Center: National Synthesis Center for Organismal Resilience to Environmental Change (NSCORE)

The National Synthesis Center for Organismal Resilience (NSCORE) will inspire, unite, and train organismal biologists and computer scientists in a collaborative effort to leverage vast amounts of real-world data utilizing advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to address the growing challenges in understanding and predicting organismal resilience. By integrating across diverse disciplines, NSCORE will transform how scientists study and predict organismal responses to change and make recommendations to improve resilience. Ultimately, its innovative programs and collaborations will empower a new generation of scientists to address one of the most critical and growing challenges of our time. Central to NSCORE’s mission is the education and training of the next generation of computational organismal biologists. To achieve this, NSCORE will implement a hybrid interdisciplinary education program for students and educators, from K-12 to university. At the core of this vertically integrated program will be the NSCORE Nexus, an online infrastructure for broad reach, that will be complemented by in-person events for deeper engagement. Initiatives will include AI-focused Bootcamps for biologists, Virtual K-12 Teacher Institutes, and Train-the-Trainer Programs for university instructors. This manifold menu of programs will emphasize opportunities for everyone, everywhere, reaching underserved urban and rural schools, minority-serving institutions, and underdeveloped regions globally. NSCORE will also engage the public through exhibits, open talks, and online resources, thereby broadening awareness and participation. Organisms respond to complex and dynamic external conditions through a series of interrelated behavioral, physiological, morphological, and molecular mechanisms. Advances in technology and increasingly deeper connections to multiple biological disciplines, including molecular, neuro-, and developmental biology, are revolutionizing the study of organisms in their natural environments. With access to vast and complex biological datasets—from genomes to behaviors—and detailed environmental data from satellite imagery and global weather networks, we are poised to revolutionize our understanding and prediction of organismal resilience. By merging organismal biology with computer science into the field of computational organismal biology, NSCORE will help advance our ability to explain and predict organismal resiliency to change by developing the tools and expertise needed to synthesize these varied datasets and bridge multiple scales using cutting-edge AI techniques. As a global hub for computational organismal biology, NSCORE will facilitate interdisciplinary synthesis through Working Groups and Catalysis Conferences that bring together experts and students. Nucleated at Columbia University, NSCORE will collaborate with academic and research institutions across the greater New York City area, North America, Europe, Asia, and beyond to foster an integrated community of researchers dedicated to achieving its goals. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. NSF Award ID: 2438843 | Program: 01003031DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT,01002829DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT,01002930DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT,01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT,01002728DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Dustin Rubenstein | Institution: Columbia University, NEW YORK, NY | Award Amount: $2,000,000 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2438843 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2438843.html