Project Grant DESC0025520

This three-year project grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074), provides $414,130 to Arizona State University to study the role of electron spin polarization in biological electron transport and redox enzymatic activity. The grantee will investigate how electrons travel long distances in biological materials that are poor conductors, and how enzymes accelerate chemical reactions that add...

This $650,001 federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CFDA 47.049) program supports research by the University of Chicago on the periplasmic biomineralization of semiconductors and semiconductor alloys for living photosensitive biomaterials. The goal is to establish a robust protocol for incorporating light-harvesting semiconductor nanoclusters into the periplasmic space of bacteria, which can enhance the efficiency of chemical...

This $375,000 project grant from the National Science Foundation's Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) supports the development of redox-based bioelectronics through the Semisynbio-III award to the University of Maryland, College Park. The three-year project will advance four technological areas to create communicating microbial cells and decision-making cells that can be instructed by electric inputs to perform logic operations by writing to genomes or adjusting consortium populations....

This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) provides $486,160 to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to conduct research on designing electrochemical photoreactors from single and ensemble multijunction silicon particles. The key objectives are to: Understand the chemical effects of liquid solutions on individual nanowire photovoltaic and photocatalyst properties, Investigate the electrochemical and photonic interactions of...

This three-year, $308,978 National Science Foundation project grant supports collaborative research between Professor José Gascón of the University of Connecticut and Professor Warren F. Beck of Michigan State University. The researchers will investigate the photophysical mechanisms cyanobacteria employ to protect themselves from excessive sunlight exposure. Specifically, they will determine how a ketocarotenoid bound to the Orange Carotenoid Protein serves as a light intensity and color sensor....

The National Science Foundation awarded $125,000 under the Engineering (47.041) federal grant program to The Regents of the University of California for a project titled "Charge Transfer at Abiotic-Biotic Interface for Photosynthetic Biohybrids." The University of California, Berkeley will utilize the funding from August 1, 2022 to July 31, 2026 to examine the fundamental electron transfer and energy transduction pathways in emerging photosynthetic biohybrid systems. Researchers will...

This $600,000 National Science Foundation Division of Chemistry Project Grant supports research into elucidating exciton transport in hierarchical organic materials through time-resolved electronic and vibrational spectroscopy/microscopy. Led by researchers at Montana State University and the University of Miami, the award will fund investigation of energy transport in light-harvesting superstructures comprised of stacked aromatic dyes covalently bonded together with molecular tethers. By...

This Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Chemistry, totaling $499,660, will support research into elucidating the electron transfer pathways involved in photo-catalytic hydrogen generation using semiconductor nanocrystals and hydrogenase enzymes. Principal Investigator Professor Gordana Dukovic of the University of Colorado Boulder will examine how properties of quantum dot nanocrystals, such as composition, diameter, and surface chemistry, impact binding with...

The National Science Foundation awarded a $374,615 project grant to the University of Texas at Austin from the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) on September 15, 2022 for work completing on August 31, 2025. The grant funds research to develop engineered protein nanowires using bacterial pili that conduct electricity by precisely designing and assembling DNA origami scaffolds. Researchers will characterize the nanowires' conductivities at the molecular scale and ultimately enable modular...

The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), under the Biomedical Research and Research Training program (CFDA 93.859), awarded a $260,940 Project Grant to The Regents of the University of California, operating as Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). The goal of this 2.5-year award, with a period of performance from July 2025 to February 2028, is to develop new X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) methods that can utilize ultra-short, femtosecond X-ray pulses from X-ray...