Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Precision Microbiome Engineering (PreMiEr)

规划资助：精准微生物工程研究中心（PreMiEr）

• 批准号: 1840452
• 负责人: Claudia Gunsch
• 金额: $ 10万
• 依托单位: Duke University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-09-01 至 2021-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1840452&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Planning; Grant; Engineering; Research; Center

The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research.Microbes have co-evolved over millions of years and assembled in highly optimized microbial communities (microbiomes). Over the last several decades scientists have begun to discover the power microbiomes harness and how microbiomes could be leveraged to benefit society. While some successes have been achieved in translating the growing fundamental scientific knowledge linking microbiomes to practical applications, in general, a systematic and replicable framework is needed for consistently bridging the gap between fundamental scientific discovery and technology development. This planning grant will create the visionary platform and collaborative network to establish an Engineering Research Center for Precision Microbiome Engineering (PreMiEr) that will enable engineers, microbiologists and other natural scientists to work alongside theorists, model builders and computational scientists to develop integrative models that will serve as the foundation for engineering discovery and application to develop a broad range of technologies designed to address global challenges in agriculture, environment, health and energy. PreMiEr's research activities will enable microbiome manipulation to promote beneficial microbes such as those that restore ecological function by degrading toxic soil pollutants, improving crop yield by increasing stress tolerance, decreasing our reliance on fossil fuel by producing biofuels and weakening undesirable microbes such as those that destroy crops and contribute to disease. PreMiEr will shift microbiome research from a descriptive to a predictive framework, a shift which is key to advancing microbiome engineering, promoting engineering innovation and facilitating research translation. Furthermore, by incorporating social scientists into the PreMiEr research framework, non-social scientists' work will be informed by consideration of the ethical and policy implications of their evolving microbiome engineering discoveries. Creation and integration of these activities will result in an accelerated research translation process designed to speed up bench to market time.This planning grant combines Core Vision Leadership Team brainstorming and integration meetings with four catalytic accelerator workshops, mapped to PreMiEr's four research themes (Environment, Agriculture, Health and Energy) which will deliver a transdisciplinary research and societal impacts agenda and identify the broader team partners and expertise that is critical to the formation and success of this Center. The expected benefits of the planning activities include: 1) crystallizing PreMiEr's engineering research themes, thrusts and cores; 2) defining a transformative agenda designed to advance microbiome research from descriptive to mechanistic to application studies; 3) creating structure for successful translation of PreMiEr's research; 4) defining critical societal impacts linked with an assessment plan that incorporates evolving international standards on relevant societal impact indicators; and 5) designing an inclusive PreMiEr training structure to broaden STEM participation and enhance domestic and global workforce development. PreMiEr's research design, informed by research-stakeholder team input, will directly impact society?s ability to supply food, energy and clean water while maintaining and improving the health of our population and ecosystems. In addition, through active recruitment of trainees from underrepresented groups and expanded collaborative partnerships with HBCUs and MSIs, PreMiEr will contribute to broadening diversity across the US STEM workforce and training the next generation in interdisciplinary technical and professional skills to compete in the emerging arena of convergence science. Finally, the translation of this planning initiative into a proposed engineering research center will provide a model for the development of other future convergence science centers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

工程研究中心规划补助金竞赛是作为 ERC 计划内的试点征集活动进行的。整个 ERC 竞赛不需要规划拨款，而是旨在培养团队之间的能力，以规划融合的、中心规模的工程研究。微生物已经共同进化了数百万年，并组装成高度优化的微生物群落（微生物组） 。在过去的几十年里，科学家们已经开始发现微生物组的力量以及如何利用微生物组造福社会。虽然在将不断增长的将微生物组联系起来的基础科学知识转化为实际应用方面已经取得了一些成功，但总的来说，需要一个系统的、可复制的框架来持续缩小基础科学发现和技术开发之间的差距。这笔规划拨款将创建富有远见的平台和协作网络，以建立精密微生物组工程研究中心（PreMiEr），使工程师、微生物学家和其他自然科学家能够与理论家、模型构建者和计算科学家一起开发综合模型，作为工程发现和应用的基础，开发旨在应对农业、环境、健康和能源领域全球挑战的广泛技术。 PreMiEr 的研究活动将使微生物组操纵能够促进有益微生物的生长，例如通过降解有毒土壤污染物来恢复生态功能的微生物，通过提高抗逆性来提高作物产量，通过生产生物燃料来减少我们对化石燃料的依赖，以及削弱不需要的微生物（例如破坏性微生物）。作物并导致疾病。 PreMiEr 将微生物组研究从描述性框架转变为预测性框架，这一转变对于推进微生物组工程、促进工程创新和促进研究转化至关重要。此外，通过将社会科学家纳入 PreMiEr 研究框架，非社会科学家的工作将通过考虑其不断发展的微生物组工程发现的伦理和政策影响来了解。这些活动的创建和整合将加速研究转化过程，旨在加快试验台上市时间。这项规划拨款将核心愿景领导团队集思广益和整合会议与四个催化加速器研讨会结合起来，映射到 PreMiEr 的四个研究主题（环境、农业、健康和能源），将提供跨学科研究和社会影响议程，并确定对该中心的形成和成功至关重要的更广泛的团队合作伙伴和专业知识。规划活动的预期效益包括：1）明确PreMiEr的工程研究主题、主旨和核心； 2) 制定变革性议程，旨在推进微生物组研究从描述性研究到机械性研究再到应用研究； 3) 为 PreMiEr 的研究成果的成功转化创建结构； 4) 定义与评估计划相关的关键社会影响，该评估计划纳入了相关社会影响指标不断发展的国际标准； 5) 设计包容性的 PreMiEr 培训结构，以扩大 STEM 参与并加强国内和全球劳动力发展。 PreMiEr 的研究设计以研究利益相关者团队的意见为基础，将直接影响社会供应食品、能源和清洁水的能力，同时维持和改善人口和生态系统的健康。此外，通过积极招募来自代表性不足群体的学员并扩大与 HBCU 和 MSI 的合作伙伴关系，PreMiEr 将有助于扩大美国 STEM 劳动力的多样性，并培训下一代跨学科技术和专业技能，以便在新兴的融合领域竞争科学。最后，将该规划举措转化为拟议的工程研究中心将为其他未来融合科学中心的发展提供一个模型。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过利用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的评估进行评估，认为值得支持。影响审查标准。