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News Release 11-208

Insights From Biological World to Inspire New Engineering Capabilities

Interdisciplinary teams to explore quietly powerful biological signals and the intersection between minds and machines

Photo of the eastern subterranean termite.

Microbes from three kingdoms live symbiotically in the gut of the eastern subterranean termite.


September 28, 2011

This material is available primarily for archival purposes. Telephone numbers or other contact information may be out of date; please see current contact information at media contacts.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) has announced 14 grants for the 2011 fiscal year, awarding nearly $28 million to 60 investigators at 23 institutions.

During the next four years, teams of researchers will pursue transformative, fundamental research in two emerging areas:  technologies that build on understanding of biological signaling and machines that can interact and cooperate with humans.

Results from this research promise to impact human health, the environment, energy, robotics and manufacturing.

Engineering New Technologies Based on Multicellular and Inter-kingdom Signaling (MIKS): The first set of EFRI research teams will investigate the chemical and mechanical signals that allow living organisms to engage with and respond to their environment at the cellular level. These signals often affect cellular development and behavior, and they can lead to complex interactions between populations of a species or even between species from different biological kingdoms. For example, biological signaling has been found to initiate the formation of biofilms and to regulate symbiotic relationships between species.

With recent advances in microfabrication, synthetic biology, optical sensing and spectroscopy, EFRI researchers will create new technologies to measure and characterize the molecular and cellular interactions that occur with signaling. They will construct novel engineered systems to understand signaling principles and to learn how to use signals for achieving particular results. Ultimately, the teams aim to create technologies that harness the power of biological signaling.

"These eight projects will examine different types of signaling in an array of organisms and environments, ranging from the microbes inhabiting termite guts to the embryonic cells of fruit flies," said Theresa Good, lead EFRI program officer for MIKS. "The results from these investigations could enable new biological energy sources and better protection for human health and the environment."

Mind, Machines, and Motor Control (M3C): The second set of EFRI research teams will pursue machines that can interact and cooperate seamlessly with humans. Current technologies draw upon only a small fraction of the sensory data available to the brain. The analytical processes and control algorithms that govern existing prosthetic devices and robots require human users to accommodate their technological limitations. In numerous ways, the interactive capabilities of machines have a long way to go before they can match those of healthy humans.

EFRI teams will study how the brain senses the physical world and the body's place in it, how it processes this information, and how it achieves rapid, complex, responsive and even improvisational movement of the body. Researchers will use their knowledge of brain activity to create devices that can interface directly and cooperatively with the human body. The overall goal is to design machines--whether prosthetics, rehabilitative machines or robots--that work as an intuitive extension of natural human activity.

"These six awards could launch great advances in robotics, manufacturing and healthcare," said lead EFRI program officer for M3C Radhakisan Baheti. "Engineers, computer scientists, biologists and doctors will undertake extensive collaboration to discover ways to improve quality of life for people with brain disease or injuries and for people who use prosthetics."

"The EFRI research teams will probe some profound aspects of the interface of biology and engineering," said Sohi Rastegar, director of EFRI. "If they are successful, the principles and theories uncovered in their investigations could unlock many technological opportunities."

The fiscal 2011 EFRI topics were developed in close collaboration with the NSF Directorates for Biological Sciences; Computer and Information Science and Engineering and Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences.

EFRI, established by the NSF Directorate for Engineering in 2007, seeks high-risk, interdisciplinary research that has the potential to transform engineering and other fields. The grants demonstrate the EFRI goal to inspire and enable researchers to expand the limits of knowledge.

Summaries of the eight EFRI projects on Engineering New Technologies Based on Multicellular and Inter-kingdom Signaling (MIKS) are found on the award announcement Web page.

Summaries of the six EFRI projects on Mind, Machines, and Motor Control (M3C) are found on the award announcement Web page.

-NSF-

Media Contacts
Joshua A. Chamot, NSF, (703) 292-7730, email: jchamot@nsf.gov

Program Contacts
Sohi Rastegar, NSF, (703) 292-8305, email: srastega@nsf.gov
Cecile J. Gonzalez, NSF, (703) 292-8538, email: cjgonzal@nsf.gov

The U.S. National Science Foundation propels the nation forward by advancing fundamental research in all fields of science and engineering. NSF supports research and people by providing facilities, instruments and funding to support their ingenuity and sustain the U.S. as a global leader in research and innovation. With a fiscal year 2023 budget of $9.5 billion, NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and institutions. Each year, NSF receives more than 40,000 competitive proposals and makes about 11,000 new awards. Those awards include support for cooperative research with industry, Arctic and Antarctic research and operations, and U.S. participation in international scientific efforts.

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