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

工程研究中心规划拨款竞赛是ERC项目的试点征集。规划补助金不需要作为ERC竞赛的一部分，但它旨在在团队之间建立能力，以规划聚合的、中心规模的工程研究。微生物已经共同进化了数百万年，并聚集在高度优化的微生物群落（微生物组）中。在过去的几十年里，科学家们已经开始发现微生物群的力量，以及如何利用微生物群来造福社会。虽然在将将微生物组与实际应用联系起来的日益增长的基础科学知识转化为实际应用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来不断弥合基础科学发现与技术发展之间的差距。这项计划拨款将创建一个有远见的平台和合作网络，以建立一个精密微生物组工程工程研究中心（PreMiEr），使工程师、微生物学家和其他自然科学家能够与理论家一起工作。模型构建者和计算科学家开发综合模型，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、卫生和能源方面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，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，以及削弱有害微生物，例如破坏作物和导致疾病的微生物。PreMiEr将微生物组研究从描述性框架向预测性框架转变，这是推进微生物组工程、促进工程创新和促进研究成果转化的关键。此外，通过将社会科学家纳入首要研究框架，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得到通知。这些活动的创建和整合将导致加速研究翻译过程，旨在加快从实验室到市场的时间。这项计划拨款将核心愿景领导团队的头脑风暴和整合会议与四个催化加速器研讨会结合起来，映射到总理的四个研究主题（环境，农业，健康和能源），这将提供一个跨学科的研究和社会影响议程，并确定更广泛的团队合作伙伴和专业知识，这对中心的形成和成功至关重要。规划活动的预期效益包括：1)明确了工程研究的主题、重点和核心；2)制定旨在推动微生物组研究从描述性到机械性再到应用研究的变革议程；3)为总理研究成果的成功翻译创造结构；4)确定与评估计划相关的关键社会影响，该评估计划纳入了有关社会影响指标的不断发展的国际标准；5)设计包容性的总理培训结构，以扩大STEM参与，促进国内和全球劳动力发展。总理的研究设计，根据研究利益相关者团队的意见，将直接影响社会？美国提供食物、能源和清洁水的能力，同时保持和改善我们人口和生态系统的健康。此外，通过积极从代表性不足的群体中招募学员，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，并培养下一代跨学科技术和专业技能，以在新兴的融合科学领域竞争。最后，将这一规划倡议转化为拟建的工程研究中心，将为未来其他融合科学中心的发展提供一个模式。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.