# ACCELERATE-BASSO: Coordinating Center for Accelerating Behavioral and Social Science through Ontology

> **NIH NIH U24** · UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA · 2024 · $797,648

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
An individual’s phenotypes related to their health conditions are associated with the complex interplay between
the individual’s biological, behavioral, social, and environmental processes, including phenomena that occur both
within (e.g., genetics, emotion, cognition) and external (e.g., social, built, and natural environments) to the
organism. Behavioral and social sciences research (BSSR) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—the
systematic study of behavioral and social phenomena relevant to health—is key to understanding how these
internal and external processes interact to alter health, and for developing efficacious interventions.
Nevertheless, BSSR of health face substantial challenges in part due to its broad and complex research
landscape, but also because of the “inconsistent use of terms and classification systems making it challenging
to integrate findings from individual studies and in turn to cumulatively build bodies of knowledge even in domains
that are consistently studied.” Ontologies provide a way to address these challenges in BSSR. Recognized and
sponsored by the NIH and various other agencies and professional societies, the National Academies of
Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) formed a multidisciplinary committee to study ways to improve
the development and use of ontologies in the BSSR domains and produced a comprehensive consensus report
identified barriers, opportunities, and recommended approaches to advancing BSSR ontologies important to
health. Motivated by the Report, the NIH aims to create a BSSR ontology development network with research
projects (PAR-23-182) covering a wide range of disciplines related to BSSR across multiple NIH
Institutes/Centers, with a Dissemination and Coordination Center (DCC; PAR-23-181) to (1) facilitate
collaboration and cross-project learning; (2) provide ontology-related technical, computational, and informatics
expertise and support; (3) facilitate dissemination of resources and training to support ontology expansion,
development, and use; and (4) provide active outreach and coordination with relevant stakeholders to increase
understanding of and demand for BSSR ontology-related tools and resources. In response to PAR-23-181, we
established a multidisciplinary team with the necessary subject matter expertise to carry out the functionalities
of the DCC, leveraging existing ontology resources and tools (e.g., Protégé) that we have developed, and the
long-standing ontology community (e.g., BiPortal) we have built and sustained. Our Specific Aims are to (1)
provide administrative and logistical support for the U01 Research Network; (2) develop a common technical
framework with standard operating procedures (SOPs) to guide the development of BSSR ontologies in the U01
Research Network; and (3) develop a “toolbox” of resources through which the products of the Network can be
shared with, and adopted for use, by all the relevant communities.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10941022
- **Project number:** 1U24AG088019-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
- **Principal Investigator:** Jiang Bian
- **Activity code:** U24 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $797,648
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-09-20 → 2025-01-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10941022

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10941022, ACCELERATE-BASSO: Coordinating Center for Accelerating Behavioral and Social Science through Ontology (1U24AG088019-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-27 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10941022. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*