NSF APPEX serves as a hub for multidisciplinary research to address the complexities of pandemic risk and response. We focus on the “what”, “how”, and “why” of expansion of disease outbreaks from local, isolated cases of infection into truly global threats. 

Our mission includes gathering and supporting new multidisciplinary science Working Groups that are innovating solutions in pandemic science over a natural lifetime of the project (from birth of a new group to sunsetting a group that has achieved everything it can). 

We are excited to announce our first semi-annual competition for new Seed Ideas for Working Groups - hearing from you what new and exciting thing APPEX should be working on next and recruiting new participants to form Working Groups around these seed ideas. This can be something you want to do yourself with our help or an idea you’ve always thought “someone should do”, even if you don’t want that someone to be you.

If you have an exciting idea for how to study pandemic expansion, we want to work with you!

In this call, you will find details on:

• Who can propose a Seed Idea?
• What is the proposal process?
• Where can I propose my Seed Idea to get started?
• What resources does APPEX provide to Selected Working Groups?
• What are the responsibilities of Selected Working Group Members?
• What is the timeline for the Seed Idea proposal process?
• Where can I see what types of project teams APPEX is already supporting?

We are excited to issue this first call and can’t wait to see what you propose!

Who can propose a Seed Idea?

Anyone interested in serious Pandemic Science can propose a Seed Idea. Proposers could be students, professors, members of the general public, employees at government agencies or labs, policy makers, researchers at other Pandemic Science-focused Centers (such as Phase 2 Prediction in Pandemic Preparedness (PIPP) Centers and CDC Outbreak Analytics and Disease Modeling Network (OADMN) centers), and can be based within the US or anywhere in the world.

What is the Process for Proposing a Seed Idea?

APPEX uses the Give and Take Matrix to process Seed Ideas through a multidisciplinary framework. “Give” refers to an idea or a skill set one can give to a particular pandemic related problem; “Take” refers to what one needs (a discipline or resource) to address a particular pandemic related problem. Mismatches in the matrix of givers and takers suggests a gap in collective understanding and therefore indicates fertile opportunities for collaborative discovery. (To learn more about a generic Give and Take Matrix, you can CLICK HERE, but note that our process is about ideas rather than team roles)

Give and Take in Practice for APPEX Seed Idea Proposals: The person proposing the Seed Idea is the one who “Takes” by writing down a list of disciplines or discipline-based contributions they think are needed to tackle the question. (Proposers can have a person already in mind to contribute this to the team, or can just explain what disciplinary contributions they need, and why they think they need them, and APPEX can help find people interested in filling those roles.) Folks who “Give” are then all the other people who read the initially proposed idea and think “Ooh, you know what else would help address this question? If you also had someone to do this thing”. That can be someone who does that thing, or just someone who recognizes how including that perspective, expertise, skillset, or dataset could really help make the work better.

How it works and how to participate:

Step #1 - To Give an idea please follow this link where you will be invited to:

1. Describe your idea
2. Describe the “Take” by naming disciplinary and or stakeholder expertise that you think would be needed to create solutions for the pandemic related problem you have given. If you have someone in mind who could fill that role, so much the better! You can check in with the person or nominate them and we will reach out to them - self-nominations are fantastic! (You should also feel free to browse among the listed APPEX membership but nominations don’t have to be affiliated in any way.)
3. Offer any other resources or information for others to consider, such as articles, websites, videos, web posts, podcasts in considering your idea.
4. Identify deliverables for the idea which can be products such as academic publications, generation of novel hypotheses or tools, policy/white papers shared to the public, patents, grants secured, requests for input from stakeholders, etc
5. Check back regularly to see what others suggest about your idea during the peer contribution process.

Step #2 - 

1. The “peer contribution” process involves engagement in the Give and Take Matrix process by viewing and considering the seed ideas and “giving”  what they can to stated ‘Takes” identified for the idea, including ideas for deliverables
   1. Anyone at all can contribute to this conversation, whether or not they want to be involved in the proposed Working Group itself
   2. Proposers are encouraged to have back-and-forth conversations with individuals as part of this phase

Step #3 -

1. The proposer of the Seed Idea refines the idea based on the peer contribution and articulates a vision for the Working Group in a short form (of the same format as the initial proposal, but now also including a proposed list of disciplines and members).

Step #4 - 

1. The APPEX selection committee reviews the seed ideas and associated matrices and establishes working groups based on the following criteria:
   1. Novelty and challenge
   2. Sufficient interest/commitment from individuals across a diversity of disciplines
   3. Sufficient number of participants who are both Giving and Taking
   4. Potential for both basic scientific advancement and real-world impact and translation

Step #5 -

1. The Working Group convenes (virtually) and rhapsodises about the seed idea. The final decision about the work of the group may or may not be tightly tied to the original seed idea after serious conversation together.
2. After 3 months the working group will be invited to engage in a self-assessment to determine if any adjustments in the working group could be made for team satisfaction and target success.
   1. These adjustments can include consultation with a Consilience Facilitator or Project Manager, discussion with a Research Programmer, and any other expertise in APPEX membership and networks that may be helpful for team success.
3. Also after 3 months, the group will be invited to have a consultation with the Policy and Translation team to discuss any potential trajectories towards impact/policy

(Ongoing Evaluation and Group Life Cycle) -

1. At 6 months (and every 6 months thereafter) the team reflects both through quantitative anonymous voting as well as discussions with members of the EC if the working group should continue for another 6 months.

Resources for Selected Working Groups

Here are some of the resources we provide to our working groups. In addition, each group will be different and we look forward to group requests for individualized support to enable progress and success. To this end, we have some (very modest) funds set aside to address such requests. We will work with each team to try to provide what they need!

Policy and translation training, guidance, and support

• Support to identify policy-relevant research directions 
• Training  and guidance to prepare researchers for effective policy engagement
• Support to collaborating team to create and implement policy engagement strategies when project maturity allows 

Post-Doctoral Support (forthcoming as we hire people into these positions)

• Contribute to experimental design and data analysis
• Lead specific research sub-projects
• Assist in grant proposal writing and publication preparation
• Mentor graduate students and undergraduate researchers

Technical Support

• Digital collaboration platform ClickUp support 
• Zoom AI transcription and use for team meeting notes
• Computational support for execution of any simulations/models produced by the working group

Team Consilience Support

• Team Charter Template
• Team Dictionary Template
• Consilience facilitation tool library
• Consilience facilitation and coaching at kick off and as needed

Other support

• Travel
• Materials

Responsibilities of Selected Working Group Members

All selected Working Groups will receive funds to meet (at least) once per year in-person at APPEX in Knoxville, TN and team members are expected to try their best to attend this annual meeting.

The Working Group team leader agrees to

• Convene monthly team meetings (APPEX provides administrative scheduling support for this)
• Lead the team through the development of a Team Charter (template provided) to facilitate communication and function
• Oversee the process of Identifying and setting team tasks 
• Monitor asynchronous task progress
• Submit a monthly form to track team progress

The Working Group team members agree to

• Attend and participate in monthly team meetings
• Use the workflow platform ClickUp (provided by APPEX) as a central repository for all team work products and resources
• Participate actively, both individually and collaboratively, in setting and meeting team goals
• Communicate actively within the group and as a member of the broader APPEX community

Every 6 months the team will be invited to consider its progress and satisfaction, potential role changes and needs, and identify barriers and opportunities that impact the team's success. APPEX leadership will work with the team to support appropriate steps made evident in the 6th month check in. (There will also be an optional 3 month self-assessment as well.)

Timeline for the Process: 

• 1st Call for Seed Ideas - Jan 2025 (Peer Contribution starts immediately)
• Final submission deadline for Working Group Proposal based on Seed Ideas (Step #3 above) - Feb 24th, 2025
• Notification of Selection for 1st Working Groups - March 7th, 2025
• Working Groups begin to meet virtually and set a time for their first in-person meeting at APPEX within 3 weeks of notification of selection

Are there Existing Working Groups I can Look to for Inspiration?

This is our first call for new Working Groups, so we don’t have examples for you just yet BUT we do have two related things that might help. 

• Our Phase 1 PIPP Institute: PREEMPT piloted our Give Take Protocol to form its teams. You can look at each of those teams on the PREEMPT website and take a look at the 5 projects described under our Research section. Not only are we proud of those projects, if you look at the initial descriptions of what we planned to do and then compare that to each of the products listed on those team pages, you’ll get a sense of how the working group dynamic went from “seed idea to bring us together” to “oh,  but now that we’re all in the room with a common goal, it changed how we are thinking and we should do this related other thing first!”. That’s what we’re expecting to happen with our APPEX Working Groups too.

The NSF APPEX Center, in addition to forming new Working Groups around proposed Seed Ideas, has about 20 Core Research Project Teams that have formed with specific goals around some of our existing focal research themes that came out of the experiences we had during our Phase 1 Institute. APPEX is just getting started and so are these Core Project Teams, but you can check out some brief initial descriptions of what we’re doing in these teams here!