STC: Center for Research On Programmable Plant Systems

This NSF Science and Technology Center aims to devise a two-way communication system between humans and plants that will dramatically enhance the ability to predict, design, and mediate biological behavior in crop-based agriculture. This transdisciplinary effort brings together plant sciences, engineering, computer science, and science and technology studies to establish an enabling framework for the systematic discovery of the rules that govern biological behavior of plant systems in field environments.

The team’s approach couples genetic, biochemical, cellular, organismal and ecological principles with environmental and socio-economic considerations. In parallel, the Center's research drives innovation in systems and synthetic biology, biotechnology, nanotechnology, automation, robotics, computing, and communication. The Center educates students through new curriculum and research engagements that integrate computer science, engineering, and public engagement with knowledge in biology and the life sciences for undergraduate, master's, and Ph.D. students.

The Center integrates public engagement throughout all activities to drive continuous, iterative dialogue between the Center's researchers, stakeholders in the agricultural sector, and the general public. The Center strives to engage the full diversity of our society and broaden participation in its mission by creating pipelines into STEM fields and sustained mentoring for students and young professionals from rural and underrepresented minority communities.

In pursuit of its scientific and technological goals and its aim for broader impacts, the Center organizes research across an innovation engine with four technological thrusts and a discovery engine with four research themes called living laboratories. These interlinked teams engage in continuous cycles of design-build-test-learn across disciplines, technical challenges, and scientific and social goals.

The innovation engine focuses on building and integrating the elements of an Internet-of-Living-Things (IoLT) through the following Thrusts: (1) Biotransducers give rise to programmable plants through synthetic biological gene circuits that enable bidirectional communications between molecular processes in plants and digital sensors. (2) Nanotransducers improve and complement molecular biological transducers to enable communication between plants and digital systems. (3) Digital interfaces develop agile and cooperative robots, communications technologies, and edge-computing capabilities to mediate efficient communication between programmable plants and cloud-hosted models. (4) Digital systems develop integrated multi-scale models of plant systems that integrate data and orchestrate actuation across the IoLT with hybrid mechanistic and data-driven strategies. Furthermore, the Living Laboratories of the discovery engine interact with all thrusts in pursuit of the following research themes: (1) Resource use and growth optimization deploy programmable plants to dissect the pathways that define water and nitrogen use and plant development, and modulate these processes for improved outcomes in productivity and sustainability. (2) Predictive modeling and germplasm improvement use the IoLT, programmable plants, and integrative multi-scale models to predict emergent phenotypes in complex environments and accelerate the process of breeding crops with improved performance. (3) Plant-microbe interactions apply technologies from the innovation engine to access the physical, chemical, and microbial dynamics of the near-root zone or rhizosphere and integrate plant-microbiome characteristics into systems biology models, breeding strategies, and crop management. (4) Public engagement permeates all Center activities to facilitate and study productive interactions among researchers, stakeholders, and general publics around the development, understanding, and communication of scientific and technological goals.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.