Bayer Crop Science, HortiEdit 2025: Thriving plants, sustainable harvest

Bayer Crop Science is looking to leverage gene editing to develop solanaceous crops (such as tomatoes and peppers), cucurbits (such as cucumbers and melons), and strawberries that exhibit reduced susceptibility to diseases, enhanced structural traits, and improved agronomic sustainability, including tolerance to variable growing conditions. 

. Private Company, Novel drying technology for meat-based products

This is a leading company in consumer product goods, dedicated to providing high-quality, nutritious products. Their focus is on high-meat formulations, which require precise drying techniques to maintain their nutritional value and quality. Traditional drying methods, such as hot-air drying by convection, often result in nutrient loss and undesirable changes in texture, aroma, and flavor due to extended heat processes, which negatively impact the product quality, consumer satisfaction, and production efficiency. We aim to identify novel drying solutions that can preserve the integrity of high-meat formulations while streamlining manufacturing performance by reducing production costs and lowering energy consumption.

NSF 22-629, Science and Technology Studies (STS)

• The STS program encourages research on complex socio-technical and techno-scientific problems that are best confronted using a distributed approach by multiple collaborative teams
• Estimated Number of Awards: 40
• Anticipated Funding Amount: $6.2 million

Science and Technology Studies (STS) is an interdisciplinary field that investigates the conceptual foundations, historical developments and social contexts of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), including medical science. The STS program supports proposals across a broad spectrum of research that uses historical, philosophical and social scientific methods to investigate STEM theory and practice. STS research may be empirical or conceptual; specifically, it may focus on the intellectual, material or social facets of STEM.

NSF 25-539, Verticals-enabling Intelligent Network Systems (VINES)

The VINES program seeks to support both fundamental research and verticals-driven technology development, demonstration, and translation activities that will lead to leaps in performance and capabilities of next generation (NextG) advanced intelligent network systems that span the user-edge-core-cloud continuum. The program seeks to go beyond the current research portfolios within individual participating NSF directorates and partner organizations by simultaneously emphasizing gains in performance and capabilities without compromising resilience and interoperability across all layers of the networking protocol and computation stacks. Innovations are sought across the various aspects of next generation communications, networking, and computing systems.

NSF PD 19-126Y, Science of Science: Discovery, Communication and Impact (SoS:DCI)

The Science of Science: Discovery, Communication and Impact (SoS:DCI) program is designed to advance theory and knowledge about increasing the public value of scientific activity. Science of Science draws from multiple disciplinary and field perspectives to advance theory and research about scientific discovery, communication and impact. SoS:DCI welcomes proposals applying rigorous empirical research methods to advance theory and knowledge on:

• The social and structural mechanisms of scientific discovery.
• Theories, frameworks, models and data that improve our understanding of scientific communication and outcomes.
• The societal benefits of scientific activity and how science advances evidence-based policy making and the creation of public value.