Draft Statement of Work (Services).pdf

Version 11-30-2016-1 FAR Part 11—Describing Agency Needs

STATEMENT OF WORK (SERVICES)

(SOW)

GENERAL INFORMATION

Title of Project:

Experimental Neuroscientist Services for Molecular and Pathophysiological Studies of Parkinson’s disease Dementia

Statement of Need and Purpose:

The Laboratory of Neurogenetics (LNG) within the National Institute of Aging (NIA), requires services from a senior neuroscientist with extensive experience in live imaging of awake behaving mice, electrophysiology, and behavioral studies. The services are required to address a pressing need for investigating cell-type and circuit mechanism of Parkinson's disease dementia. The contractor shall provide all resources necessary to accomplish the tasks and deliverables described in the Statement of Work (SOW). The contractor shall provide research assistance and various research-related deliverables, such as papers, talks and guidance for other team members.

Background Information and Objective:

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is typically characterized as a degenerative movement disorder, clinically manifested with distinct motor disturbances, including slowness of movement, resting tremor, rigidity, and postural instability, resulting from extensive loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta of midbrain. Besides motor symptoms, PD patients often develop cognitive dysfunctions, which leads to Parkinson’s disease dementia (PDD). Approximately 75% of PD patients develop dementia within 10 years of diagnosis, and the prevalence of PDD is 0.3-0.5% in general population older than 65 years. There is no cure for PDD. The exact pathogenic mechanisms of PDD are largely unknown. An important step in intervening complexed neurological disorder like PDD, is to elucidate the functional roles of different neural circuits responsible for specific behavioral phenotypes. Therefore, the objective of this work is to investigate the synaptic inputs and physiological functions of a specific subpopulation of midbrain dopaminergic neurons in declarative memory formation. The knowledge gained from this study will provide cell type and circuit specific mechanisms of PDD and lay the foundation for designing new therapeutic interventions for treatment of cognitive impairments in PDD.

Period of Performance:

Will consist of a twelve (12) month base period followed by one (1) twelve (12) month optional period.

SCOPE OF WORK

General Requirements:

Independently and not as an agent of the Government, the Contractor shall furnish all the necessary services, qualified personnel, material, equipment, and facilities, not otherwise provided by the Government as needed to perform the Statement of Work below:

The National Institute on Aging requires senior neuroscientist services for the live imaging, electrophysiology, and behavioral studies of mouse models resembling key clinical symptoms of Parkinson’s disease dementia (PDD). The neuroscientist will apply advanced sophisticated modern neuroscience experimental techniques, including – but not limited to – live imaging of neuronal activity in behaving mice with miniScope or fiber photometry, stereotactic injections and mouse survival surgery, immunohistochemistry and confocal microscope, and mouse behavioral testing. This work requires familiarity with MATLAB for data analyses. The neuroscientist will play an important role in assisting manuscript preparation and research training of other team members.

Specific Requirements:

In keeping with the general requirements above, the contractor will:

- Conduct full-time, independent research relating to the pathophysiological mechanisms of PDD, guided by the point of contact (Dr. Huaibin Cai) for 30 hours per week.

- Provide project updates weekly and ongoing. Data communication is essential in this role both for presenting projects to other scientists and journals but as well as internal oversight and project development.Ongoing project updates will account for roughly 2 hours per week and include time for meetings, presentations, manuscript drafting and revision. This will also help ensure that the scope of work and general requirements is being adequately fulfilled in a timely manner.

- Teach other team members crucial research skills for about 3 hours per week.

- Support LNG’s mission to share the results with the broader scientific community by uploading data to the respective data repositories.

The senior neuroscientist must have a doctoral degree with three or more years' postdoctoral training in neuroscience or a life science field. The neuroscientist is expected to be an expert in live imaging techniques in behaving mice, electrophysiology and neuroanatomy. Previous experience with basal ganglion physiology is a plus.

LEVEL OF EFFORT:

The estimated level of effort for this requirement is one (1) contractor employee on a part-time basis for 1,500 hours per year, or approximately thirty (30) hours per week.

GOVERNMENT RESPONSIBILITIES

The Government will provide data for analysis, computing resources, and office space to the contractor personnel working under this effort. All data provided to the Contractor must be treated as confidential and not be disclosed to any third party. FAR Clause 52.245-1 Government Property shall be applicable to this requirement.

DELIVERY OR DELIVERABLES

• Generation and analysis of data to provide insight into the molecular and pathophysiological mechanisms of PDD through use of advanced neural imaging and anatomy techniques.

• Delineate specific cell type and circuit mechanisms to common forms of dementia.

REPORTING REQUIREMENTS

Quarterly reports summarizing progress and current state of deliverables to Dr. Cai as point of contact for evaluation.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

Travel:

The principal place of performance is the NIH Main Campus in Bethesda, MD. The consultant may be required to travel within the contiguous United States to provide the services described in this statement of work. Travel reimbursement will be provided for such required travel.

All travel arrangements must be made in accordance with Federal Travel Regulations and must be approved by the Contracting Officer and authorized by the Contracting Officer’s Representative prior to being finalized or invoiced. Contracting Officer approved and Contracting Officer’s Representative-authorized travel shall not exceed $3,000.00 annually.

Please note that time spent travelling may not be billed to the Government. Please see the Federal Travel Regulation for allowable travel expenses, such as fares, rental fees, mileage payments, and other expenses related to transportation per FTR §301-10.2.

Key Personnel:

Senior Researcher

• Ph.D. in a related discipline.

• Minimum of six (6) years of related experience.

• Strong communications skills, both oral and written.

• Excellent technical, analytical, organizational and time management skills.

The proposed Key Personnel will become subject to the provisions of Health and Human Services Acquisition Regulation (HHSAR) Clause HHSAR 352.237-75 Key Personnel as follows:

• The key personnel specified in this contract are considered to be essential to work performance.

• At least 30 days prior to the contractor voluntarily diverting the specified individual to other programs or contracts the Contractor shall notify the Contracting Officer and shall submit a justification for the diversion or replacement and a request to replace the individual.

• The request must identify the proposed replacement and provide an explanation of how the replacement's skills, experience, and credentials meet or exceed the requirements of the contract.

• If the employee of the contractor is terminated for cause or separates from the contractor voluntarily with less than thirty days’ notice, the Contractor shall provide the maximum notice practicable under the circumstances.

• The Contractor shall not divert, replace, or announce any such change to key personnel without the written consent of the Contracting Officer. The contract will be modified to add or delete key personnel as necessary to reflect the agreement of the parties

Information System Security Plan:

The Contractor must ensure that any computer system used in the course of this contract shall include the following features:

1. Any computer used in relation to this contract must be patched with most updated IT Security Patches.

2. Any Contractor computer used in relation this contract must have virus protection loaded and running with definition files that are updated on at least a daily basis.

3. Hard drives and portable media used for this contract must be encrypted using the FIPS 140-2 standard.

4. Contractors are required to take NIH Security and Privacy Training annually http://irtsectraining.nih.gov/ http://irtsectraining.nih.gov/

5. Contractor are required to sign the NIH non-disclosure agreement http://irtsectraining.nih.gov/NIH_Non-Disclosure_Agreement.pdf

6. Contractors are required to report any lost or stolen NIH data to the NIA ISSO within one hour of knowing of the lost or theft even if the data is on a Contractor furnished computer.

7. Contractors are required to adhere to the NIH IT rules of behavior which can be found at https://ocio.nih.gov/InfoSecurity/training/Pages/nihitrob.aspx

8. Any computers used in reference to this contract must be assessed for vulnerabilities.

9. Any computers used in reference to this contract must be backed up on an external hard drive which is password protected.

10. Any computers used in reference to this contract must have auditing enabled such that if an incident occurred then that event could be reconstructed.

11. Any computers that are used in reference to this contract must employ at a minimum user name and password authentication or if possible two factor authentications.

12. Any computer used in relation to this contract must be password protected. All Password must meet the NIH standard such that users must choose passwords that have at least eight characters and at least three of the following types of characters:

a. capital letters

b. lower case letters

c. numeric characters

d. special characters (!@#$%^&*()_+|~-=\`{}[]:";'<>?,./)

Data Rights:

The NIH/NIA/LNG shall have unlimited rights to and ownership of all deliverables provided under this contract, including reports, recommendations, briefings, work plans and all other deliverables. This includes the deliverables provided under the basic contract/order and any optional task deliverables exercised by the contracting officer. In addition, it includes any additional deliverables required by contract change. The definition of “unlimited rights” is contained in Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 27.401, “Definitions.” FAR clause 52.227-14, “Rights in Data-General” is hereby incorporated by reference and made a part of this contract/order.

Section 508—Electronic and Information Technology Standards:

The contractor shall comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (29 U.S.C. § 794d), as amended by the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (P.L. 105-220), August 7, 1998.

Publications and Publicity:

The contractor will publish manuscripts and/or public presentations in research forums for the work conducted relating to the SOW deliverables.

Confidentiality of Information:

The contractor will only work with de-identified data that has either been shared by collaborators already or made publicly available through various mechanisms. None of the outcomes will be confidential as the SOW includes deliverables of open-source computer code, manuscripts for publication and public presentations.

https://ocio.nih.gov/InfoSecurity/training/Pages/nihitrob.aspx