In December 2021, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) co-founders and co-CEOs Dr. Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg announced a 10-year effort to develop the science and technologies to observe, measure, and analyze human biology in action. Over the next decade, CZI Science will focus on developing new research, institutes, and technologies that measure human biology in new ways to help deepen our understanding of human health and disease.
As part of this effort, and modeled on the success of the San Francisco-based CZ Biohub, we are forming a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Network, in which new Biohubs will be created to bring together leading scientific and technology institutions with the goal of pursuing grand scientific challenges on 10- to 15-year time horizons. The next CZ Biohub in this Network will be chosen through a competitive application process. It will be a sister organization to the existing San Francisco CZ Biohub, bringing together leading scientific and technology institutions that are within close geographical proximity to one another, with the goal of pursuing a grand scientific challenge.
We are now seeking Letters of Intent (LOIs) to create the next CZ Biohub, which will be based in the United States.
We expect that the next CZ Biohub will receive a 10-year funding commitment in the range of $200–250 million, with an anticipated launch in 2023. Based on the progress and achievements of this new CZ Biohub over that 10-year period, there is the potential for an additional 5-year commitment of funds, yielding 15 years of total funding. The final funding commitment for the selected new CZ Biohub will be determined based on the scope of the successful proposal and in consultation with the CZ Biohub Network leadership team.
As with the CZ Biohub in San Francisco, we further expect that the next CZ Biohub will be structured as a nonprofit medical research organization and will enter into a collaboration agreement with its university partners. This will enable this new CZ Biohub to support research at its partner universities as well as provide faculty at those partner universities with access to its central research facility.
This new CZ Biohub will focus on developing new technologies to measure and observe human biology in ways that help deepen our understanding of human health and disease. The ideal scientific themes will be interdisciplinary in nature, have large engineering challenges to conquer, and be wildly ambitious. The focus area of this new CZ Biohub should further diversify CZI’s existing research portfolio, which consists of infectious disease and quantitative cell science (San Francisco CZ Biohub); neuroscience and artificial intelligence (Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University); and the Chan Zuckerberg Institute for Advanced Biomedical Imaging.
A central goal of the CZ Biohub Network initiative is to promote collaboration across disciplines and among institutions. Therefore, LOIs must be submitted jointly from at least three universities and/or other research institutions within the same city or geographic area.
An institutional approach is being developed; interested Duke faculty members – individuals or groups – may submit an expression of interest following the ‘Internal Nomination’ instructions below.
Deadlines:
Anyone wishing to express interest should submit the following materials as one PDF.
• Summary of the vision (1-page max.)
• List the team leader, other collaborators, potential partners at other institutions (1-page max)
Duke leaders will review the submitted ideas and may consider potential opportunities to merge two or more concepts into an overall theme.
Please submit internal materials through My Research Proposal. (Code ILN): https://www.grantinterface.com/sl/uq0KXm
Instructions for creating an account (if needed) and submitting your materials: https://www.ctsi.duke.edu/myresearchproposal
