Funding

Disciplines:  All

NSF - Understanding the Rules of Life: Emergent Networks (URoL:EN) Predicting Transformation of Living Systems in Evolving Environments

The 21st century is becoming the "century of biology", enabled by major advances in understanding the molecular basis of life. In the past fifty years, revolutions in biology have included advances in genomics, modeling, and bioinformatics, among others. A critical dimension of this century of biology will be the further integration of life sciences with other disciplines.

The URoL:EN program is a cross-directorate program of the National Science Foundation that aims to develop a predictive understanding of how key properties of living systems emerge from interactions of factors such as genomes, phenotypes, and environments and how emerging networks of organismal, natural, social, and human-engineered systems respond to and/or influence evolving environments. The URoL:EN program supports projects that take interdisciplinary approaches to better understand emergent networks and their mechanisms, emphasizing projects that cross multiple levels of complexity and/or temporal scales in taxa from anywhere within the tree of life. The program's required interdisciplinary focus presents excellent opportunities for the exploration of novel experimental and comparative approaches, leveraging existing large data sets and analytics, predictive modeling, engineerable interventions, new mathematical, computational and data science approaches, and for integrated multi-disciplinary education and outreach activities.

Investigators wishing to inquire about the suitability of potential projects for URoL:EN are encouraged to email a one-page summary to e-networks@nsf.gov.  For More information click here.