$25 million NSF grant launches natural and digital evolution center at Mich. State University

$25M grant to MSU for bio-digital evolution center

DETROIT — The National Science Foundation has awarded $25 million to Michigan State University to create a center for the joint study of natural and digital evolution, officials said Wednesday.

The center will conduct basic and applied research that includes and combines evolutionary biology and computer science, center director Erik Goodman told The Associated Press ahead of the announcement.

Computer-based design already uses a digital version of natural selection to discover and test the relative efficiency of alternative solutions to technical problems, the computer scientist said.

He said he was “extremely excited” about the prospect of bringing natural and digital evolution researchers together in one program.

“In addition, we will educate a generation of multidisciplinary scientists and improve public understanding of evolution at all levels,” Goodman said.

“We have an incredible opportunity now for the two-way flow of ideas and methods between biology and engineering,” added microbiology professor Richard Lenski, co-principal investigator.

Lenski said the opening of the center lets scientists “use deep biological principles to stimulate innovation in computational realms and, at the same time, use the speed and precision of computers to explore open questions in biology.”

The center will be called BEACON, which stands for “Bio/computational Evolution in Action CONsortium.” The grant begins June 1.

“The problems we face and the questions we seek to answer are far too complex to fit into traditional academic frames,” Michigan State President Lou Anna Simon said in remarks prepared for the announcement.

BEACON is one of five new centers being launched under the NSF’s Science and Technology Centers Program. The five-year grant is renewable for five more years.

Four other universities — North Carolina A&T State University and the universities of Idaho, Washington and Texas at Austin — are collaborating with Michigan State.

The center will involve more than 30 Michigan State faculty members, about 30 Ph.D students and about 10 postdoctoral researchers, Goodman said.

The NSF has created 17 other operations under its Science and Technology Centers Program. They have focused on fields including behavioral neuroscience, optics, embedded network sensing, water purification and weather modeling.