Federal Grant Award Summary

The National Science Foundation's Division of Information and Intelligent Systems awarded George Washington University a $380,000 Project Grant on July 15, 2026, under the Computer and Information Science and Engineering program (CFDA 47.070) to develop hardware-algorithm co-design solutions for efficient artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators applied to molecular biology and genomics research. The project will deliver new AI algorithms capable of capturing direct and indirect interactions within complex biological networks, novel theoretical frameworks to exploit parallel processing capabilities, and specialized hardware designs optimized for scalable analysis of molecular and genomic relationships. These research outputs are expected to overcome current scalability barriers in machine learning applications for biomedical discovery, enabling faster and more accurate modeling of protein interactions and genome regulation. The award runs through June 30, 2030.

Research findings, simulation toolkits, and computational frameworks developed under this collaborative research initiative will be disseminated through peer-reviewed journal publications, conference presentations, and professional meetings to maximize community benefit. The project integrates AI models, graph theory, and hardware-software co-design principles to address fundamental challenges in analyzing multi-step biological dependencies. Beyond its technical contributions, the award emphasizes education and workforce development by integrating discovery research with graduate and undergraduate training in advanced computing methodologies for life sciences applications.