08/28/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 08/28/2024 08:24
The U.S. National Science Foundation has made five awards totaling $75 million to support the creation of five biofoundries that will spur innovation, provide tools and technologies to researchers nationwide, and help advance biology, biotechnology, and the broader science, technology, engineering and mathematics enterprise.
NSF BioFoundries are integrated facilities that enable researchers to rapidly design, create, test and streamline the development of tools and products to accelerate research to advance the bioeconomy.
These facilities combine the latest advances in biological sciences, geosciences, biomaterials, chemical biology and bioengineering with tool development, automation, high throughput measurement, integrated data acquisition and analysis, and artificial intelligence and machine learning. By serving as user-facing facilities with complementary internal research programs, NSF BioFoundries will provide broad access to cutting-edge technology, workflows, processes and knowledge bases, and the design and scale-up capabilities necessary to ensure all ideas reach their potential.
Each NSF BioFoundry will focus on a different area of biology or biotechnology, but all will advance both in-house and user-initiated projects, train the next generation of the scientific workforce, engage with consumers and users of the products developed, and continually enhance workflows and processes to accelerate the translation of ideas.
"Across all fields of science and engineering, addressing grand challenges requires access to advanced technologies, sophisticated instrumentation and workflows, but not every researcher at every institution can access those critical capabilities," said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. "The new NSF BioFoundries will help democratize access to critical research infrastructure, helping to spur opportunities everywhere so innovation can happen anywhere. Not only will these NSF BioFoundries advance biology, they also will lead to developments in artificial intelligence, data storage, health, climate resilience and more."
The facilities will drastically expand and democratize biotechnology capabilities in the United States. To date, such technologies have been limited to specific academic labs, certain parts of industry and two government facilities: the U.S. Department of Energy's Agile BioFoundry and the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Living Measurement Systems Foundry. By acting as user facilities without charging user fees, NSF BioFoundries will enable research and translation at various institutions - from research-intensive universities to minority-serving institutions, community colleges and others.
Education, training and outreach efforts will further the facilities' reach, engaging students from kindergarten through graduate school, supporting industry and translational partnerships, and creating materials to educate the public on engineering biology, synthetic biology and biotechnology. Several NSF BioFoundries will work with minority-serving institutions, including historically Black colleges and universities, to bring in groups traditionally underrepresented in the STEM workforce. Efforts will focus on training a workforce skilled in biology, computer science, AI and robotics.
The five awards are: