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 (ExFAB), a collaboration led by UC Santa Barbara (UCSB), together with UC Riverside (UCR), and Cal Poly Pomona (CPP). ExFAB 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." Henry T. Yang, Chancellor, University of California - Santa Barbara "We are extremely excited because this funding enables us to build infrastructure that nobody, especially.