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.

工程研究中心规划奖助金竞赛是作为ERC计划的试点征集活动进行的。计划拨款并不是整个ERC竞赛的一部分，而是为了在团队之间建立能力，以计划汇聚的、中心规模的工程研究。微生物经过数百万年的共同进化，聚集在高度优化的微生物群落(微生物群)中。在过去的几十年里，科学家们已经开始发现利用微生物群的力量，以及如何利用微生物群造福社会。虽然在将不断增长的将微生物群与实际应用联系起来的基础科学知识转化方面取得了一些成功，但总的来说，需要一个系统和可复制的框架，以持续不断地弥合基础科学发现和技术开发之间的差距。这笔规划赠款将创建一个富有远见的平台和合作网络，以建立一个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、模型建造者和计算科学家一起开发综合模型，这些模型将作为工程发现和应用的基础，以开发旨在应对农业、环境、卫生和能源领域的全球挑战的广泛技术。Premier的研究活动将使微生物组操作能够促进有益的微生物，如通过降解有毒土壤污染物恢复生态功能的微生物，通过提高抗逆性提高作物产量，通过生产生物燃料减少对化石燃料的依赖，以及削弱有害微生物，如破坏作物和导致疾病的微生物。Premier将把微生物组研究从描述性框架转变为预测性框架，这一转变是推进微生物组工程、促进工程创新和促进研究翻译的关键。此外，通过将社会科学家纳入主要研究框架，非社会科学家的工作将通过考虑他们不断发展的微生物组工程发现的伦理和政策影响而获得信息。这些活动的创建和整合将导致加速研究翻译过程，旨在加快板凳上市时间。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在一起，这些研讨会映射到Premier的四个研究主题(环境、农业、健康和能源)，这些主题将提供跨学科的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。规划活动的预期好处包括：1)明确Premier的工程研究主题、重点和核心；2)确定旨在推动微生物组研究从描述性研究到机械性研究再到应用研究的变革性议程；3)为Premier的研究成功转化创建结构；4)界定与评估计划相关的关键社会影响；5)设计包容性的Premier培训结构，以扩大STEM的参与和促进国内和全球劳动力的发展。总理的研究设计受到研究利益相关者团队投入的启发，将直接影响社会？S在维持和改善我们人口和生态系统健康的同时，提供食物、能源和清洁水的能力。此外，通过从代表性不足的群体中积极招聘学员，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，以便在新兴的融合科学舞台上竞争。最后，将这一规划倡议转化为拟议的工程研究中心将为未来其他汇聚科学中心的发展提供一个模式。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。