Federal Project Grant Award Summary

The University of California, San Francisco received a $562,484 Project Grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) under the Biomedical Research and Research Training program (CFDA 93.859) for the five-year period from May 1, 2026, through April 30, 2031. This award supports the development of next-generation visualization and analysis software tools designed to enable scientific discovery in biomedical research. The software will provide integrated visualizations and analyses of diverse biomolecular data, including atomic-resolution molecular coordinates, three-dimensional cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) density maps, and protein and nucleic acid sequences, annotations, and networks.

The primary deliverables focus on interactive visualization and analysis tools for molecular structures, molecular assemblies, and sequence-structure relationships that directly address critical biomedical research needs, such as identifying molecular bases of disease, discovering drug development targets, designing therapeutics, and engineering proteins with novel functions. UCSF will leverage highly trained personnel with specialized expertise in software engineering, computer graphics, and data analysis to develop and disseminate these tools. The resulting software, including the widely-recognized ChimeraX platform, will be distributed freely as executable applications and source code through the project website and GitHub repository, supported by comprehensive documentation, tutorials, scientific publications, and web-accessible training videos to maximize scientific impact and accessibility across the biomedical research community.