Hot on the heels of yesterday’s announcement that the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) was teaming up with the Food and Drug Administration to conduct research into the drug approval process, the agency today rolled out six more initiatives to foster collaborative research across the various NIH institutes and centers.

Among the new programs, which are supported by the NIH Common Fund to the tune of $17.8 million, is a new center for studying induced pluripotent stem cells and an effort to phenotypically characterize thousands of knock-out mouse models.

“These strategic investments will yield critical new resources, scientific knowledge, and strategic partnerships across a broad landscape of basic biology, behavioral science, global health, and clinical medicine,” said NIH director Francis Collins in a statement.

The remaining scientific programs include research tools for studying proteins, an examination of how biology, culture and society together affect people’s behavior, a new global health program, and a systems biology resource called the Library of Integrated Network-based Cellular Signatures, or LINCS.