Georgia Tech Researchers Win NSF Rules of Life Funding to Address Societal Challenges

Three of 12 projects that received funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Using the Rules of Life to Address Societal Challenges are led by researchers in ChBE@GT.

The 12 projects received a total of $27 million in investment, supporting the use of knowledge learned from studying the Rules of Life — the complex interactions within and between a broad array of living systems across biological scales, and time and space — to tackle pressing societal challenges, including clean water, planet sustainability, carbon capture, biosecurity, and antimicrobial resistance to antibiotics.

The ChBE-related projects received a total of $7.7 million.

“The enormous opportunity to apply biological principles to solving the biggest problems of today is one we cannot take lightly. These projects will use life to improve life, including for many underprivileged communities and groups.” - Susan Marqusee, NSF assistant director for Biological Sciences.

The ChBE-led projects include: w Co-Producing Knowledge, Biotechnologies and Practices to Enhance Biological Nitrogen Fixation for Sustainable Agriculture, $2.67 million w Next-Generation Biological Security and BioHackathon, $2.81 million w Synthetic Protocell Communities to Address Critical Sensing Challenges, $2.23 million

The project’s principal investigator is Assistant Professor Lily Cheung.

Her research team will address food security through low-cost technology based on biological principles to increase nitrogen content in soils and improve crop production on marginal lands.

The project’s principal investigator is Professor Corey Wilson, and the co-principal investigators include Professor Matthew Realff.

The researchers will create programmable, biological combination lock methods — “on and off” states — for using synthetic biology safely, containing potentially dangerous organisms and protecting valuable ones.

The project’s principal investigator is Professor Mark Styczynski, and the co-principal investigators are Shuichi Takayama, professor of biomedical engineering; Brian Hammer, associate professor of biological sciences, and Neha Garg, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry.

The researchers will create synthetic “protocells” enabling the development of a highly sensitive, field-deployable analysis system that could be used for many applications such as measuring micronutrient deficiencies in undernourished populations.