The National Science Foundation and the state of Delaware announced in April a $9 million partnership to fund new research in the life sciences by the state’s institutions of higher education, led by the Delaware Biotechnology Institute and the University of Delaware.

Participating in the partnership with DBI and UD are Delaware State University, Delaware Technical and Community College and Wesley College.

The NSF has awarded a research infrastructure improvement grant of $6 million to the partnership through its Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), and the state has committed $3 million in matching funds.

In addition to research, the funding will be used for outreach and education programs and to generate consideration of ethics and public policy in light of the rapid advances in the physical and biological sciences.

The funding also will have a strong economic development component, as novel research generated by the grants is expected to eventually reach the marketplace and thereby lead to the creation of new jobs in the state.

Key benefits of the funding will be the acquisition of needed instrumentation to undertake leading-edge research and the creation of professional networks to enhance collaborative efforts among the institutions.

The project is designed to build an infrastructure of people, programs and equipment and to develop a culture of interdisciplinary collaboration around research in complex environmental systems and ecosystem health. Through such infrastructure development, researchers in the state will be able to compete more successfully for federal grants and contribute broadly to national science initiatives.

Furthermore, the project is designed to build on the state’s existing economic development initiative, which stresses the life sciences as a major area of opportunity, and to stimulate an increased level of involvement of the academic community in the initiative.

The research component of the funding involves UD, DBI, Delaware State and Wesley, which will work together to develop a major new area of interest that draws on the institutions’ capabilities in plant, soil and marine science, as well as in bio-nanotechnology and environmental ecology.

The goal is to investigate complex microbial systems and their interrelationships in order to determine and predict their impact on the health of the ecosystem.

UD and DBI are combining genomics-based technologies with new tools in environmental biogeochemistry to conduct fundamental research in nanoscale science and engineering. Delaware State plans to bring together faculty from across the institution to create an interdisciplinary focus on terrestrial and marine ecosystem issues, and Wesley plans an interdisciplinary environmental sciences and policy program with an emphasis on ecosystem health.

All of the partner institutions plan to work cooperatively in an outreach effort targeting women, underrepresented groups and underserved rural populations in southern Delaware. The focus will be on undergraduate research and career opportunities, new biotechnology degree programs at Delaware Technical and Community College campuses and the stimulation of interest in the life sciences among middle school teachers and students.

The ethics and public policy component will create a statewide forum to spread knowledge and create understanding of important ethical and policy issues arising as a result of the rapid advances in the life sciences.

The EPSCoR project will be managed by the Delaware Biotechnology Institute, under the leadership of DBI Director David Weir.