Federal Project Grant Award Summary

The University of Kansas Medical Center Research Institute, Inc. (KUMCRI) received a $349,436 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Emerging Frontiers under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) effective July 1, 2026, with completion targeted for June 30, 2028. The project addresses the critical challenge of predicting functional consequences of amino acid changes in proteins—a fundamental barrier to rational protein engineering and biotechnology innovation. The research will develop biophysical protein ladder standards designed to benchmark high-throughput studies, enabling more reliable prediction of how sequence modifications affect protein function and performance.

This work directly supports NSF's strategic priorities in artificial intelligence and biotechnology by tackling three key obstacles in protein engineering: the computational impossibility of measuring all possible amino acid variations across protein sequences, the current limitations of algorithmic prediction methods for functional consequences of mutations, and gaps in existing protein engineering approaches such as directed evolution. The deliverables will provide standardized reference materials and methodologies that advance the field's capacity to rationally design proteins with predictable, bespoke functions for biotechnology applications.