Greetings,
We are excited to share NSF's 2024 Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) topic: Biocomputing through EnGINeering Organoid Intelligence (BEGIN OI), a solicitation that seeks to include social scientists, ethicists, and educators in interdisciplinary teams to tackle challenging problems relevant to engineering smart systems. Information on this award can be found in the synopsis and links below.
NSF Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI): Biocomputing through EnGINeering Organoid Intelligence (BEGIN OI)
Letter of Intent Due to Sponsor (required): January 17, 2024
OSP Deadline: February 14, 2024. Departments or areas may require additional time for proposal review and submission. Please discuss a timeline with your grants administrator.
Sponsor Deadline for Full Proposal: February 22, 2024
Award Amount: Up to $2,000,000 over four years
The Office of Emerging Frontiers and Multidisciplinary Activities (EFMA) in the Directorate for Engineering provides funding opportunities for interdisciplinary teams of researchers to embark on rapidly advancing frontiers of fundamental engineering research. The Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation program (EFRI), the signature program of the EFMA Office, seeks proposals with potentially transformative ideas that represent an opportunity for a significant shift in fundamental engineering knowledge with strong potential for long-term impact on national needs or a grand challenge.
The EFRI Biocomputing through EnGINeering Organoid Intelligence (BEGIN OI) solicitation supports foundational and transformative research to advance the design, engineering, and fabrication of organoid systems that are capable of processing information dynamically while interfacing with non-living systems. This solicitation supports a broad interpretation of in vitro biological “intelligent systems” to include the capture of real-world input, autonomous processing in an engineered biological construct, and generating an output that drives an engineered system. “Intelligence” and “learning” have unique meanings for different communities in biology, cognitive science, computer science, and engineering, and the EFRI BEGIN OI solicitation asks investigators to define the bounds of “intelligence” and “learning” needed to achieve responsive and adaptive biological computing and control in engineered systems.
A convergent research approach that engages engineers, biologists, computer scientists, social scientists, ethicists, and others with complementary expertise to tackle challenging problems relevant to engineering smart systems driven by organoid intelligence is required to realize the goals of this solicitation. Integrating social scientists, ethicists, and educators in the interdisciplinary teams will be critical for addressing the associated ethical, legal, and social implications of using living systems as building blocks for bio-enabled computing. Projects must engage all three of the following Research Threads:
- Biocomputing Theory and Modelling
- Biology-Integrated Culture Maintenance and Hardware Systems
- Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications
Inclusion of appropriate expertise from the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences within project leadership is required. EFRI BEGIN OI projects are also envisioned as ideal platforms for innovative educational and workforce development programs, such as curriculum development and outreach activities to broaden the participation of the full spectrum of diverse talents in STEM.
Eligibility: The lead PI must be full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty. A minimum of one PI and two co-PIs must participate in each proposal. Either the PI or one of the co-PIs must have a full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty appointment within a College/Department of Engineering. Individuals may participate as either PI or co-PI in only one proposal submitted to this solicitation in a single fiscal year.
Questions from FAS or SEAS faculty about this opportunity may be directed to research_development@fas.harvard.edu.