NSF Awards $20 Million to Northwestern for Nation's First AI-Powered Protein Engineering Cloud Lab
核心洞察
The NSF has awarded Northwestern University $20 million over four years to establish DREAM, the nation's first publicly accessible AI-powered cloud laboratory for protein engineering.
DREAM aims to synthesize and characterize more than 300,000 proteins, generating up to 30 million data points to create one of the largest publicly available datasets for AI-guided protein engineering.
The facility will use AI models to propose protein designs, with robotic systems building and testing them through a design-build-test-learn cycle, removing critical bottlenecks in protein development.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded Northwestern University $20 million over four years to establish the nation's first publicly accessible, AI-powered cloud laboratory dedicated to protein engineering. The facility, called the AI-Driven, Rapid, Experimental Automation Machine (DREAM) Cloud Lab, is designed to dramatically accelerate the development of new medicines, sustainable materials, agricultural technologies and other biotechnology innovations.
DREAM is among 20 inaugural NSF-funded Programmable Cloud Laboratory (PCL) test beds, part of a broader $380 million national investment to create a nationwide network of AI-enabled, remotely accessible laboratories. Positioned within Northwestern's Center for Synthetic Biology (搜索) (CSB), DREAM will serve as the protein-engineering hub within this network, sharing data, AI models and best practices with other cloud laboratory nodes.
"Northwestern is honored to be selected by the NSF to host one of the inaugural Programmable Cloud Laboratory test beds in the country," said President Mung Chiang. "DREAM is an important initiative that will create the platform for our Center for Synthetic Biology (搜索) to collaborate with researchers across the nation, advancing important breakthroughs in protein engineering and broadly in biotechnology."
Addressing the Protein Engineering Bottleneck
Proteins perform nearly every essential function of life, and scientists increasingly seek to engineer them for applications including new therapeutics, recycling plastics, detecting environmental contaminants and recovering critical minerals. Yet designing proteins that perform exact desired functions remains slow, expensive and accessible to relatively few laboratories.
Although recent advances in AI have made it possible to computationally design promising proteins, a critical bottleneck persists: scientists need to build and test proteins to generate the data required to improve AI models. DREAM is designed to remove that bottleneck.
Through a cloud-based interface, users will specify the desired functions they want a protein to perform. AI models will then propose promising designs and, after evaluation through a rigorous biosafety and biosecurity review process, robotic systems will automatically build and test those proteins. The resulting experimental data will continually improve the AI models.
"Building and testing the proteins are historically tedious, slow and costly steps," said Danielle Tullman-Ercek, co-PI of DREAM and co-director of the Center for Synthetic Biology (搜索). "To overcome this issue, the DREAM facility leverages cutting-edge developments in the synthesis of proteins using cell-free technologies that were pioneered at Northwestern."
Unprecedented Scale of Data Generation
During the four-year award period, DREAM's investigators expect to synthesize and characterize more than 300,000 proteins, generating up to 30 million data points — creating one of the largest publicly available datasets for AI-guided protein engineering. The team plans to release the data and AI models through an open-access framework, establishing a national knowledge base that scientists can build upon for years to come.
The facility will be physically housed within the CSB's Synthetic Biology Foundry, a shared research facility equipped with advanced robotics and protein-engineering tools. The Foundry is co-located with the Querrey InQbation Lab, Northwestern's startup incubator hub, allowing research breakthroughs to quickly transition from the lab into new companies and products.
"DREAM will positively transform our society, spinning out new companies and creating new jobs by accelerating new technologies for manufacturing, critical mineral mining, healthy aging, agriculture and advanced materials," said Julius B. Lucks, principal investigator of DREAM and co-director of the Center for Synthetic Biology (搜索).
Leadership and Collaborative Structure
Lucks, the Margery Claire Carlson Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering, leads the initiative. Co-PIs include Danielle Tullman-Ercek, Han Liu — the Orrington Lunt Professor of Computer Science at McCormick and professor of statistics at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences — and Michael Jewett, professor of bioengineering and chemical engineering at Stanford University. Key personnel include Joshua Leonard, professor of chemical and biological engineering at McCormick, and Michelle Hoffmann, executive director of the Chicago Biomedical Consortium (搜索).
The DREAM node will sit at the heart of the Midwest bioeconomy and, given its national connectedness to the broader network of AI "self-driving" labs, will serve as a foundational resource for the expanding Chicago and Illinois biotechnology sector. The Chicago Biomedical Consortium (搜索) will provide expertise for DREAM's translational processes, ensuring that research transfers to applications and products.
"The Northwestern DREAM Cloud Lab will be a game changer for the State of Illinois," said Christy George, president and chief executive officer of the Illinois Economic Development Corporation. "As the only AI-protein engineering hub in the country, it will add another critical core facility to our strong life sciences ecosystem and offer new opportunities for companies looking to partner and grow in Illinois."
National Context
The NSF's PCL Test Bed program aligns with the U.S. government's Genesis Mission, a national effort aiming to harness AI for scientific discovery. Northwestern engineers will also contribute to two other PCL test beds: Wei Chen will serve as co-PI of the Artificial Intelligence for Materials Design Network led by Johns Hopkins University, and Chris Wolverton will serve as co-PI of ATHENA, led by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
"The NSF Programmable Cloud Laboratories initiative will unlock new discoveries in a wide range of fields while also advancing AI-enabled technologies that form the backbone of the automated science revolution," said Erwin Gianchandani, NSF assistant director for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships.