Sixteen projects have been selected for funding in the second round of Research Forward, including four projects run by CALS PIs. The four CALS-led projects, described in further detail below, are:

• “Measuring land surface carbon uptake in real time using geostationary satellites” led by Paul Stoy in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering
• “Microbial natural products discovery hub,” led by Katrina Forest in the Department of Bacteriology
• “Precision pollination: a low-cost, scalable device for monitoring pollinators and pollination services using deep learning,” led by James Crall in the Department of Entomology
• “Towards a mechanistic understanding of how bile acids modulate gut microbiome composition and function,” led by Daniel Amador-Noguez in the Department of Bacteriology

The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education (OVCRGE) hosts the Research Forward initiative to stimulate and support highly innovative and groundbreaking research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The initiative is supported by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) and will provide funding for 1–2 years, depending on the needs and scope of the project.

Research Forward seeks to support collaborative, multidisciplinary, multi-investigator research projects that are high-risk, high-impact, and transformative. It seeks to fund research projects that have the potential to fundamentally transform a field of study as well as projects that require significant development prior to the submission of applications for external funding. Collaborative research proposals are welcome from within any of the four divisions (Arts & Humanities, Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences, Social Sciences), as are cross-divisional collaborations

Measuring land surface carbon uptake in real time using geostationary satellites

Vegetation carbon uptake via photosynthesis is the ultimate source of our food and regulates global warming by removing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Photosynthesis is sensitive to extreme events and climate change, and we need to understand it to effectively manage ecosystems in Wisconsin and elsewhere. Satellites have long measured photosynthesis on weekly to annual time scales, but ecosystem disturbances can happen much faster, and better choices can be made with information that arrives instantaneously rather than retrospectively. The University of Wisconsin helped invent geostationary (“weather”) satellites to benefit society. Weather satellites can now actually measure photosynthesis in real-time, but nobody has done this to date. This project will develop approaches to measure photosynthesis and ecosystem water flux from weather satellites. It will compare these measurements against ecosystem photosynthesis measurements, and use this information in writing a competitive federal grant proposal to build a center of excellence in real-time carbon cycle monitoring at UW–Madison.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Paul Stoy, associate professor of biological systems engineering

CO-PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS
Ankur Desai, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences
Jason Otkin, associate scientist at the Space Sciences and Engineering Center
Zhou Zhang, assistant professor of biological systems engineering

Microbial natural products discovery hub

Bacterial and fungal pathogens threaten to return us to the pre-antibiotic era of the early 20th century. After enjoying 80 years of an abundant supply of antibiotics, bacteria have evolved resistance to most of these drugs. To address the growing threat of antibiotic-resistant pathogens, this project will accelerate antibiotic discovery at UW–Madison by removing the bottleneck in the process. Most antibiotics in clinical use are themselves produced by bacteria, and a cornucopia of compounds await discovery by UW–Madison microbiologists who have a long history of success in this arena. The limitation in the process is isolation and structural analysis of novel compounds. Chemistry research labs are overwhelmed with requests for collaborations; therefore, this project proposes a new model for chemical analysis — a facility with a senior scientist dedicated to elucidating chemical structures with and for microbiologists. This hub will accelerate discovery, leading to useful drugs of benefit to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and human health.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Katrina Forest, professor of bacteriology

CO-PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS
Helen Blackwell, professor of chemistry
Jo Handelsman, director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery

CO-INVESTIGATORS
David Andes, professor of medicine and medical microbiology and immunology
Tin Bugni, professor of pharmacy
Joe Dillard, professor of medical microbiology and immunology

Precision pollination: a low-cost, scalable device for monitoring pollinators and pollination services using deep learning

Insect pollinators are critical to food production and conservation globally. Currently, yields of many crops are limited by insufficient pollination, a problem that declining pollinator populations threaten to accelerate. Despite mounting concern over insect declines, quantifying pollinators remains a significant challenge, in turn limiting our ability to design effective pollinator management strategies. This project will develop a first-of-its-kind device for automatically detecting and identifying insects in the field. These Autonomous Pollinator Sampling units (or AutoPolls) will use cutting-edge deep learning algorithms to quantify pollinator biodiversity and activity on a small, battery-powered device. The project team will use this technology to quantify the ecological diversity of pollinator communities and assess the impacts of practical approaches for improving the climate-resilience of pollination services. The technology that will be developed has the potential to transform the study of pollinators (and other insects), and the critical role they play in supporting crop yields and biodiversity.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
James Crall, assistant professor of entomology

CO-PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS
Claudio Gratton, professor of entomology
Joshua San Miguel, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering

Towards a mechanistic understanding of how bile acids modulate gut microbiome composition and function

Bile acids (BAs) are synthesized in the liver, have antimicrobial effects, facilitate the absorption of lipids, and act as hormones to modulate glucose homeostasis, lipid metabolism, energy expenditure and intestinal motility. The gut microbiome influences human health in part by altering the composition of the BA pool through their ability to chemical transform host generated BAs. Microbially modified BAs have distinct effects on host physiology, but we currently have a very limited understanding of the factors that control the abundances of individual BAs within the host. The overarching goal of this project is to establish causal relationships between the BA pool and the gut microbiome composition. To accomplish this, the project team will apply a cross-disciplinary approach that combines bottom-up and top-down strategies together with in vitro and in vivo experimental designs encompassing anaerobic microbiology, metabolomics, synthetic communities, germ-free mouse models and computational modeling.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Daniel Amador-Noguez, Associate Professor of bacteriology

CO-PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS
Frederico Rey, associate professor of bacteriology
Ophelia Venturelli, assistant professor of biochemistry

CALS personnel are also involved – as co-PIs or co-investigators – in these additional Research Forward-funded projects:

• Measuring the pulse of Wisconsin: a feasibility study to develop an online research panel of Wisconsinites – Dietram Scheufele, professor of life sciences communication, co-investigator
• Harnessing Microbial Ecology for Broad-Spectrum Antiparasitic Discovery – Cameron Currie, professor of bacteriology, co-investigator