UCSB to lead $22M NSF-funded center on exceptional microbes

This week, the National Science Foundation announced the award of a six-year, $22M grant to UC Santa Barbara under its biofoundries program for the establishment of the BioFoundry for Extreme and Exceptional Fungi, Archaea and Bacteria (Ex-FAB), a collaboration led by UC Santa Barbara (UCSB), together with UC Riverside (UCR), and Cal Poly Pomona (CPP). Ex-FAB establishes the nation’s first biofoundry that focuses on largely untapped and unexplored extreme microbes. UCSB's award is one of only five grants made under NSF's BioFoundry program during this funding cycle, which awarded a total of $75M to the five selected universities.

“Our campus is thrilled to receive this visionary funding from the National Science Foundation, which reflects the research strength and innovation of our colleagues who are working across disciplines and institutions to advance biotechnology and bioengineering,” said UCSB Chancellor Henry T. Yang. “We congratulate Professor O’Malley and our entire campus team, and thank Michelle for her leadership of this pioneering effort. Our campus is known for our culture of working collaboratively at the cutting edge, and we look forward with great anticipation to the discoveries that will be made through the BioFoundry as our colleagues explore new frontiers in the world of extreme microbes.”

“We are extremely excited because this funding enables us to build infrastructure that nobody, especially in academia, has had access to before,” said Ex-FAB Director Michelle O’Malley, a professor of chemical engineering and bioengineering at UCSB. “The facility allows us to unlock the promise of a new generation of synthetic biology — one that focuses on developing new biotechnology from extreme and unusual microorganisms found in nature.”

Read the full article in the UCSB Current