Wellcome Trust: Bioimaging Technology Development Awards

Teams of technology developers will be funded to create novel bioimaging tools at the cell-tissue scale, with the aim of answering ambitious research questions or overcoming barriers to bioimaging work in low-resource settings.

Founded in 1936, the Wellcome Trust is an independent foundation that seeks to improve health by supporting researchers, addressing big health challenges, campaigning for better science and encouraging everyone to get involved with science and health research.

The Trust’s Bioimaging Technology Development Awards call will fund the creation of novel and ambitious bioimaging tools at the cell-tissue scale carried out by proficient and diverse teams of technology developers and users. Successful teams will develop technologies that answer ambitious research questions or overcome barriers to bioimaging work in low-resource settings. The awards will be run and assessed in two phases: a foundation phase and a scale-up phase.

Awarded teams will develop tools and technologies to overcome barriers to progress in bioimaging. Specifically, they will advance technologies to investigate biological phenomena at the cell-tissue scale. Potential areas and questions of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Cell atlasing – How can novel bioimaging technologies and their combination with other omics help identify all cell types at the molecular level?
• Connectomics – How can novel bioimaging technologies pave the way to a full map of the neuronal connections in the mammalian brain?
• Dynamic biology – How can novel technologies improve temporal resolution in bioimaging to advance understanding of how organisms function, adapt and respond to their surroundings?
• Systems – How can novel bioimaging technologies allow the characterisation of dynamics and structure of complete biological systems?
• Imaging data handling – Novel data management strategies are needed to simplify image acquisition, analysis and data sharing. New tools are needed to support the integration of bioimaging data with other types of biological information.
• Overcoming barriers to bioimaging in low-resource settings – How can novel or existing technologies be adapted to advance discovery research in low-resource settings?

A key criterion for selection will be for teams to include technology developers and researchers using bioimaging technologies to answer important discovery research questions. The teams and their technological innovations must be guided by a research question that aims to improve understanding of human life, health or wellbeing.

The teams must aim to make a major contribution to the field of bioimaging by developing novel tools that will either advance the current state-of-the-art standards in bioimaging, or significantly lower barriers to bioimaging in low-resource settings.