Whole cell models (WCMs) use theory and simulation to capture an ever-increasing set of processes and functions exhibited by natural cells. These computer-based, or in silico, cells provide a platform for eventually understanding how a holistic agent emerges from many distinct yet coupled processes. The WCMs developed to date are primarily chemical-kinetics models that accurately represent chemical reaction rates but don't explicitly account for physical processes and how they vary in space and time.  This grant provides ongoing support to Roseanna Zia, a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Missouri, for efforts to develop and expand a whole cell model that explicitly tracks biomolecules and their interactions as they diffuse through a crowded cell interior. Zia’s efforts focus on understanding ribogenesis, the process by which cells build the molecular complexes (ribosomes) responsible for protein synthesis. Zia will develop complex machine learning tools that can simulate in a computationally tractable way the complex process of ribosome formation, and then validate these tools, both against experimental data and against existing simulations that require more computational resources. Zia will leverage these computational tools to expand her model to better understand and simulate important elements of ribogenesis, such as the compaction of rRNA strands into folded, functional configurations and how this folding is affected by intra-cellular conditions like pH, cellular crowding, and protein abundance. These improvements, if successful, will allow Zia’s augmented WCM to simulate about half of ribosome synthesis, and would represent substantial progress towards the ultimate goal of modeling in silico the construction of a full ribosome.

This grant provides continued support for the Johns Hopkins University Open Source Programs Office (OSPO), which is managed by Megan Forbes and directed by Bill Branan. With grant support, the OSPO plans to develop a Research Software Support Network (RSSN) to connect distributed expertise and services at the university, create visible pathways for researchers to find network participants, and ensure that available support aligns with researcher needs. The RSSN will span organizational units including the Libraries, Research Computing, Technology Ventures, and JHU’s new Data Science and AI Institute. A key component of the effort will be the development and implementation of a Research Software Assessment to identify the distinct needs of a given software project, positioning the OSPO as a network coordinator and research connector across the Johns Hopkins campus. The Foundation has provided $350,000 since 2020 in support of the Johns Hopkins University OSPO.

The NBER Summer Institute is a three-week megaconference that takes place every July in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It brings together thousands of economists from 50 subfields and over 400 institutions to participate in dozens of overlapping workshops. Agendas are built through an open call for papers and curated by over 150 organizers who select papers, invite discussants, and design sessions. Additional field-building activities include econometric methods lectures, research bootcamps for PhD students, first-timer breakfasts, late-afternoon networking events, and fellowships that support participation by faculty from minority-serving institutions. From 2026 to 2028, this grant will help pay for meeting rooms, audiovisual services, group meals, and other costs. Nearly all sessions and lectures are livestreamed and posted on the NBER YouTube channel. Together, these investments strengthen the economics profession by supporting intensive workshops, new collaborations, and broader access to frontier research.

In the search for exoplanet biosignatures, researchers have obtained an unprecedented volume of atmospheric spectra in recent years; primarily due to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST; online since 2022), with more data expected in the coming years and decades as several planned, ground-based, large telescopes come online. The relevant signal for quantifying a possible biosignature is the atmosphere’s spectrum: the amount of light transmitted through the atmosphere, at different wavelengths, when the planet passes in between its star and Earth. By determining which wavelengths are transmitted through the atmosphere, one can, in principle, determine which molecules are present in the atmosphere and then infer if those molecules imply the presence of life on the planet. There are challenges, however, to analyzing atmospheric spectra for the presence of molecules that signal life. First, current analysis models are too slow (computationally inefficient) and therefore only able to analyze a spectrum for the presence of one or two molecules at a time; this compared to a list of about 14,000 candidate biosignature molecules. Second, the library of known/tabulated molecular spectra is small, containing data for only a few hundred of the potential 14,000 biosignature molecules. Funds from this grant support a team led by Cecilia Garraffo, Director of the AstroAI Center at the Harvard/Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics to address both of these issues. Garraffo and her team will use advanced statistical techniques to iteratively improve a widely used analysis model, called POSEIDON, so that it can progressively analyze atmospheric spectra for many molecules at a time, rising eventually to an estimated 2000. In parallel, the team will use advanced machine learning techniques to develop, train, and validate an AI tool to predict how a molecule’s characteristics determine what sort of atmospheric spectra its presence would produce, adding an estimated 2000 molecules to the library that astronomers could use spectral analysis to search for. The effort, if successful, would lead to a significant improvement in our capacity to search atmospheric spectra for signs of extrasolar life.

This grant renews support for the Sloan Science on Screen Program in partnership with the Coolidge Corner Theatre, an independent cinema in Brookline, Massachusetts. The program provides awards to independent cinemas across the country to support science and film programming. These events showcase scientific experts at screenings of popular or cult-classic films for a discussion about the films’ scientific or technological themes. Sloan support will allow the Coolidge to make new grants to 70 participating theaters over the next two years, bringing the total number of independent cinema houses that have participated in Science on Screen to well over 150.