The National Science Foundation Division of Biological Infrastructure awarded Smith College $736,602 on January 15, 2027, to expand and refine EukPhylo, an open-source bioinformatic platform for phylogenomic analysis of microbial eukaryotes.
The project develops a user-friendly computational toolkit that integrates best practices from software engineering and incorporates artificial intelligence and machine learning to enable robust, reproducible analysis of genome-scale data from diverse microeukaryotic species including flagellates and amoebae. The platform addresses a gap in existing bioinformatic pipelines, which focus primarily on bacteria or animals and typically require substantial technical expertise, by lowering barriers to entry for scientists with variable bioinformatic skills. EukPhylo will generate standardized results suitable for hypothesis testing on ecologically important and disease-causing microbial species.
Work runs through December 31, 2029, and is performed in Northampton, Massachusetts. The award is funded under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074).
The project includes workforce development through training of undergraduate and graduate students and a postdoctoral fellow, and will produce written and video tutorials as well as public-facing training sessions to support adoption of the toolkit across the scientific community.