Life is constantly responding to change. Temperatures shift, ecosystems reorganize, species move, and organisms adapt to new pressures. Understanding these changes requires science that crosses scales, disciplines and environments.
Several 2026 HFSP Research Grant projects explore Ecology, Climate & Environmental Systems. Together, they examine how organisms, populations and ecosystems respond to a rapidly changing world.
One project investigates how climate change is reshaping the distribution of ticks carrying disease-causing viruses. By combining causal inference, artificial intelligence and mechanistic modeling, the team aims to better predict climate-sensitive tick–virus dynamics and the risks they may pose.
Another project looks at fitness from a different angle, studying how the abundance, activity and toxicity of proteins influence their roles in cells. This work explores how biological systems balance benefit and risk at the molecular level.
A third project moves underground, using robotics to uncover the hidden ecology of mole-rats. By entering environments that are difficult for humans to access, the project opens new ways to study subterranean life and the systems that support it.
The final project in this theme focuses on major upwelling ecosystems, which are among the most productive marine systems on Earth. By bringing together ecological and evolutionary perspectives, the team will investigate how these ecosystems respond to climate change across scales.
Across these projects, the common thread is change: how living systems respond, adapt and reorganize under pressure. From viruses and proteins to underground animals and marine ecosystems, HFSP-supported teams are developing new approaches to understand life in motion.
These projects reflect the interdisciplinary spirit of HFSP Research Grants: combining ecology, climate science, computation, robotics, evolution and molecular biology to address some of the most complex questions in the life sciences.