NSF launches AI-driven biotech research program

The National Science Foundation has allocated over $70 million to a new initiative that works to connect artificial intelligence and bioscience research spaces.

Unveiled on Wednesday, five different projects will receive funding from BioFoundries, NSF’s new program that brings facilities and equipment together with researchers to develop new solutions for the U.S. bioeconomy, which includes fields like biological sciences, geosciences, biomaterials, chemical biology and bioengineering. NSF’s awardees will leverage AI and machine learning tools to process the large volumes of data required by these disciplines in order to model and scale novel advancements.

“Our main goal is really advancing our competitiveness and growing the bioeconomy for these programs,” Sridhar Raghavachari, NSF’s program officer for Biological Centers, Facilities and Additional Research Infrastructure Cluster, said on a Wednesday press call. He emphasized protein design as a leading theme for the research projects NSF is funding, noting that the predictive analytics AI offers can help extrapolate how a protein sequence can unfold and function. This advancement could spell major innovations in drug development, agricultural science and more.

“It's really great to be living [in] this holy grail era,” he said. 

Five recipients will split a total of $75 million in funding. All recipients are led by academia, featuring participation from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Puerto Rico; the University of Georgia; the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; the University of California at Santa Barbara, Riverside and California Polytechnic Pomona; and the University of Delaware. 

Each recipient will form a biofoundry working with the NSF. Specific research areas include using AI to help develop RNA molecules and delivery vehicles; protein design and cellular engineering and development; and microorganism research, among others.

“We would like to see large numbers of use-inspired AI, ML protein designs from all around the United States with many different applications,” Raghavachari said. “And, more importantly, we want to create this robust and independently supported protein design and characterization tools, and we want it to be widely used by startups, industry and academia.”

The ultimate goal of the BioFoundaries funding is to strengthen the larger U.S. bioeconomy. Identified by the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy as a leading emerging field, biotechnology development stands to impact the larger global technological and socioeconomic space in the coming years. 

“There are estimates that by the year 2030, the bioeconomy is going to contribute 1 million jobs to the U.S. economy, and that's only five years away from where we are today,” Susan Marqusee, NSF assistant director for Biological Sciences and head of the NSF Biological Sciences Directorate, said on the press call. “I like to think about this as: The living world…has evolved to solve so many problems… Evolution has figured out a way for organisms to survive in almost all situations — extreme temperature, very dry areas, etc, the depth of the ocean, at very high pressures — so in addition, as society, we've developed, or can develop, the technology to harness and engineer these solutions for benefit to society.”