Federal Grant Award Summary

The University of Texas at Dallas received a $286,781 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure under the Computer and Information Science and Engineering program (CFDA 47.070), awarded September 1, 2026, with completion by August 31, 2028. The NEXABIO (Next-Generation AI Biomaterials Workforce) initiative is a CyberTraining pilot program that delivers interdisciplinary training combining biomaterials expertise with data science and machine learning methods. The program's core products include a modular curriculum addressing polymer chemistry, biomaterials design, machine learning fundamentals, representation learning, model evaluation, and uncertainty quantification; cybertraining workshops and a ten-day summer bootcamp; invited lectures; and an online learning platform with personalized exercises and progress tracking capabilities.

Participants—both undergraduate and graduate students—complete hands-on projects utilizing publicly available biomaterials datasets to develop practical competencies in applications such as predicting drug and gene delivery performance, selecting candidate monomers for material design, and evaluating prediction reliability. By integrating computational tools with biomaterials research methodology, the program addresses a documented workforce development gap and builds institutional capacity for AI-driven innovation in healthcare technologies and advanced manufacturing. The initiative targets recruitment and retention of students in bioengineering and materials science disciplines while broadening access to emerging computational methods transforming scientific discovery.