For 2025, the Huck Institutes seeks to encourage cross-disciplinary life sciences research rooted in the following thematic areas. Our current round of seed funding gives preferential consideration to projects that fall into these categories.
Interdisciplinary Research Themes
Future Foods
Ensuring access to abundant, nutritious foods in a changing world requires an integrated approach. At the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, we investigate critical interactions between genetics, microbiology, physiology, health, and productivity of plants and animals, spanning all aspects of plant and animal biology, agroecology, human nutrition, and health. This research is accelerated by innovations in AI-driven predictive modeling and remote sensing to optimize resource use and management decisions under variable environmental conditions. We pioneer innovations in engineering and energy management to support controlled environment agriculture, such as greenhouses and vertical farming. Our research programs seek to understand the nutritional needs and preferences of people in different stages of life, and how food processing and dietary supplements (such as the microbiome) influence nutrition and health. By creating tangible solutions, our scientists strive to give farmers the tools to produce healthy and nutritious foods and empower families with knowledge to make informed dietary choices.
Health for Life
The health of plants, animals, and humans is impacted by experiences across the lifespan. These experiences include exposure to beneficial and parasitic organisms (microbes, fungi, viruses, nematodes, etc.), changing nutritional regimes, contaminants and pollutants, and social conditions. The effects of these exposures can be long-lasting, where experiences during development influence outcomes in adulthood, and may persist into future generations. These effects can manifest in many ways, including compromised or more resilient immune systems, cognitive declines or long-term cognitive flexibility, and metabolic changes. Our researchers are working with stakeholders, including farmers, community groups and policymakers, to develop strategies to promote health of plants, animals, and humans by considering the impacts of biological, environmental, and socio-cultural factors across all aspects of the lifecycle.
Emergent Intelligence in Organisms
One of the most remarkable features of living things is their ability to adapt to and modify the world around them. Organisms integrate internal and external signals into their decision-making to maximize their survival and reproductive success. Moreover, organisms can store and act on their memories of past experiences over many time scales, spanning from seconds to several lifetimes. This form of intelligence is found across diverse organisms. Integration of signals and subsequent changes in physiology and behavior are orchestrated by the brain and central nervous system in animals, and by networked molecular pathways in organisms without brains, such as microbes and plants. At the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, scientists study how intelligence emerges from basic components at multiple levels of organization (spanning genes, cells, neural networks) in diverse species, including microbes, insects, plants, animals, and humans. We seek to understand the fundamental processes that shape cognition and behavior to develop new strategies to promote well-being and brain health and apply what we learn from living systems to guide the design of biomimetic computer systems and artificial intelligence.
Engineering Resilient Ecosystems
Ecological communities include microbes, plants and animals that interact with each other and environmental factors such as nutrients in the soil, water, and air. Functional ecological communities support food webs that sustain biodiversity, pollination of agricultural crops, nutrient cycling, and clean water systems. However, ecological communities can be disrupted by stressors, including the introduction of invasive species, emerging infectious diseases, extreme weather, pollution, and construction. Scientists at the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences aim to develop innovative strategies, using approaches spanning genomics to ecology, material science to civil engineering, to first identify communities at risk of disturbance and then protect, restore and create resilient ecosystems in our cities, farms, forests, streams, lakes and oceans. Through partnerships with conservation organizations, government agencies, and community stakeholders, we seek to translate these scientific advances into practical solutions that enhance ecosystem stability and services.
Cross-Cutting Research Themes
Translational Science & Public Impact
Research at the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences bridges foundational discovery with real-world application. Our scientists work across disciplines to transform basic biological insights into innovative tools, treatments, and strategies that benefit society at local, national, and global scales. We are accelerating the development of next-generation pharmaceuticals and vaccines through advanced molecular modeling, structural biology, and systems immunology. Our teams are pioneering new approaches in industrial biotechnology and bio-renewables, harnessing microbes, enzymes, and plant systems to produce sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels and synthetic chemicals. By integrating computational modeling with field and clinical data, we are improving our ability to forecast and manage infectious disease outbreaks, track antimicrobial resistance, identify synergies in interventions, and guide public health responses. Our researchers are advancing the communication of science and health policy, engaging with stakeholders to ensure evidence-based decisions are informed by the latest research. Whether it is predicting ecosystem collapse, improving crop resilience, or optimizing health interventions in communities across the world, our work translates complex science into accessible, impactful solutions that serve people and the planet.
Life at All Scales
At the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, we are using and developing innovative new strategies to view life from all angles and scales. Our researchers explore how proteins and RNA regulate gene expression, viruses cross cell membranes, metabolites move inside an organism, and plant communities are distributed across landscapes. Our scientists are leveraging technology, chemistry and artificial intelligence to develop sensors that can detect physiological and chemical changes in plants, animals, humans, or changes in pollutants, environmental conditions, or species abundance and community composition in diverse habitats. These approaches allow us to monitor changes in organismal and environmental health with greater precision than ever before, leading to the development of novel and effective strategies to promote the health of people, plants, animals, and ecosystems.
AI to Action
We are in a global data revolution, where it is possible to collect data at an unprecedented scale, spanning genomes to ecosystems, from archeological sites to real-time data collection from wearable devices. This provides opportunities for integrating different data streams to identify novel mechanisms underlying fundamental biological processes, such as cellular dynamics and social interactions, as well as ongoing societal challenges, including infectious and chronic diseases. Huck Institutes scientists are developing innovative strategies to harness and apply these complex data streams to address fundamental and societal grand challenges.