responsiveness discussion with the scientific/research contacts when the fit is uncertain. The announcement strongly recommends prior consultation; staff can discuss programmatic fit but do not determine technical merit.
- Submit before February 8, 2027, allowing time to correct errors found during the electronic submission process.
The announcement identifies [email protected] for scientific and research inquiries. Applicants should use the contact information and instructions in the official announcement when confirming the appropriate NIH submission route and any current system requirements. The program contact cannot replace the applicant’s institutional grants office, which remains responsible for registrations, forms, signatures, and submission validation.
Review and network participation
NIH will evaluate applications through its peer-review system using the criteria in the NOFO. The technical case should make significance, innovation, rigor, feasibility, and scalability easy to locate. Reviewers need to understand what the method will produce, how its accuracy will be checked, how it compares with existing approaches, and how the work contributes to the BRAIN CONNECTS objective.
Awardees will be integrated into the BRAIN CONNECTS Network and expected to work cooperatively toward common goals. Network participation may involve shared data-processing practices, coordinated analysis, dissemination of tools, and efforts to connect data from different modalities. Applicants should account for that collaboration in governance, staffing, documentation, and project planning rather than treating it as an afterthought.
Timing and status
The NOFO was posted on May 28, 2026, and opened for earliest submission on June 9, 2026. The first application due date was July 9, 2026. The next announced receipt date is February 8, 2027, followed by October 4, 2027. The final date is close to the expiration date of October 5, 2027, so applicants considering the later window should check the full announcement and NIH submission systems for any updates before preparing a package.
The February 2027 date is not a guessed renewal date. It is one of the fixed new-application receipt dates printed in the current RFA. The page uses that date as its live deadline while retaining the July 2026 date in the body so readers can distinguish the completed first round from the next available window.
Common fit questions
Is this a fellowship or training award?
No. It is a U01 research project cooperative agreement for technology development.
Can a proposal include a clinical trial?
No. Clinical trials are not allowed. Human-subject activities that are not clinical trials may be possible if they satisfy the announcement and NIH instructions.
Can a foreign organization apply?
Yes, the eligible-organization section includes foreign organizations and non-domestic components of U.S. organizations. Foreign components, as defined in the NIH Grants Policy Statement, are not allowed, so the proposed organizational structure must be checked carefully.
Is a fixed award amount published?
No. NIH gives an estimated first-year commitment of $10 million for approximately 3–6 awards, says budgets are not limited, and requires each budget to reflect the actual needs of the project.
What should applicants do first?
Read the full announcement and the NIH Research (R) Instructions, check eligibility and responsiveness, contact the program team if fit is uncertain, and start institutional submission preparation well before the February 8, 2027 deadline.
Official source
The current full announcement is the Grants.gov-hosted copy of the NIH RFA-NS-27-015 notice linked above. NIH identifies the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) as the primary institute and lists the BRAIN CONNECTS inquiry mailbox in the announcement. Applicants should rely on the full notice and the NIH application instructions for final submission requirements.