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Funding
Funding
HFSP supports novel, innovative and interdisciplinary basic research focused on the complex mechanisms of living organisms. A clear emphasis is placed on novel collaborations that bring biologists together to focus on problems at the frontier of the life sciences.
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Awardees
Awardees
In this section you find information about the awardees in the HFSP scientific programs. This includes a searchable database of HFSP awardees, information on the HFSP Nakasone Award and other achievements by HFSP awardees.
- News & Impact
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Events
Events
HFSP promotes and participates in several events every year. We are committed to bringing together the scientific community and forging new opportunities to network and have scientific discussions that help to create bridges and partnerships for the future of frontier science.
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About
About
The Human Frontier Science Program is a program of funding for frontier research in the life sciences. It is implemented by the International Human Frontier Science Program Organization (HFSPO) with its office in Strasbourg. Here you can find all you need to know about the HFSPO.
Awardees
2026
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Grant Awardees - Program Grants
Understanding the role of biodiversity in shaping immunity and spillover risks
FORNACE Kimberly (United States)
- National University of Singapore - Singapore - SINGAPORE
LAING Eric (United States)
- Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences - Bethesda - United States
SETHI Sarab (United Kingdom)
- Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine - London - United Kingdom
KARLSSON Erik (United States)
- Institut Pasteur Cambodia - Phnom Penh - United States
Most new infectious diseases in people originate in wildlife. Environmental changes, such as deforestation or the development of new urban areas, can bring human and wildlife populations into closer proximity to create new opportunities for infectious disease transmission. While it is often suggested that protecting biodiversity could prevent disease outbreaks, there is still limited evidence on how changes in ecosystems can influence the spread of multiple populations and pathogens and the way human and animal immune systems respond. To address this fundamental question, we will leverage innovative technological approaches to continuously monitor biodiversity, measure a broad range of immunological responses in people and wildlife representing current and past infections and apply new molecular approaches to track pathogen diversity and spread. We will apply these methods to a unique ecological change: the planned development of the new Indonesian capital in the highly biodiverse island of Borneo. Across a landscape representing different stages of development, we will implement acoustic sensor networks to provide continuous data on biodiversity changes and the distribution of people and wildlife. In parallel, we will conduct surveys to track exposures to different pathogens to understand resulting immune protection or vulnerability. Genomic studies will allow us to detect and measure the evolution of pathogens over time. These data will inform new epidemiological models designed to examine how biodiversity changes translate into disease risks. Through this multidisciplinary approach, we aim to understand the mechanisms through which biodiversity loss contributes to infectious disease emergence and identify early warning signals of outbreak risks. Ultimately, this will answer key questions on how living organisms respond to environmental change, providing critical insights for pandemic prevention, conservation and urban planning.
2026
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Grant Awardees - Program Grants
Evolution of extreme behavioral adaptations in the bat fly, a blood-feeding parasite of bats
GALLIO Marco (ITALY)
- Northwestern University - Evanston Campus - Chicago - United States
GREWE Felix (GERMANY)
- Field Museum of Natural History - CHICAGO - United States
SOARIMALALA Voahangy (Madagascar)
- Association Vahatra - Antananarivo - Madagascar
To adapt to an ever-changing environment, animals have evolved diverse, often extreme behaviors, yet our understanding of the mechanisms driving the evolution of behavior remains very limited. The flies (Diptera) are an especially good example of how rapidly and dramatically behavior can evolve: this group comprises ~120,000 described species containing a dazzling variety of physiological, morphological, and behavioral adaptations. Even within the Diptera, bat flies (Nycteribiidae and Streblidae) stand out as some of the most remarkable insects: having originated from a free-living ancestor ~50 million years ago, they evolved into blood-sucking parasites which rarely leave the bat host. Fitting with their lifestyle, bat flies are small, spider-like insects, wingless or with reduced wings, and with tiny eyes. All known bat flies spend their entire life in close association with the bat host, aided by a number of specific adaptations. For example, rather than laying hundreds of eggs on a substrate (as most other flies do), a single bat fly larva develops within the female, feeding on the secretion of the so-called milk glands. The bat fly mother gives birth to a single, fully developed larva that immediately pupariates in the vicinity of the bat roosting site. It is believed that the newly eclosed adult then finds a new bat host or host colony using olfactory and thermal cues. Because bat flies feed on the bat’s blood, they are considered a potential vector for pathogens within and between bat colonies, and yet we know little about the mechanisms underlying their physiology and behavior, or about how they evolved. Here, we propose to open a window on the evolutionary mechanisms that have accompanied the remarkable transformation of bat flies from a free-living fly-like insect into an obligate ectoparasite, focusing in particular on the mechanisms that tune their sensory systems for the recognition of their species-specific bat host. Our goal is to combine eco-ethological research in caves, genomic studies, and functional assays in the laboratory on selected genes, to understand the molecular and evolutionary mechanisms that underlie the unique adaptations of bat flies.
2026
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Grant Awardees - Program Grants
Control of mammalian embryo patterning and morphogenesis by opto-electrochemical gradients
VEENVLIET Jesse (NETHERLANDS)
- Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (Max-Planck-Institut für Molekulare Zellbiologie und Genetik) - Dresden - GERMANY
GLOWACKI Eric (POLAND)
- Brno University of Technology - Brno - CZECH REPUBLIC
SOZEN Berna (TURKEY)
- Yale University - New Haven - United States
Embryo development is a complex and precisely coordinated process, influenced by a combination of genetic instructions and signals from the environment surrounding the developing cells. While decades of research have made great strides in understanding the genetic side of this journey, the role of the surrounding environment —such as oxygen levels and the pH of the developing tissues—remains much less understood. Emerging research suggests metabolism does more than simply fuel cells; it may guide cell formation, movement, and organization. This concept revives an early 20th-century theory, which proposed that metabolic activity might form patterns across the embryo, influencing its growth and structure in a coordinated way. However, the tools to test this theory simply didn’t exist—until now. This project sets out to explore this fascinating concept: can oxygen and reactive oxygen species (ROS)—naturally occurring molecules that arise as byproducts of metabolism—act as signals to guide how the embryo takes shape? We believe that these molecules might form gradients, or invisible trails, that developing cells follow, determining their fate and position in the growing embryo. To unravel this mystery, our team is leveraging groundbreaking technologies, blending the latest in microelectronics and biosensors with cutting-edge experimental embryology and stem cell biology. Using these advanced microelectronic tools, we will be able to control and precisely adjust oxygen and ROS levels during embryo development, both in live embryos and in lab-grown models generated from stem cells. By combining these innovative approaches, we aim to create a detailed, three-dimensional map showing how oxygen and ROS work in concert with genetic instructions to guide the formation of the body’s major structures, such as the head-to-tail axis. These insights could help answer some of the most profound questions in developmental biology: how does an embryo know where to place its organs, and what happens when this process goes awry? Ultimately, our research could open new avenues for understanding developmental disorders and offer fresh perspectives on how a healthy organism is built from the very first moments of life. This work could one day pave the way for interventions that ensure embryos develop properly, offering hope to those affected by conditions rooted in early development
2026
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Grant Awardees - Program Grants
mech.nano.morph: Decoding mechanical principles of nanometric morphogenesis
RAIBLE Florian (GERMANY)
- University of Vienna (Universität Wien) - Vienna - AUSTRIA
GORIELY Alain (BELGIUM)
- University of Oxford - Oxford - United Kingdom
How do living cells synthesise objects smaller than a speck of dust, yet shaped with extraordinary precision? Many animals produce intricate microscopic structures—ridges, toothed blades, paddles, hooks, or joints—that give them colour, or help them move. These are often made from chitin, one of the world’s most abundant biopolymers, but formed at a microscopic scale, smaller than the width of a human hair. We still know little about how individual cells can build such complex objects so reliably and with such diversity. Our project focuses on marine bristle worms, whose bristles are made by highly specialised cells. These cells work much like miniature three-dimensional printers: tiny protrusions on their surface move in specific patterns while depositing chitin, shaping each bristle into its final specific form. Depending on the fine orchestration of this deposition process, many different shapes are possible. By combining advanced light and electron microscopy with mathematical modelling and experimental manipulation, we will study exactly how these projections move, how their movements translate into the shapes we see, and which molecular factors encode the enigmatic programme that orchestrates this process with nanometric precision. Informed by detailed observations, we will first create a mathematical model that generates an algorithm that can “print” virtual bristles, allowing us to explore the full range of shapes that could, in principle, be made by a given set of cellular movements. In turn, we will compare this virtual space of possible shapes to the ones we observe in real worms, including natural variations and those produced by targeted experimental changes. In the second phase, we will investigate the genetic and molecular codes that control these processes and instruct the cell on how to move its projections, so that the right shape is produced at the right time. By understanding these processes, we aim to uncover the general principles that nature uses to perform nano-morphogenesis, that is how cells build small but highly complex structures. Such insights will inspire new ways to design materials and devices in nanotechnology, while deepening our understanding of one of nature’s smallest and yet extremely precise synthesis machines.
2026
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Grant Awardees - Program Grants
Revealing the Hidden World of Heme Proteins in True Colour
OGILVIE Jennifer (CANADA)
- University of Ottawa - Ottawa - CANADA
KUKURA Philipp (United Kingdom)
- University of Oxford - Oxford - United Kingdom
SLIWA Michel (FRANCE)
- CNRS - Délégation Ile-de-France Gif-sur-Yvette (DR04) - Gif-sur-Yvette - Palaiseau - FRANCE
HAMZA Iqbal (United States)
- University of Maryland, Baltimore - Baltimore - United States
Heme proteins represent one of biology's most diverse and critical protein families, with tens of thousands of variants performing essential roles across all domains of life—from oxygen transport to drug metabolism. Despite their ubiquity and importance, we lack a basic understanding of how heme is trafficked, distributed, and inserted into proteins to enable them to fulfill their many crucial functions. This knowledge gap stems from heme's dual nature as both an essential cofactor and a cytotoxic, hydrophobic molecule requiring sophisticated cellular handling. Current microscopy approaches, while achieving sub-diffraction resolution and single-molecule sensitivity, are limited by their reliance on molecular reporters and fluorescence detection. Genetically encoded sensors perturb the heme pools they investigate, while chemical probes cannot be biosynthesized in situ and present challenges with membrane permeability and non-physiological accumulation. Label-free methods such as Raman and pump-probe microscopy lack sensitivity for physiologically relevant heme concentrations. Recent interferometric scattering microscopy developments demonstrate unprecedented sensitivity but cannot access absorption-based spectroscopic information that can report on heme protein identity, ligation and redox state. Fourier transform (FT) spectroscopy offers molecularly specific information but lacks sensitivity and spatial-temporal resolution. This project combines the sensitivity of interferometric imaging with FT spectroscopy's molecular discrimination capabilities to yield comprehensive imaging modalities with widefield and point-scanning configurations attaining sensitivity at the single-molecule level. These modalities will enable non-invasive, quantitative analysis of heme protein dynamics in living systems. We will systematically apply the methods in cells and animals to elucidate fundamental mechanisms governing heme transport, subcellular distribution, and incorporation into proteins. Such insights have broad implications, informing therapeutic strategies for targeting parasitic organisms that threaten global health, agriculture, and food security.
2026
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Grant Awardees - Program Grants
Sleep without the brain: Characterizing Signatures and Roles of Sleep in the Spinal Cord
TAKEOKA Aya (JAPAN)
- RIKEN Center for Brain Science (RIKEN CBS) - Wako - JAPAN
LIU Sha (CHINA)
- Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie (Flanders Institute for Biotechnology, VIB) - Gent - BELGIUM
HENGEN Keith (United States)
- Washington University in St.Louis - Saint Louis - United States
Scientists have long believed that sleep happens only in the brain to regulate cognitive functions like learning, but this groundbreaking research challenges that idea by investigating whether the spinal cord can also sleep. The spinal cord can learn and remember movements even when disconnected from the brain, but we currently do not understand how this works. Here, we test if sleep-like states in the spinal cord help strengthen these memories, working independently from brain sleep. Our research aims to unveil that spinal cord sleep exists and understand why it matters. We plan to answer this in three main approaches: First, we will use advanced nerve activity recording technology in the brain and the spinal cord and artificial intelligence to detect whether the spinal cord has its own sleep patterns. We'll compare spinal cord activity in mice with intact spinal cords versus those with severed connections to the brain, checking if spinal sleep looks like brain sleep or has its own unique pattern. Second, we will examine the molecular changes that happen during spinal cord sleep by studying individual cells and their gene expression patterns. We'll compare these changes to what we already know about brain sleep to see if they work similarly or differently. Third, we will test whether spinal cord sleep is actually necessary for learning that happens within the spinal cord without brain input. We will achieve this by training mice with spinal cord injuries to move their legs in response to specific cues. While monitoring their spinal cord activity, we will test three ideas: 1) Sleep is needed to strengthen the nerve connections that store memories, 2) Sleep helps maintain the optimal balance of nerve activity for efficient learning, and 3) Learning experiences trigger the need for sleep in spinal cord circuits. By combining cutting-edge nerve activity recording techniques, genetic analysis, and computer modeling, this research aims to determine whether sleep is required by all learning networks throughout the nervous system, not just the brain. Understanding how the spinal cord sleeps could lead to new treatments for spinal cord injuries and reveal fundamental principles about how our nervous system processes information and forms memories. This discovery could alter our understanding of sleep, learning, and recovery from neurological injuries.
2026
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Grant Awardees - Program Grants
Rictal bristles - a potential novel sensor for the perception of high-frequency sounds in birds
HOFFMANN Susanne (GERMANY)
- Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence - Planegg-Martinsried - GERMANY
MALDONADO-CHAPARRO Adriana (COLOMBIA)
- Universidad del Rosario (Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora del Rosario) - Bogotá - COLOMBIA
Animals perceive their environment, including sound, through their senses. Sound is created by vibrations that travel as waves through a medium like air or water, and animals perceive sound with their sense of hearing. Sound waves occur at different frequencies, and each species is able to hear different segments of this frequency range. Sound is used by animals mainly for communication with conspecifics over longer distances. However, some animals, like toothed whales and bats, use sound to navigate in the dark, a system called echolocation. These animals emit sounds and listen to the echoes that bounce back from objects around them. This allows them to create a mental map of the surrounding environment. Interestingly, oilbirds, fruit-eating, nocturnal birds that live in caves in the South American forest, also use echolocation. But the sounds emitted by oilbirds for echolocation consist of frequencies beyond the oilbird’s hearing range. This puzzle suggests that oilbirds may be using a sense other than hearing to detect the echoes of their echolocation sounds. A team composed by SUSANNE HOFFMANN (Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence in Germany), who is a neuroscience specialist, and ADRIANA MALDONADO-CHAPARRO (Universidad del Rosario in Colombia), who is an expert in avian behavioral ecology, will investigate a new idea: Could the oilbird use its rictal bristles—stiff, hair-like feathers around the beak—to feel the vibrations of the sounds? The researchers propose that the bristles can serve as an acoustotactile sensor for high-frequency sounds, which, if true, constitutes a new kind of non-auditory sound perception. To test this idea, the team will work with wild oilbirds in Colombian forests. They will use advanced wireless technology to study the activity in the oilbird’s brain during echolocation behavior. They will also equip the birds with small wireless microphones and GPS trackers, allowing them to study the birds’ vocalization behavior as they navigate their natural environment. If successful, the team will describe a new sense for sound perception, which is independent of the sense of hearing. This new knowledge could be helpful for engineers, who, for example, develop new hearing aid technologies.
2026
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Grant Awardees - Program Grants
Across-Scale Ecological and Evolutionary Responses of Major Upwelling Ecosystems to Climate Change
VALDOVINOS Fernanda (CHILE)
- The Regents of the University of California, on Behalf of its Davis Campus - Davis - United States
LIMA Fernando (PORTUGAL)
- Associação BIOPOLIS - Vairão - PORTUGAL
REZENDE Enrico (CHILE)
- Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (Pontifical Catholic University of Chile) - Santiago - CHILE
HUI Cang (CHINA)
- Stellenbosch University - Stellenbosch - SOUTH AFRICA
This project brings together a global team to develop a powerful tool for understanding and predicting how the planet’s most sensitive and important ecosystems respond to climate change. The tool will be created with a focus on the planet’s four major upwelling regions, located off the coasts of North America, South America, Europe, and Africa. These areas of the ocean have exceptionally high levels of biological productivity, making them both ecologically and economically important. Despite their importance, we have a limited understanding of the basic biological processes that help each upwelling ecosystem function and how those processes might differ from one region to the next. This project will develop this understanding, building on cutting-edge ecological, physiological, evolutionary, and mathematical techniques, with a foundation in ground-level measurements of organisms in each region. The global team brings local knowledge for each system and the interdisciplinarity needed for a global tool that can describe these ecosystems. Valdovinos (California, USA) is an expert in theoretical ecology and food webs, Lima (Portugal) is an expert in developing technology to measure environmental temperatures, Rezende (Chile) is an expert in the physiological response of organisms to temperature and describing the evolutionary relatedness of organisms, and Hui (South Africa) is an expert in biomathematics and modeling ecological and evolutionary processes. For each upwelling region, the team will work together to describe the local food web, measure environmental temperatures and upwelling profiles, and determine how key species respond and survive stressful temperatures. These key pieces of information will be expanded to all species in each food web, based on their evolutionary history - for instance, closely related species likely have the same sensitivity to temperature. All information will be brought together in a single mathematical modelling tool to understand how the food web, with its underlying ecological processes and potential for adaptation, responds to environmental conditions. Once the tool is developed, the team can carry out unprecedented comparisons of the four upwelling regions; this can reveal unique traits and tendencies of each region and ultimately strengthen our ability to predict how each region responds to future climate scenarios.
2026
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Grant Awardees - Program Grants
Dissecting how petal microstructure shapes the thermal microenvironment of flowers
KOSKI Matthew (United States)
- Clemson University - Clemson - United States
MOYROUD Edwige (FRANCE)
- The Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University of Cambridge - Cambridge - United Kingdom
ISHII Satoshi (JAPAN)
- National Institute for Materials Science, Japan - Tsukuba - JAPAN
Temperature has a profound influence on plants' fitness and their ability to reproduce successfully. In the context of a rapidly changing climate, where heat waves are becoming increasingly prevalent, understanding how plants develop strategies to withstand and adapt to such high temperatures is critical. Flowering plants are wonderful engineers, capable of sculpting their organs to produce surfaces with remarkable properties, allowing them to manipulate the behavior of other organisms (for example, attracting pollinators or repelling herbivores) and deal with environmental stresses (for example, protecting reproductive organs from damaging UV and preventing water-loss). However, how they do so is not well-understood. Here we propose to combine experiments in the lab with computational modelling and field work to understand how plants can produce flowers with cooling properties and how such properties impact plants interactions with pollinators and their ability to adapt to different environments. Our novel and interdisciplinary research will help us understand plants’ engineering skills, generate the knowledge we need to produce flowers with cooling or heating properties and uncover crucial mechanisms allowing plants to cope with a changing world.
2026
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Grant Awardees - Program Grants
Regulation of collective cell migration by electromechanical patterns in the gut
KRNDIJA Denis (Croatia (Hrvatska))
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique / Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology Unit - Toulouse - FRANCE
SAW Thuan Beng (MALAYSIA)
- Westlake University - Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province - CHINA
JÜLICHER Frank (GERMANY)
- Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems - Dresden - GERMANY
Collective cell migration (CCM) is a fundamental biological process, driving tissue formation during development, closing wounds after injury, and maintaining barriers in adult organs. By enabling groups of cells to move together in a coordinated way over long distances, CCM ensures that tissues remain functional and resilient. The intestinal epithelium provides a striking example. It is one of the fastest-renewing tissues in the body, where CCM continuously transports cells from their birthplace in crypts to the tips of villi, where they are shed. This constant movement is essential for gut homeostasis: without it, both the protective barrier against microbes and the absorptive surface for nutrients would fail. Yet how such precise, long-range migration is orchestrated remains poorly understood. Mechanical forces such as stretching and compression are known to influence cell migration. Tissues also generate electrical signals, and studies in simpler systems suggest that these bioelectric cues may be equally important. In the intestine, coordinated ion transport and tight junctions establish a natural potential difference across the epithelium. We propose that this transepithelial potential pattern, shaped by the gut’s 3D architecture, coordinates mechanical and electrical signals to guide CCM robustly. To test this idea, our interdisciplinary team will integrate biology, biophysics, and theoretical modelling. We will develop advanced imaging and microelectrode tools to track electrical activity alongside mechanical stresses, combine these with organoid and “Electro-gut” chip models that recreate tissue geometry, and validate findings in physiologically relevant gut systems. By perturbing known regulators and performing unbiased screens, we aim to uncover how epithelial cells sense and integrate electrical and mechanical cues during migration. This project will reveal how electrical and mechanical signals are coupled in living tissues to sustain continuous, directional cell migration while preserving integrity and function, uncovering fundamental principles that allow organs like the gut to maintain homeostasis throughout life.
2026
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Grant Awardees - Program Grants
Silencing Active Synapses: STAmP for Selective Synaptic Inhibition in Neural Circuits
MCHUGH Thomas (United States)
- RIKEN Center for Brain Science (RIKEN CBS) - Wako - JAPAN
LIN Michael (United States)
- The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University - Stanford - United States
KIM Jinhyun (Korea (South))
- Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) - Seoul - Korea (South)
The brain is a complex organ, with billions of neurons each synapsing onto multiple unique partners, forming intricate networks that control everything from memory and emotion to movement and decision-making. However, not all synapses are the same—even between two similar cells, the role of a connection can vary greatly depending on the type of neuron sending the message and the type receiving it. To truly understand how the brain works—and how problems in these connections may lead to diseases like epilepsy, autism, or dementia—we need tools that allow us to silence specific synapses without affecting the entire cell or nearby connections. However, currently, no such tool exists. This project aims to develop and apply novel technology that will allow us to precisely block communication at selected synapses, based on the identity of both the sending and receiving neurons. Inspired by previous work that used engineered proteins to visualize specific connections, we will instead use similar principles to selectively block them. By modifying the naturally occurring tetanus toxin protein, which can enzymatically silence neuronal transmission, and making it activatable by light, we will gain unprecedented control over which synapses are turned off, when, and for how long. Once developed and optimized, this tool will be used in animal models to explore how different types of connections in the brain's memory center, the hippocampus. contribute to learning and memory. Ultimately, this tool will enable neuroscientists across fields and model organisms to map and manipulate the brain’s wiring with a new level of precision, paving the way for new treatments for brain disorders and a deeper understanding of how we think, feel, and remember.
2026
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Grant Awardees - Program Grants
The evolution, functions, and receptors of socially transferred materials
LEBOEUF Adria (United States)
- The Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University of Cambridge - Cambridge - United Kingdom
KOENE Joris (NETHERLANDS)
- VU University Amsterdam (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, VU) - Amsterdam - NETHERLANDS
STYNOSKI Jennifer (COSTA RICA)
- Universidad de Costa Rica (University of Costa Rica) - San José - COSTA RICA
Across animals, organisms have repeatedly evolved ways to transfer materials between bodies that manipulate or support receiver physiology, fertility, or behavior. These socially transferred materials (STMs) represent convergent solutions to fundamental adaptive challenges in nutrition provisioning, reproductive control, and microbial community management. Despite their ecological importance and applied potential—from in vitro fertilization protocols to agricultural applications—we lack a comprehensive understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying STM function across evolutionary distant lineages. Recent advances in genomics, proteomics, orthology and spatial biology now enable systematic investigation of STM evolution at unprecedented scale. The key insight driving this proposal is that if STMs represent convergent evolutionary solutions, we should observe molecular signatures of this convergence across distant taxa. By integrating phyloproteomics with functional validation across arthropods, molluscs, and chordates, we can identify both universal mechanisms and lineage-specific innovations. The field currently lacks: (1) systematic comparative analysis of STM proteomes across metazoan diversity, (2) mechanistic understanding of where STM proteins act in receivers, and (3) experimental validation of cross-taxa STM functionality. This proposal addresses all three gaps through an integrated approach that combines big data mining with mechanistic experimentation.
2026
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Research Grants - Early Career
Windows to the past: functional evolution of vision in trilobites
SUMNER-ROONEY Lauren (United Kingdom)
- University of Bristol - Bristol - United Kingdom
PARRY Luke (United Kingdom)
- University of Oxford - Oxford - United States
LEE Gil Ju (Korea (South))
- Pusan National University - Busan - Korea (South)
Trilobites are an iconic group of extinct animals that dominated the world’s oceans for over 250 million years. They occupied a huge diversity of habitats, from shallow water to the deep sea, and had lifestyles encompassing scavenging on the seafloor, burrowing in sediments, and catching prey in the open ocean. One of the most distinctive features of trilobites is their compound eyes, which are made of hundreds to thousands of individual lenses like those of modern insects and crustaceans. Eyes are typically not preserved in fossils, as they are often lost to decay or subsequent geological processes, but trilobite eyes are unique in that they are made of mineral calcite. As a result, they are often preserved in sufficient detail to see individual lenses, less than one tenth of a millimeter in diameter, capturing a blueprint for how they saw the world. This unique record of ancient vision not only offers a rare opportunity to study the evolution of visual systems based on direct evidence over long timescales, but contains several unique eye types that are not known in nature today. While the oldest trilobites are thought to have had eyes functionally similar to modern insects, trilobites subsequently evolved two entirely novel eye designs whose functions remain somewhat enigmatic. In turn, trilobites are also a rich potential source of inspiration for biomimetic engineered imaging systems. We will apply modern imaging, analytical, and optical modelling techniques to the exceptional fossil record of trilobites, to reconstruct how they saw the world around them, unravel how their vision was interwoven with their evolutionary longevity and success, and identify key optical and neural principles that may have underpinned their unique eyes. Our central objectives are: 1. To simulate how trilobites with different morphologies and ecologies viewed their natural environments, and identify key adaptations of their eye structure that were suited to this task. 2. To reconstruct the evolutionary trajectories of eye size, shape, and loss across the entire 270 million-year history of trilobites, in order to identify their interactions with ecological transitions, speciation, and extinction. 3. To model the optical and neural mechanisms of vision in trilobites, focussing on the mysterious schizochroal eye, and applying these findings to novel engineered imaging systems.
2026
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Grant Awardees - Program Grants
Using Robotics to Unearth the Hidden Subterranean Ecology of Mole-Rats
ROTICS Shay (ISRAEL)
- Tel Aviv University - Tel Aviv - ISRAEL
SEO TaeWon (Korea (South))
- Industry-University Cooperation Foundation of Hanyang University - Seoul - Korea (South)
Numerous species spend part or all of their lives underground, inside burrow systems which provide essential shelter from climate and predation, and are among the largest structures built by animals. Burrow architecture would be expected to optimize internal conditions and functionality; however, these aspects remain poorly understood. This is because the primary method of investigating complex burrow systems has been by excavating them, a laborious and destructive method that limits the extent of research and precludes recording internal conditions and structural dynamics. We propose an interdisciplinary collaboration to develop a miniaturized robot for burrow exploration and to use it to advance our understanding of burrowing animal ecology. Thus, our aim is twofold, first, development of a burrow-exploring robot, capable of traversing underground tunnels, mapping their structure, and recording imagery and internal conditions including temperature, humidity, oxygen and CO2 concentrations. This innovative, non-destructive method will provide novel data on burrow structure, dynamics and internal environmental conditions. Second, using the robot we will study a strictly subterranean model species, the Middle East blind mole-rat (Nannospalax ehrenbergi), which inhabits complex, sealed, burrow systems. We will examine the ecological drivers that shape burrow architecture and their associations with internal conditions. We will also track the mole-rat behaviour underground using body acceleration biologging to relate it to burrow construction and internal conditions. Combinedly, we will address three ecological goals: (a) Understand burrow architecture regularities and variability by mapping multiple burrow systems across individuals and habitats; (b) Investigate burrow construction processes through repeated mapping over seasons and by field experiments including animal translocations; (c) Characterize internal burrow conditions and link them with burrow architecture and with the resident animal activity. We believe that the findings, together with the ground-breaking methodology developed in this project, will advance the frontiers of knowledge on animal burrow ecology, and pave the way for research in other subterranean species.
2025
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Grant Awardees - Program Grants
Musculoskeletal system of head-first burrowers: an interdisciplinary approach
MOAZEN Mehran (United Kingdom)
- University College London - London - United Kingdom
KOHLSDORF Tiana (BRAZIL)
- University of Sao Paulo (Universidade de São Paulo), USP - Ribeirão Preto - BRAZIL
BIRKEDAL Henrik (DENMARK)
- Aarhus University (Aarhus Universitet, AU) - Aarhus - DENMARK
ADRIAENS Dominique (BELGIUM)
- Ghent University (Universiteit Gent) - Gent - BELGIUM
Head-first burrowing is a specialized locomotory behaviour in vertebrates and is least understood compared to e.g. flying and swimming. We do not understand how small, mainly limbless, animals with head sizes less than 10mm can build tunnels through different soils, or navigate their way forward. They apply forces much greater than their body weight, and their heads have evolved to do so without damage. Understanding how they manage this rather extraordinary task is the main focus of this project. The interdisciplinary and international team assembled here will decode the musculoskeletal system of a specific group of head-first burrowers called amphisbaenians to an unprecedented level. Amphisbaenians look a bit like snakes but are specialised lizard with four distinctly different head shapes (shovel, spade, keel, round). These different snout shapes are thought to reflect their burrowing methods, but there may be other driving factors that we still do not know about. The four contributing labs will use a range of advanced techniques to study amphisbaenian: (1) Moazen lab will characterise the mechanics of their skull bones and joints and how it interacts with different soils using computed tomography, image processing & computer simulations; (2) Kohlsdorf lab will measure the forces acting on their skulls using real life measurement and unravel their genomes to understand how genetically di/similar they are to one another; (3) Birkedal lab will examine the chemical composition and nanostructure of their skull tissues and explore potential links with their genetics and overall shape and size; (4) Adriaens lab will investigate the role of muscles and sensory organs within their skin, and their movement in different soils. This basic science project will unravel how an understudied group of reptiles function and produce unexpected levels of force. The findings of this project can help scientists from several fields. It can inform tissue engineers on the interplay between forces, function, and gene expression that can lead to novel tissue engineering/regeneration approaches. It can enable engineers to develop miniaturised robots for various applications such biomedical engineering or excavation. Most importantly, it will train the next generation of scientists to learn from nature and translate this knowledge into applications for mankind.
2025
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Long-Term Fellowships - LTF
PTMs as master regulators of splicing factor activity
AMAHONG Kuerbannisha (CHINA)
. - Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT - Cambridge - United States
BURGE Christopher (Host supervisor)
Summary: Every cell in our body contains thousands of proteins whose activities must be precisely tuned to match
the cell's needs at any given moment. One of the most important ways cells achieve this tuning is through
post-translational modifications - chemical tags added to proteins after they are made. These tags act
like molecular switches, turning proteins on or off, changing where they go inside the cell, and altering
who they interact with. Among the proteins most critically shaped by these modifications are splicing
factors, which control how genetic information is read out. Splicing factors determine which versions
of thousands of genes are produced in each cell type, and their choices are what make a liver cell different
from a brain cell, or a stem cell different from a mature blood cell. Despite decades of research, we do
not understand how these chemical tags reshape what splicing factors do across the genome - which
genes they control, how strongly they act, and where they bind. This project will answer that question
for the first time.
Aims: Our research is structured around two aims. First, we will systematically map how specific chemical
modifications change the activity of splicing factors across the entire genome. To do this, we will
chemically block each type of modification - using well-established inhibitor drugs - and measure how
the splicing factor behaves with and without the modification using genome-wide sequencing. We will
build upon a new computational tool, KATMAP, developed by our host laboratory, which can read these
sequencing datasets and reconstruct a precise picture of where and how strongly a splicing factor acts
on thousands of genes simultaneously. This will reveal, for a panel of splicing factors spanning three
major modification types, exactly what each modification changes: whether it alters which genes are
targeted, how strongly the factor acts at different positions around a gene, or whether it shifts the factor's
preference for certain RNA sequences.
Second, we will investigate the molecular reasons behind these changes and ask whether they have been
preserved by evolution. For splicing factors where we find that a modification matters, we will directly
capture the RNA molecules that the modified versus unmodified protein is bound to inside living cells,
using a two-step biochemical method we will develop and validate as part of this project. We will also
examine where inside the cell nucleus the splicing factor sits - since location determines which genes a
factor can access. Finally, we will use genomic data from 240 mammalian species to identify which
modification sites on splicing factors have been conserved across tens of millions of years of evolution
and experimentally test whether removing those sites disrupts normal gene regulation.
Outcome: The anticipated outcome is the first systematic map of how post-translational modifications reshape the
regulatory activity of splicing factors. This will reveal which modifications matter, what they change,
and why evolution has preserved them - defining a previously uncharacterized layer of gene regulation
that connects the cell's metabolic and developmental state to the specific versions of proteins it produces.
Impacts: The impact of this project extends beyond the study of splicing. By revealing how chemical signals are
translated into specific changes in gene readout, this research will illuminate fundamental principles of
how cells adapt their gene expression programs during development and differentiation. The
computational and experimental tools developed here will be broadly applicable to studying how other
protein modifications shape gene regulation, opening new directions across molecular biology and cell
biology.
2025
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Grant Awardees - Program Grants
Vibrational sensing and production in fishes: investigations of the underwater vibroscape
ROBERTS Louise (United Kingdom)
- University of Liverpool - Liverpool - United Kingdom
SISNEROS Joseph (United States)
- University of Washington - Seattle - United States
AMORIM Clara (PORTUGAL)
- FCiências.ID – Associação para a Investigação e Desenvolvimento de Ciências - Lisbon - PORTUGAL
MILLER James (United States)
- University of Rhode Island - Kingston - United States
While human ears are designed to detect sound, our fingertips introduce us to a sensory world where mechanical waves are “felt” as they travel through surfaces. Substrate-borne communication and sensing through vibration are, in fact, widespread across the animal kingdom. Fish behaviour frequently involves the production of sounds or visual signals (such as “trembling”) when they are in, on, or near substrates. Despite the likelihood of energy transfer between media (water-substrate), the extent to which vibrations travel through surfaces and their role in fish ecology remain largely unexplored. The vibrational landscape, or vibroscape, may be a crucial component of a fish’s perceptual world, overlapping with the soundscape. Our investigation will focus on whether fishes produce and respond to vibrational signals and cues, and how far these vibrations propagate through substrates. To achieve this, we will measure substrate vibrations (using acoustical oceanography and engineering methods), conduct playback experiments (integrating behaviour, bioacoustics, neurophysiology), and interpret our data through the lens of biotremology (vibrational communication). Our interdisciplinary team is well-positioned to uncover a new mode of communication in fish, and to reveal a previously uncharted sensory landscape in marine ecology, the underwater vibroscape.
2025
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Long-Term Fellowships - LTF
Unravelling the role of proboscis neuronal populations in Aedes aegypti blood feeding behavior
ARNOLDI Irene (ITALY)
. - Radboud University Medical Center (Radboudumc) - Nijmegen - NETHERLANDS
HOL Felix (Host supervisor)
Mosquitoes are often depicted as the deadliest animals of the world. Despite being a bit confusing, this sentence is partially true: mosquitoes which perform blood feeding on humans are a huge burden for our society, mainly due to their ability to transmit pathogens causing potentially deadly diseases, including plasmodium, which causes malaria, and mosquito-borne viruses, such as dengue, Chikungunya and Zika. Among blood feeding species, only female mosquitoes need to feed on a vertebrate host to acquire blood, which is used as a nutrient source to complete egg development. Indeed, immature females and males are innocuous, as they feed on nectar. Mosquitoes find a human host by exploiting visual, thermal, and olfactory cues; next, they land on the human skin and move their proboscis around until identifying, based on unknown mechanisms, an area to insert their mouthparts. The mosquito proboscis comprises the labium, which is retracted during blood feeding, and the needle-like labrum, which forms the alimentary canal and is inserted in the skin while biting. The labium and the labrum harbour sensory neurons which are thought to be involved in the perception of chemical and physical stimuli during feeding. The labium is committed to nectar perception but could have a role in identifying a good area to pierce while inspecting human skin before biting, while the labrum is involved in blood perception. While probing the skin, mosquitoes salivate and insert and move their stylets in this tissue, to find a blood vessel to pierce. Then, they start engorging with blood and, finally, they remove their mouthparts from the skin and fly away for digestion. Blood feeding is pivotal in mosquito biology and highly relevant for humans, due to the risk of pathogen transmission through the injection of pathogen-enriched saliva at the site of bite. Despite its importance, we know very little about this process and particularly about how chemical stimuli, such as blood-related compounds, or physical stimuli, including temperature or blood flow, are sensed and integrated by sensory neurons within proboscis. This lack of knowledge prevents us from identifying what makes mosquitoes such efficient feeders, impeding the design of targeted innovative tools to interfere with blood feeding and relieve the burden of vector-borne diseases. To fill this knowledge gap, I aim to understand the role of different neurons of the labrum and the labium in the perception of chemical, thermal and mechanical stimuli during blood feeding, by studying the yellow fever mosquito Aedes aegypti, an invasive species competent for the transmission of several arboviruses. To fulfil this objective, I will identify and select different populations of labrum and labium neurons, involved in three sensory modalities (chemosensation, thermosensation, and mechanosensation) during blood feeding. By exploiting genetic engineering, I will identify the chemical, thermal and mechanical stimuli which activate each selected population of neurons. Finally, I will use a behavioral assay for the quantitative evaluation of biting and feeding behaviors of individual mosquitoes, to investigate the effect on blood feeding of the elimination of populations of proboscis neurons. This approach will allow me to identify the role of different neurons in the mosquito proboscis in exploiting different chemical and physical stimuli to locate blood vessels in the skin. The results of this research project will provide new insights about mosquito neurosensory system in blood feeding and could also be exploited to study other processes in these and other insects. The pathways which I will characterize through this project can be targeted in the future to inhibit the blood feeding process in mosquitoes, leading to the development of novel strategies for mosquito management and control of vector-borne diseases.
2025
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Grant Awardees - Program Grants
Visualizing and dissecting spatial translation dynamics across developmental time
GHAVI-HELM Yad (France, Metropolitan)
- École Normale Supérieure de Lyon (ENS Lyon) - Lyon - FRANCE
ASHE Hilary (United Kingdom)
- University of Manchester - Manchester - United Kingdom
SAWH Ahilya (CANADA)
- The Governing Council of the University of Toronto - Toronto - CANADA
Understanding how genes are precisely regulated at the cellular level is crucial for the proper development and function of organisms. Recent technological advances have allowed scientists to study the abundance and spatial distribution of mRNAs (the molecules that carry genetic instructions from DNA to make proteins) within individual cells. However, just measuring mRNA levels does not always give an accurate picture of how much protein is being produced, as this process is tightly regulated at the translation stage (when mRNA is converted into protein). Unfortunately, the extent of this regulation is still not well understood due to technical challenges. To address this gap, our goal is to develop a new method called \"spatial translatomics\" that will allow us to study how translation is regulated during development. We plan to combine expertise in molecular biology, advanced imaging, computational analysis, and developmental biology to achieve this. We will use the Drosophila embryo (fruit fly) as our model system because of its advantages for studying gene regulation during development. First, we will visualize and measure the translation of thousands of mRNAs in single cells at key stages of Drosophila embryogenesis. This will give us a detailed view of how translation is regulated at the cellular level. Next, we will identify groups of mRNAs that are co-regulated during translation and focus on RNA-binding proteins that control this process. We will use innovative genetic and genomic techniques, and spatial translatomics to uncover the mechanisms behind this regulation. Finally, we will study how mRNAs are directed to specific regions in the cell known as \"translation factories,\" where clusters of mRNAs are efficiently translated into proteins. We will combine chromosome tracing with spatial translatomics to test the idea that genes that are transcribed together may be efficiently directed to these translation factories. This research will provide a comprehensive view of how translation is controlled at a high spatial resolution during development in Drosophila. Moreover, our method will offer new insights into translational regulation that could be applied to other model systems, potentially transforming the way scientists study gene expression in diverse organisms.
2025
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Long-Term Fellowships - LTF
Re-engineering memory engrams in mice with brain machine interfaces
ASUMBISA Kadjita (Ghana/Canada)
. - Biozentrum University of Basel - Basel - SWITZERLAND
DONATO Flavio (Host supervisor)
Memory is one of the brain’s most essential functions, enabling us to recall past episodes and learn from our experiences. At the core of this process are memory engrams – groups of neurons believed to store or “bookmark” memories in the brain. These engram neurons work together through coordinated activity, but how these memory networks are formed and the plasticity mechanisms that govern them remain poorly understood. In the 1940s, Donald Hebb proposed a theory to explain engram formation, famously suggesting that “cells that fire together, wire together”. He posited that repeated co-activity strengthens the connections between neurons, allowing the activation of a subset of the network to reinstate an entire memory through pattern completion – where the network is driven into a state that recalls the full memory. In such systems, memory is distributed across many neurons, meaning the loss of some neurons does not entirely erase the memory. This theory raises intriguing possibilities: if repeated co-activity is sufficient to bind neurons into a memory network, could it be possible to artificially recruit non-engram neurons into an existing engram and have them share the memory? Moreover, if the original engram neurons were subsequently removed, would the memory still persist in these newly incorporated neurons? My project aims to directly test this hypothesis by using cutting-edge brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) to integrate non-engram neurons into existing memory traces, potentially transferring memories between neuron groups. BMIs are powerful tools that allow real-time control of neuronal activity. While their traditional use leveraged electrophysiological recordings to decode activity patterns for motor rehabilitation, recent advancements in calcium-based BMIs – which combine BMIs with in-vivo calcium imaging – have made it possible to monitor and control genetically defined neurons, such as engrams, with unprecedented precision. In this project, I will use a calcium-based BMI to synchronize the activity of engram neurons representing a contextual fear memory with non-engram neurons – binding them into a unified memory network. Afterward, I will selectively ablate the original engram neurons to test whether the memory is retained in the newly incorporated neurons. To achieve this, I will first use two-photon calcium imaging to longitudinally record the activity of neurons in the hippocampal CA3 region – a critical area for encoding contextual fear memories – before, during, and after fear conditioning. This will allow us to identify patterns of neuronal activity that prime certain neurons for engram allocation and strengthen their functional connectivity upon memory encoding. Next, I will use a BMI to induce co-activity between engram neurons and non-engram neurons, effectively integrating the non-engram neurons into the memory network. Following successful integration, I will use genetic tools to selectively ablate the original engram neurons and assess memory retention by evaluating memory-driven behavioral responses and monitoring neuronal coactivation during memory recall. This project holds the potential to reveal critical insights into the plasticity rules that govern memory networks. By demonstrating that memories can be transferred or expanded to include new neurons, this project could establish a biologically feasible technique using BMIs to restructure memory networks. Such advancements could lead to therapies for memory disorders, providing ways to restore lost memories or alter maladaptive ones.