EP BrainHealth 2026 - Biological, social and environmental factors that impact the trajectory of brain health across the lifespan

Fond National de la Recherche Scientifique (F.R.S.-FNRS)

Sciences de la vie

Call 1: Biological, social and environmental factors that impact the trajectory of brain health across the lifespan – in the field of neurological, mental and sensory disorder

Aim and Scope of the Call

The EP BrainHealth invites applications to combine a holistic approach to brain health with in-depth biological understanding. The aim of the call is to facilitate multinational, collaborative and interdisciplinary research that addresses critical translational questions. Applications for this call, should address how biological, social and environmental factors affect the trajectory of neurological, mental and sensory disorders across the lifespan.

Applications must be interdisciplinary and address at least two of the three factors impacting brain health trajectories in the field of neurological, mental and sensory disorders:

1) Biological factors, e.g. genetics, epigenetics, -omics, neuroplasticity, inflammation, infection, synaptogenesis, circuits, vascular factors, sensory impairment, co-morbidities;

2) Lifestyle and social factors, e.g. exercise/activity, nutrition, sleep, smoking, alcohol and drug abuse, work (income, employment), socio-economic background/status, race/ethnicity, sex and gender, education, safety, social interactions (family/friends), access to healthcare, stress, trauma, migration.

3) Environmental factors, e.g. pollution/contaminants, urbanicity, disasters, pandemics, war/conflicts, climate change, microbiota, nature.

In addition, applications must investigate at least two of the following aspects:

1) Mechanisms of action of the identified factors;

2) Early recognition, diagnosis and prognosis linked to the identified factors;

3) Prevention/treatments/interventions/technological development/care and support linked to the identified factors.

Furthermore, the following aspects are important in the context of this call:

1) Applications should investigate how factors impact brain health trajectories along the life course.

2) Outcomes benefiting the quality of life of patients and their carers are of special importance and should be explicitly defined and stated.

3) Applications focusing on disability, gender, ethical, cultural and socio-economic aspects are encouraged.

4) Approaches such as integration of multimodal data, use of accessible wearable technologies (e.g. mobile devices), artificial intelligence/digital twins and drug repurposing are particularly welcome.

Excluded are the following topics/aspects:

1) Applications focusing on cancers;

2) Applications addressing predominantly research questions in the field of the EP BrainHealth call 2

Call 2: Biological, social and environmental factors that impact the trajectory of brain health across the lifespan – in the field of neurological, mental and sensory disorders

Aim and Scope of the Call

Applications must be interdisciplinary and address at least two of the three factors impacting brain health trajectories in the field of neurodegenerative disorders:

1) Biological factors, e.g. genetics, epigenetics, -omics, neuroplasticity, inflammation, infection, synaptogenesis, circuits, vascular factors, sensory impairment, co-morbidities;

3) Environmental factors, e.g. pollution/contaminants, urbanicity, disasters, pandemics, war/conflicts, climate change, microbiota, nature.

In addition, applications must investigate at least two of the following aspects:

1) Mechanisms of action of the identified factors;

2) Early recognition, diagnosis and prognosis linked to the identified factors;

3) Prevention/treatments/interventions/technological development/care and support linked to the identified factors.

Furthermore, the following aspects are important in the context of this call:

1) Applications should investigate how factors impact brain health trajectories along the life course.

2) Outcomes benefiting the quality of life of patients and their carers are of special importance and should be explicitly defined and stated.

3) Applications focusing on disability, gender, ethical, cultural and socio-economic aspects are encouraged.

Excluded are the following topics/aspects:

1) Applications focusing on cancers;

2) Applications addressing predominantly research questions in the field of the EP BrainHealth call 1 (neurological, mental disorders and sensory disorders)

Please note that applying with the same proposal to both EP BrainHealth calls is not allowed.

Financement

Each partner is funded separately by the national/regional funding organisation they are applying to. They must fulfil the conditions of their funding organisation.

The maximum amount of requested funding per project is 300.000 EUR for a total period of thee years. If the project involves the recruitment of a PhD student, the project duration of the F.R.S.-FNRS sub-project could be up to four years.

Eligible costs items

Personnel costs: 80,000€ EUR per year on average for the duration of the project. The usual duration of ERA-NET research programmes is three years. However, when the project involves a PhD student, the principal investigator can apply for an additional one year funding in order to complete the four years PhD programme. Since this programme is co-funded by the European Commission, this final year should not be included in the budget submitted to this call.

Equipment: can be eligible up to 20% of the total budget of the project

Running costs: travel expenses; organisation of small scientific events in Belgium; consumables and the following support costs: consumables Publication Designing (conception d’ouvrage) Dictionary Production (réalisation de dictionnaire) Purchase of Books Encoding Software Access Rights Congress Registration Fees Purchase of Computer Scanning Travel costs Visa costs Open Access publication of an article up until 500 euros (see F.R.S-FNRS Open Access policy).

“Overhead”

For “overhead” costs:

Operating expenses: up to 1% within the granted budget. This percentage should be included in the requested operating budget.

Personnel: up to 2% outside of the granted budget. This percentage will be paid upon reimbursement of expenses to institutions by the F.R.S.-FNRS.

Pour postuler

Transnational level

Pre-proposals must be submitted by the coordinator in electronic format no later than 14:00:00h C.E.T. on 10.03.2026, via the electronic submission system (link). No other means of submission will be accepted. The pre-proposal template is available on the website. Adherence to this template is mandatory (link to template). All fields must be completed using DIN-A4; font: Arial, 10pt; single-spaced, page limits. Please note that some funding organisations might request an additional mandatory submission on their own national/regional platform (see national Annexes)

National/regional level

Applicants must provide basic administrative data by submitting an administrative application on e-space within 5 working days after the general deadline of the call to be eligible. Please select the “PINT-MULTI” funding instrument when creating the administrative application.

Deadlines

Deadline for short proposal submission is 10 March2026, 14h CET.

Deadline for submission to FNRS is 17 March 2026, 14h CET.

Deadline for full proposal submission is 30 June 2026, 14h CET.

Requis d'admission

Eligibility of the consortia

Only transnational projects will be funded. Each consortium submitting a proposal must involve a minimum of three research partners eligible for funding by organisations listed in this call text (section 4). The eligible research partners must be from at least three different participating countries and including at least two EU Member States or Associated Countries. The total number of research partners in a consortium is limited to six, including partners participating at their own expenses. For reasons of transnational balance, no more than two partners from the same country are allowed to join a proposal. Gender balance among the partners of a consortium is encouraged.

See call document for more details.

Eligibility for belgian partners (F.R.S. - FNRS):

Applicants requesting funding from F.R.S. FNRS must comply with the following rules.

The applicant must be affiliated to a university from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation (FWB).

At the closure of the call, the applicant should also:

- Be a permanent researcher of F.R.S-FNRS (Chercheur qualifié, maître de recherches ou Directeur de recherche) or;

- Hold a tenure track position (or an assimilated position including pending tenure track) with a research institution from the FWB

After the submission of applications, the F.R.S.-FNRS and the research institutions are required to verify the eligibility of the candidates. The F.R.S.-FNRS reserves the right to refuse those whose eligibility criteria would not comply with the Regulation. In order the check the compliance with these eligibility criteria, please contact your contact person at ULB-TTO (see details below). The complete F.R.S-FNRS rules for international research projects is available at the following link: https://www.frs-fnrs.be/docs/Reglement-et-documents/International/FRS-FNRS_PINT-Multi.pdf