Penn State's Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences has awarded nine research teams seed funding for 2026-27. These grants support high-impact, innovative research projects that align with the Huck's strategic research priorities and have the potential to drive scientific breakthroughs and generate significant return on investment.
"The Huck Seed Grant program is designed to foster collaborations across disciplines and colleges," said Christina Grozinger, Publius Vergilius Maro Professor of Entomology and director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences. "These nine grants represent our continuing commitment to building teams that can tackle fundamental scientific and global challenges through projects that deepen our understanding of life and have the potential to translate that knowledge into significant, real-world impacts."
The program is made possible by an endowment created by J. Lloyd Huck and Dorothy Foehr Huck.
"Their vision and commitment to supporting research and researchers who break down the boundaries between disciplines to transform the life sciences continue to inspire us all," Grozinger said.
The 2026 awarded projects and researchers are:
"Tracing and Containing a Novel Salamander Skin Disease in the Wildlife Trade Network"
- Principal investigator: Molly Bletz, assistant professor of disease ecology
- Huck research themes: Health for Life, Engineering Resilient Ecosystems, Translational Science & Public Impact
- In the context of an ongoing fungal disease outbreak among captive salamander populations, Bletz's project that will identify the disease's underlying causes, develop and validate diagnostic tools, evaluate risk to amphibian species, and test treatment strategies for identified pathogens
"Early Environmental Allergen Exposure: Effects on White Matter Development in the Brain"
- Principal investigator: Sonia Cavigelli, associate professor of biobehavioral health; with collaborators Helen Kamens, associate professor of biobehavioral health; Thomas Neuberger, research professor and director of the High-Field Magnetic Resonance Imaging Core Facility
- Huck research themes: Health for Life, Translational Science & Public Impact, Life at All Scales
- Researchers will investigate how exposure to common household allergens, like dust mites, during early development affects brain development in children with allergic asthma. Using a preclinical model and diffusion tensor imaging, the team will examine whether allergen-triggered inflammation disrupts white matter in brain regions involved in cognition and mental health, providing insights into the neurological effects of pediatric asthma
"A Physiology-Informed AI Framework to Identify Cross-Scale Plant Responses to Environmental Perturbations"
- Principal investigator: Paul Gauthier, associate professor of controlled environment agriculture; with collaborators Armen Kemanian, professor of production systems and modeling; Ruairidh Sawers, associate professor of plant response to abiotic stress; Patrick Suthers, assistant research professor of chemical engineering; Wenpeng Yin, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science; Wenrui Hao, professor of mathematics and director of the Center for AI and Mathematical Biology
- Huck research themes: Future Foods, AI to Action
- Using controlled experiments that vary environmental factors like light, water and CO2 availability for maize and wheat, the team will develop an artificial intelligence (AI) framework to better understand how crop plants respond to changing environmental conditions. They will combine physiological measurements, metabolomics and AI to identify the biological processes that help plants adapt to variations in light, temperature and carbon dioxide, with the goal of improving crop resilience and informing future agricultural research.
"Dissecting and Engineering Cereal Crop Resistance Against Striga, a Pernicious Parasitic Plant, to Improve Food Security"
- Principal investigator: Jesse Lasky, professor of biology; with collaborators Charles Anderson, professor of biology; Surinder Chopra, professor of maize genetics
- Huck research themes: Future Foods, Engineering Resilient Ecosystems, Translational Science & Public Impact
- The Lasky lab recently discovered a strain of sorghum, a cereal grain, that is resistant to Striga hermonthica, a parasitic plant also known as witchweed that devastates cereal crops across sub-Saharan Africa. This project will investigate how sorghum naturally resists Striga. By identifying the genes and biological mechanisms underlying this resistance, the team aims to help develop cereal crops that are more resistant to the parasite while also improving nutritional value and resilience to environmental stress.
"AI-Enabled Quantification of Transcriptional Condensate Dynamics to Predict Gene Regulation in Live Cells"
- Principal investigator: Qunhua Li, professor of statistics; with collaborators Manyu Du, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology; Huijuan Xu, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science
- Huck research themes: Health for Life, Translational Science & Public Impact, Life at All Scales, AI to Action
- Disruptions in gene regulation underlie many human diseases, but scientists still have limited ability to observe and predict how genes are turned on and off in living cells. This project aims to develop artificial intelligence tools to analyze live-cell microscopy data, enabling researchers to track the dynamic cellular processes that control gene activity in real time, laying the groundwork for future studies of diseases linked to faulty gene regulation, such as sickle cell disease.
"AI-Enabled Discovery of Early Stress Physiology and Nutritional Metabolome Control in Hydroponic Leafy Greens"
- Principal investigator: Vatsa Patel, assistant professor of computer science; with collaborators Sairam Rudrabhatla, professor of biology; Anilchandra Attaluri, associate professor of mechanical engineering
- Huck research themes: Future Foods, Life at All Scales, AI to Action
- Researchers will investigate how changes in the root environment affect the health and nutritional quality of hydroponically grown lettuce before visible signs of stress appear. By combining sensors, imaging and artificial intelligence, the team aims to identify early biological indicators of plant stress and develop tools that help growers optimize crop quality, resource use and yield in controlled-environment agriculture.
"Cell-Based IL22BP Delivery Using Biomimetic Camouflage for AML therapy"
- Principal investigator: Kumble Sandeep Prabhu, professor of immunology and molecular toxicology; with collaborator Yong Wang, professor of biomedical engineering
- Huck research themes: Health for Life, Translational Science & Public Impact
- Acute myeloid leukemia is an aggressive blood cancer that often returns after treatment because cancer stem cells evade the immune system. Prabhu and Wang have proposed the development of a cell-based immunotherapy that uses engineered stem cells to continuously deliver a protein that blocks leukemia growth and restores the immune system's ability to attack cancer, with the goal of improving long-term treatment outcomes.
"Feeding the Circuit: The Gut-Brain Axis Linking Ultraprocessed Foods and Substance Use in Emerging Adults"
- Principal investigator: Emma Jane Rose, associate teaching professor of psychology and director of the Research on Adversity and Risk Lab in the Child Study Center; with collaborators Meg Bruening, professor of nutritional sciences; Ipsita Mohanty, assistant professor of pharmacology; Xiaoxiao Bai, associate research professor and co-director of the Social, Life, and Engineering Sciences Imaging Center
- Huck research themes: Future Foods, Health for Life, Life at All Scales, Translational Science & Public Impact
- Young adults who consume diets high in ultra-processed foods have higher rates of substance use and are at elevated risk of negative physical and mental health outcomes, but the biological connection between the two remains poorly understood. This project will investigate whether diets high in ultra-processed foods alter communication between the gut and brain - through changes in the gut microbiome, metabolism and brain function - using functional MRI, magnetic resonance spectroscopy and metabolomics to better understand how these biological changes may increase substance use risk and inform future prevention strategies.
"Toward Reliable Microbial Association Networks from Sequencing Data"
- Principal investigator: Justin Silverman, assistant professor of information sciences and technology, of statistics, and of medicine; with collaborator Francisco Dini -Andreote, associate professor of phytobiomes
- Huck research themes: Future Foods, Health for Life, AI to Action, Life at All Scales
- This project will improve the accuracy of microbial community analysis by addressing a key limitation of DNA sequencing data: It measures only the relative abundance of microbes, which can create misleading patterns of association. The researchers aim to develop new statistical methods and a public benchmarking resource to account for uncertainty in microbial biomass, then validate the approach using controlled microbial communities. The resulting framework will help scientists more reliably identify how microbial communities respond to environmental change, advancing research across human, animal and environmental health.
