Federal Project Grant Award Summary

The National Science Foundation (NSF), Division of Emerging Frontiers, awarded $120,857 to Trustees of Boston University under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) for a one-year project beginning July 1, 2026 and concluding June 30, 2027. The award funds a graduate student scholar-in-residence position at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Living Measurement Systems Foundry to develop AI-ready data standardization and integration infrastructure for biological circuit design and analysis. The primary deliverable is refinement and application of KNOX, a software platform designed to organize, represent, and train machine learning models on datasets comprising more than 100,000 integrated genetic circuits. By combining high-quality experimental measurements with machine learning capabilities, the project accelerates the design-build-test-learn cycle, reducing experimental costs and improving reproducibility in biological engineering.

The project generates additional public-facing products, including a public KNOX instance, AI-ready datasets, and design rules that lower barriers to entry for researchers and educators working with biological circuits. The initiative strengthens national bioeconomy infrastructure by creating open, standards-aligned computational tools that enable faster and more accurate prediction of circuit behavior, thereby shortening development timelines and improving the reliability and shareability of engineered biological systems. The sustainable computational infrastructure deployed at NIST LMSF supports ongoing measurement-based standards development in synthetic biology and engineering biology.