Research opportunities that advance pandemic preparedness and inform evidence-based countermeasure development.
Submissions are welcome from all responsible sources, inside and outside the United States, capable of performing the work outlined in this Request for Proposals.
To avoid conflicts of interest, any individual who contributed substantive written or editorial input to drafts of this Request for Proposals within 30 days prior to its public release is ineligible to serve as a principal investigator on a proposal.
As a 501(c)(3) organization, we are subject to federal tax law requirements that restrict the circumstances under which grants may be awarded to entities that are not tax-exempt.
Proposals from entities that are not tax-exempt will be evaluated with particular attention to whether intellectual property generated under the award will be made broadly available for the advancement of science and public health, and whether the proposed work produces publicly accessible outputs, such as open-source tools, open datasets, or peer-reviewed publications.
Any private benefit to the awardee must be incidental and insubstantial; proposals focused primarily on the development of proprietary products or services are unlikely to be funded.
For-profit awardees may be subject to additional terms regarding the ownership, licensing, and dissemination of intellectual property developed under the award. We reserve the right to decline awards where such awards would be inconsistent with our charitable purpose or applicable legal requirements.
We will be unable to provide awards to any individuals or entities subject to United States sanctions.
We maintain the following policy that limits indirect costs (“overhead”) for any grant we make or recommend:
Direct costs are defined as expenses that support and advance the project’s specific goals; indirect costs are defined as general administrative and operational expenses that are not specifically identified with the funded project.
Applicants may elect to contract subcomponents of their proposed work to other groups.
We reserve the right to:
We may stop considering a proposal for award if any of the following occurs: all parties involved fail to reach agreement on terms (award, technical, milestones, etc.) within a reasonable time; the applicant fails to provide requested additional information; or the application is deemed noncompliant with the requirements of the RFP at any time.
Awardees are responsible for ensuring that research is conducted in compliance with rules set forth by relevant institutional, local, and national research regulatory bodies such as Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) or Institutional Ethics Committees (IECs). Awardees shall be solely responsible for ensuring that any goods, services, or deliverables provided under this award do not infringe upon any existing patents, trademarks, or other intellectual property rights.
We retain sole discretion to select awards and to negotiate all terms and conditions with selectees.
We will negotiate project deliverables with individual awardees. Selected awardees may be asked to provide technical reports, virtual meetings to describe and discuss the technical progress, and a final report of funding-related activities.
Proposed project timelines should be no longer than 24 months from the award date and ideally 12 months or less.
Public dissemination of research is central to Blueprint's charitable mission. Awardees are expected to make outputs, including tools, datasets, methods, and findings, publicly available in a timely manner through peer-reviewed publication, conferences, preprint servers, open-source repositories, or other appropriate channels. We encourage awardees to publish and disseminate their findings in accordance with responsible information sharing practices in biosecurity, including awareness of information hazard and vulnerability disclosure risks.
If your proposal includes any proprietary components, please clearly identify what they are, why they need protection, and whether there is a way for us to share the information with others where we feel it may advance the scientific field.
Submissions are encouraged, but not required, to use the Expression of Interest template available in each RFP. Refer to the specific RFP for the template.
We treat all submissions as protected information and will only share them with authorized individuals involved in evaluation. This may include internal staff, external contractors, subject matter experts, and other collaborators (collectively, “Review Team Members”) who assist with administrative or technical review. For confidentiality and conflict of interest obligations applicable to Review Team Members, see the Proposal Evaluation Process and Conflicts of Interest section below.
Blueprint Biosecurity will retain an electronic copy of each proposal; all other copies will be destroyed. Submissions will not be returned.
Expressions of Interest should not include proprietary or confidential information unless essential for evaluation. If proprietary or confidential information must be included, it must be clearly marked as “Proprietary” or “Confidential,” as appropriate, and you must have the authority to disclose it.
Please note that Review Team Members may already possess information, methodologies, or data related to the subject matter of your submission through prior research, grantee interactions, or public sources. When marking information as "Proprietary," please ensure that you have accurately identified what is genuinely confidential and novel. If we determine that marked information is substantially similar to information we have independently obtained or already possess from other sources, we reserve the right to use that information according to the applicable rights from those sources, and such information will not be treated as confidential.
It is our policy to ensure fair and consistent evaluation of all submissions. The Review Team will consist of staff and a small number of external subject matter experts. All external reviewers are bound by nondisclosure agreements and subject to our conflict of interest process, including recusal from review of any proposals in which a conflict is identified.
All Review Team Members are bound by confidentiality obligations at least as strict as those contained in our standard Nondisclosure Agreement, and we remain responsible for their compliance with these obligations.
External reviewers who conduct technical review of submissions are prohibited from receiving funding to conduct Blueprint-sponsored research for a period of 12 months following the conclusion of the review process.
External reviewers do not make funding decisions; final award determinations are made solely by our staff. External reviewers will be acknowledged by name with the announcement of selected awardees.
Our Chief Operating Officer, who will not be part of the review team, will manage the conflict of interest process and adjudicate conflicts. Evaluation will consider potential dual-use applications of proposed work as well as vulnerability disclosure risks.
For more information about our conflict of interest process, please refer to the contact information provided in the applicable funding opportunity.
Applicants are required to disclose all potential, real, or perceived organizational conflicts of interest, which may include but are not limited to:
Browse Blueprint Biosecurity’s broader research portfolio focused on the development and deployment of countermeasures for pandemic preparedness and response.